Well yes and no :P I fill my machines from then underside like you, but I do do have high(er) placed buffers (water/liquit "Towers") to ensure fullness of the machines. For me the big eye opener is the VIP-junction, have been looking for that thing for a while now. Thx for helping me out 😉
Honestly I learned that the water in this game acts like real water. For some reason I thought is was a simpler system and always wondered why my coal power would shut off even though it is self powered.
@@karls8103 If you have a pump at a lower point then the extractor output it helps to keep the extractor operating. Also putting a mk1 pump every 4 4m foundations high will help the flow upwards. Only every 12 4m foundations if you use the mk2.
I got that feeding from below and my power is costantly fluctuating :'( but how to change that? when I put the pipes higher it's gonna be ugly :'( Would overfilling the system work? I have the numbers balanced so maybe excess water would help?
What's to understand? The spiiiiicy rocks go in the thing and you boop the line into existence. Eaaaaasy. But no, definitely agree, this game has such a good fan base that's always willing to help and share ideas.
140 hours into this game and pipes are the bane of my existence. Have never once seen that blue ring to tell me where to place pumps. Thanks for the great guide!
@@timmcgrath8742I don't see the hologram, but it usually snaps to the location. Keep the pipe systems short and simple and it should be fine. Anything I build consuming water I build over a body of water just high enough to fit a water pump under. Then connect each pump to the number of machines it can support (or each machine to the number of pumps it needs). Yes, it can take time to run smoothly when feeding from below, but if the system is small it resolves itself quickly. Then use valves balancing byproducts. Again, it can take more time to smooth things out than other solutions if things go wrong, but not too much for. small systems.
This is one of the most complicated things in the entire game to balance and it's absolutely frustrating not being able to figure out where the problem in your piping network lies.
Agreed. Trying to supply 8 coal power plants with 3 water extractors and mk I pipes somehow always ends up with headache for me. Despite those flow indicators on the outside of the pipe it's kinda hard, at least for me, to see what's going on inside the pipes and diagnose the problem.
@Hoon Turd Chemical Engineers often work in Chemical Factories, alongside Process Engineers, Equipment Operators, Maintenance Technicians, Factory Engineers, all inside a building designed by Architects specializing in the needs of Industrial Engineering, using large machines designed by Mechanical Engineers, wired up by Electrical Engineers and glorified Plumbers. In Satisfactory, the player takes on all these roles. So, naturally, it follows that people in many of these occupations will have an appreciation of this game. Saying that as someone who was an operator and technician in a factory at one point.
Lol electrical engineers never wire anything up lol. I can't say for the other engineers but I'm pretty sure this game is the realization of your work. An electrician wires things up with instructions from engineers. This game is so appealing to engineers because it takes it right from you to the realization of the work instead of just giving instructions
flashback to the first time i unlocked coal power in satisfactory and created such an unreliable unusable mess of a power grid (because i didnt realize that pipes could only carry so much water) that i had to restart completely from scratch lol
I started a 1.0 save and just spent 10 hours making a 5 gigawatt compacted coal grid at tier 3. Reluctantly, I log manifolded the water input to make the whole thing look better. In turn, the gens at the end of the line were getting basically zero water. The tip in your video about looping the end of the manifold back to the start fixed my problem and put everything back at 100%. Thanks!
Using the same principles laid out in the manual, you can set up your waste-water aluminum setup much easier than described here. The first solution I figured out was to have the water extractors filling buffers, but the buffers are raised to where they don't have enough headlift to fully fill the tanks. A buffer ~8m above an extractor will NEVER fill. Feed your waste-water back into that line from refineries that are higher than the extractors. This means that the extractors can only fill the buffer half way (or so), but the feedback water has more headlift so will fill the remaining space. Since the extractors can't add water when it's more than 50% full, it will exclusively use the waste-water until it is gone, then use the extractor water. It never backs up, doesn't require precise valves, and is resistant to failure due to cutting a line or something. The second solution is far simpler and it made me very angry that my first "brilliant" solution was basically pointless. Just place a vertical junction on the refinery feed line. Extractors into the top, feedback into the bottom. Since pipes ALWAYS drain from the bottom first, this will never back up (even when the pipes are completely full). No need for sinking or any shenanigans. It just works. You don't even need a buffer.
If you're pressed for space, just adding a powered pump to the recycled water line works. It provides a higher working pressure, which gives it priority over the extractors since even a mk1 pump has twice their headlift. Just be careful if the extractor line also has a pump on it.
easiest way I found was just matching the waste to production. 1 refinery for alumina solution uses exactly 1 water extractor and 0.5 from a scrap refinery, or more realistically, 2 alumina refineries use 1 scrap refinery and 2 water extractors. This setup works perfectly and theres literally 0 reason to have balance issues. if you're having flow issues, you could set it up in multiples of 360 ingots a minute to get exactly 180/min of waste water, which will perfectly feed 1 alumina solution refinery per 360 ingots.
@@james2042 That works but if any part of any of the production lines gets interrupted, the pipes all fill with water and you'll have to flush the lines to start it again (if you aren't using the preferential junction setup I mentioned). If you do the vertical junction, you can delete a belt to re-route something or whatever without worrying about your alumina factory shutting down.
@@psmitty840 it would never completely shut down though is the thing. If you're working on it, then turn it off so stuff doesn't back up, figured that was common sense. Otherwise if you design it right there shouldn't be interruptions.
@@james2042 "If you're working on it, turn it off so it doesn't break" sounds a lot like a worse design. I can disconnect whatever I want for however long I like on my alumina factory and when I plug it back in, it goes back to work, no breakers or cut power lines needed. I mean you can do it however you like, but if someone offered you a factory that would need to be manually messed with every time you move a belt or blow a fuse and one that doesn't... I know which I would choose.
ye i was scratching my head with this I was like damn I have like 7 water extractor and 6 coal burner why is 1-2 always tend to struggle with water then it ended up with a spaghetti pipes I just ended up watching a guide lmaoo
I spent hours trying to balance the backflow with recycled water. I found a valve to be the most helpful on the extractor side limiting overall supply so that the recycled water takes priority. Just make sure to not supply recycled water to everything in line. Pick one or two items unless you really hate yourself. I didn't realize the game factored head pressure relative to height before. I knew it did a little bit, but didn't realize a water tower would actually work! I'm putting one in ASAP. I used to work in water treatment personally and love all the nerding out you did on this video.
I try to put a buffer before any major input line. I let that fill up before connecting it to the actual input manifold. The reason? Having a max-flow pipe is a bit finicky, especially the mark 2s. Sometimes they'll drop to 298 or 598 for absolutely no reason for a bit and this will cause whatever is consuming to spin up and down and then causes the water extractor to turn off because it's full and then sloshing starts. Having a buffer (especially one that's elevated) seems to fix this problem. Actually, "dropping" water from a buffer into a manifold line is almost always a good idea.
ohh yes. The reason is that the water extractors need a little bit of time to get started. The second that water is drawn from the pipeline, the water extractors need 1-2 seconds to get started and extract water. Causing there to be only ~598-ish water provided in a mk2 pipeline. I can remember that the nuclear reactors needed 300 water each. perfect for a mk2 pipeline to feed two reactors right? but we needed a buffer as well to make it work, since its only 598-ish water in the pipe.
Hint: When delivering fluids by train and you want to ensure a constant flow even during loading / unloading you'll need to double buffer on the side of each terminal. (Same principle as for solid goods.) - Make sure to connect each input / output to a small, individual buffer (as there's no buffer with two inputs yet)... - and merge them afterwards. - Don't forget to add a valve right in front of the merging junction to make sure there won't be any backflow to the buffers. - Add those double buffers to ALL stations, be it loading or unloading to avoid any shortages on its way
Also useful for feedback loops. Take uranium cell production. It requires sulfuric acid and outputs sulfuric acid. You can use a pump on a horizontal pipe to prevent backflow to make sure the output side of the blender is always open and able to flow out.
I had water recycling issues for both my alumina solution and uranium recycling where at less than 100% efficiency the input water would saturate the line and not allow for the recycled water to leave the machine, causing them to halt. The priority merger shown fixed those issues right up since the recycled water on the bottom always has priority over the water to refresh the loss.
omg you saved me, I spent hours yesterday trying to troubleshoot a fuel power plant that just wouldn’t work right and got so frustrated I almost quit my save. The solution? At 6:40 MAKE IT A LOOP. It works perfectly now.
I spent 2 hours trying to figure out how to load balance my water for my coal power plants just to learn that I do it need to do it. This makes it so much easier
This video has helped a lot. I've been having issues with supplying Coal generators and it's because I've been supplying them from below. Won't be making that mistake again!
Coming back to this video after 2 years, because I'm having trouble with flow rate in horizontal pipes.. I'm not sure why it's happening, but it's lacking flow the further down the oil pipe I go. There's a buffer somewhere early in the circuit, but it's quite leveled with the oil extractors as well, so was thinking headlift should never be an issue here. Input of oil is also higher than what it needs, because it made it somewhat stable for a while. Though I still lack flow rate in the pipes further away, on a surfaced level
For "liquid recycling" as you put it , something you don't touch on is pipe LENGTH. The shortest pipes will get cleared first. Great for prioritising the waste output of refineries over the water extractors
That's only if the water extractors pipes aren't full, which is a possibility if not thought about, that's why it's better to use priority pipes like the upside down U bend or priority junctions ☺️
Been dealing with fluid issues for like 2 weeks with my fuel setup. And it's probably because I'm feeding them from below. It just looks so much nicer. Guess I'll be redoing my piping. You explained the issue very clearly. Thanks!
Honestly I do mine from below as well. I have a Mk1 from the refineries into my storage tanks, then it goes below to the left where there's a Mk2. From there it goes left for 3 generators and loops around into a manifold for all 12 generators. I've had zero problems with it.
fist time seeing your channel and I feel like I learned more in this 1 video than I have from all my time playing. Definitely going to check out more of your stuff, very interesting.
There seems to be some kind of directional priority for pipes as well - they will prefer flow in the direction that they are placed. This can be checked using the default orientation of a valve on the pipe
I noticed this problem once once deleted the pipes and reconnected the other way the problem was solved. Good to know about the check, didn't know that, thanks! Been worried about making the mistake again in a bigger build.
@@anneputseys4441 That's how I came across it too! Had a basic 3 well oil->plastic,rubber,power station, and was running really unreliably. Losing as much as 15% uptime. After trying a bunch of stuff that didn't help, I remembered that someone had found a similar issue in Factorio at some point, reconnected all my pipes in root->stem order instead of just whatever I did initially, and it's 100% solid uptime now.
Pipes are the hardest thing in the game to build neatly but this information helped a lot! Great video and absolutely beautiful builds/examples within!
The most confusing thing i have watched on satisfactory to date, good video none the less as always - but above my pay grade at this point - i would like to see you make a video like "water transfer for Dummies" or perhaps show us in a linear progression style like start with a less complicated set up and progress through the options in terms of complexity. just a suggestion.
you can also use mk1 pumps as a sort of check valve to ensure fluid only flows one way past it. this is one way to cope with buffer backflow. you can also just build the buffers stacked vertically if you want them in-line.
You just need valves for manifolds that feed from below. The fluid still balances into the level pipe, but then can't backflow beyond the valve, forcing it into the building.
Thanks for explaining this Total, it was really helpful! Even for experienced players this might be the reason why things are not that good in their factory! I'm glad you did this :)
Buffers actually have a real fluid level. That is why full buffers have a higher head lift. But that also means that if your buffer is at the limit of its input head lift, IT WILL NEVER GET FULL, because you need extra pressure to raise its internal fluid level.
You really gotta watch it when you upgrade pipelines too, I personally found you're just better off deleting the existing pipeline entirely and then rebuild it using the mk.2. The problem is when you "upgrade" a pipe from mk.1 to mk. 2 anything underneath existing attachments, like valves, intersections, pumps, etc. doesn't get upgraded, even if you go back after and upgrade the mk 1 pumps to mk 2 pumps, the pipe it's sitting on will remain a mk 1 pipe. So yeah, just delete the whole pipeline and rebuild it, you can leave the support poles and ports to be your guides if you wish, but bare in mind your pumps can be spaced further apart, so you may just want to rebuild it from scratch.
Feeding my coal generators from below is just pure black magic. Some times it works, some times it doesn’t. It’s a complete mystery. Once I accidentally stumbled upon a configuration that worked for no apparent reason, I just never touched it again. Come to think of it, I should probably rebuild all my power stations to get rid of any unpredictability. Just feed the coal from below and water from above.
You're probably using pipe floor holes. These are incredibly finicky and can stop headlift from passing through completely. They will basically only work if you build the pipes into the floor holes in the correct order. If your water comes from below, then you need to build the pipe on the bottom side first and then build the top pipe. You can verify this when placing a pump. If the blue headlift marker stops at the floor hole, rebuild the pipes first.
Around 8:27 you mention working pressure and talk about "a 100 meter pipe" ... now you mixed up meters (which measures a one dimensional line) and the cubic meters (with which you actually measure volume in a 3 dimensional space). But besides that, great video. Wish more people would look such good explanations. Troubles with pipe system and the most frequent reasons, people come to the official discord server and ask for help.
That's a nice fluid system you've got there. Be a shame if someone were to stubbornly circumvent it by just packaging everything no matter how inconvenient that is.
I have always used valves as a rule of thumb. I didnt actually know the game had backwash so I have been accidentally preventing it all this time. Plus i think it looks correct to have them near junctions anyway.
Great video! Trying to figure out how to minimize pumps is so hard to figure out sometimes. I just built a plant with 130 Turbo Fuel Generators, everything from nodes on site, with each stage moving vertically upwards. I said F-it and just put in like 100 pumps.
Next time do it backwards: put the first processing refineries on top and leave the rest to gravity, going levels down as many floors as needed. Then you’ll need pumps just to lift the crude oil.
To some extent the game is fun, but to some extent to complete it you need math, learning, knowledge and patience, which is why I have over 100 hours and never get anything really fully built. Im on my 100th restart.
Make sure everything is built next to each other so any fluid doesn’t have to go far. And do the math on the output if the next refinery only needs 50 units, set the input to 50 units and so forth. And packaging fluids is the only way to move stuff.
So here's the preface: I just unlocked Oil refineries and all that jazz... and here's the dumb question... I know the pipes say they can't be connected to pipes filled with other liquid... But..... Is it actually true? I'm convinced you can use a combo of buffers, junctions, backflow, valves, and pumps to negate this. I just can't comprehend how if it is possible.
Was just making my first coal plants and water was not flowing, so I look up a tutorial. I get jumpscared by the biggest power plant I've ever seen in my life. This game can be even crazier than I thought.
I try not to use that headlift hologram indicator on the pipes as I'm placing pumps. I've had it be wrong before and my water was failing to reach its destination. Now I always go about 5-7 meters below it.
There's a method that I use that works very efficiently and has never created any problems and I'm surprised you don't mention in your video. I take three buffer tanks I stack them one on top of the other. Then I use the pump lift system to fill the top tank and allow gravity to fill the middle tank to the bottom tank thus increasing the pressure and creating a situation where I have no problem running my coal plant efficiently and I have also use this on my fuel generator plants and it works very efficiently as well. However I've had people laugh at me when I post my designs and say it's an efficient when I tell them no it is actually very efficient and they still don't understand it. I love the fact that the DEVS change the flow rate in this game where gravity plays an intricate part to it and it makes the game even more fun to play.
Cool, I've been struggling with oil processing, fuel generators, and fluid buffers all day. This didn't help, but only because liquids are far more complicated than I assumed in this game.
wow. today I learned you can achieve vertically aligned junctions WITH foundation grid snap using walls. I wish I knew that a looong time ago. Is that the only way to do this, or is there some simpler method I've also overlooked?
After a mild annoyance setting up my coal a while back, and now ramping up for oil power, reviewing this video... realizing real engineers with pamphlet making expertise play this game too XD thats wonderful. Water towers! Probably gonna snitch. Hummm gonna look into how to build round like that too, is it just like twenty to fifty sided or are ther CURVED WALLS?! WHY NOT??! I'm definitely gonna use the double back circuit if I have to expand my coal at some point again before I get the TURBOFUEL up and running, woo!
Yeah, but i have a pipe fully pressured and the next pipe segment connected to it (horizontally!) is completely empty. Somehow the fluids just seem to randomly disappear at certain connections.. can someone explain to me wtf is going on there?
What power do you run on while building the coal plant? I can get the steam turbines running but I quickly run out of water. I think it's because my pumps don't have enough power to keep the pipe filled.
Hi great video, but I have a question, is it possible to create "Tesla valves" to create directional flow in satisfactory without the use of actual valves ? And will it work ?
You don't need to limit flow rate when recycling water, provided priority is correct (giving priority to the waste source instead of the fresh source).
So I have never truly tried to make my machines perfectly efficient, and I'm still not there yet. I'm interested in making my own king of design and learning how each item in the game works individually and together. I like to take my time learning slowly and on my own normally. However I was getting frustrated with why my pipes were either full or mostly full and staying that way most of the time, but not always. I had learned own my own that there was a back flow and sloshing. But I couldn't figure out why the pipe connected to my coal generator wasn't taking in water as fast as the pipe connected to it was filling up. Admittedly right now my design is very flawed but I learn from mistakes and I like to do things unconventionally many times. However my point for this comment was that this video has aged well for my need and I appreciate it. I just had to figure out if it was a bug or my misunderstanding of the mechanics in the game. And I have found out that it is my misunderstanding. I didn't understand the gravity and pressure aspects in the game. This is why I love this game though because you have to think through every detail. So now my coal generators are taking in water and doing it consistently and more efficiently. Now I am going back and learning more and probably going to have to redesign and do better but I love it. Thank you for the detailed information even when it didn't quite fit my situation, it helped tremendously.
That reload bug might explain why my "100% efficient" nuclear setup with 100% recycling was failing miserably after I loaded it a few times and not let it run long enough to become stable again... annoying. But maybe I can work out the issues now xD
A year late to things, and I just realised the "Don't feed from below" is why my blenders are getting starved... but in that case, how *do* you feed something that's higher up? Typically my fuel plants start with making fuel on the bottom floor before going being pumped up to fuel generators on higher floors... if I reverse that, then I still have to pump all my oil/water to the roof then feed down, so it's the same problem isn't it?
Oh... re-watched the video about three times and I think I get it... I can lift the fluid as needed, but then should "Drop" it into the manifold and have the feed points at the level (or below it)
... And just to close the loop, that fixed it, everything is working like clockwork now! Thanks to McGalleon for the guide, and TotalXclipse for highlighting it in this video!
My latest build has been all underground - so the entire factory is below the extractor height - meaning nothing from the extractors require pumps to get anywhere - its only if you need to elevate up from a buffer or the output of a buildable do you need a pump.
I also like to complicate things, so I recycle all water in my battery factory. Problem with water dissapearing at save load. Problem with moving more than 600 water in one pipe system. After adding several pipes to load balance I decided to bring limestone to sink excess. Still had not enough water for sulfur, added pump on that side of system. All pipes are bottom fed with enough headlift. Then new problem: last 2 refineries did not receive enough sulfur, while sulfur has been clogging at miner sey exactly to 780 with mk5 belts. Why? Shenanigans!
The problem with my system was that one fuel generator was a fraction of a meter higher than the others and got fuel extremely slowly. The pipes for the other generators never filled up though, so I don't know where the extra fuel went.
The best games are the ones that teach you real life principles. Satisfactory, factorio, KSP and Minrcraft Industrialcraft/Buildcraft Mod are great examples of this.
Pipes are the only thing i have issues with in this game... it's almost as if the pipes flow is halved like a splitter, but since it has back flow, it returns what isn't used, so in the sense of a manifold of pipes with the pipe slightly above each machine (fuel gens) it doesn't matter what you do, the flow will more or less cut itself off. valves do nothing when you're flowing a pure oil extractor to a 16x fuel gen... makes me wonder if it's worth overclocking the generators.
So like me, have you set up your pipes wrong?
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Well yes and no :P I fill my machines from then underside like you, but I do do have high(er) placed buffers (water/liquit "Towers") to ensure fullness of the machines. For me the big eye opener is the VIP-junction, have been looking for that thing for a while now. Thx for helping me out 😉
Honestly I learned that the water in this game acts like real water. For some reason I thought is was a simpler system and always wondered why my coal power would shut off even though it is self powered.
woosh still dont understand so if pip is straght dont need pump? then y they way i try to setup sucks ?
@@karls8103 If you have a pump at a lower point then the extractor output it helps to keep the extractor operating. Also putting a mk1 pump every 4 4m foundations high will help the flow upwards. Only every 12 4m foundations if you use the mk2.
I got that feeding from below and my power is costantly fluctuating :'( but how to change that? when I put the pipes higher it's gonna be ugly :'( Would overfilling the system work? I have the numbers balanced so maybe excess water would help?
You know a game has a dedicated fan base when manuals are being written for it
No, just noone understands, what Kibitz always talking about)
What's to understand? The spiiiiicy rocks go in the thing and you boop the line into existence. Eaaaaasy. But no, definitely agree, this game has such a good fan base that's always willing to help and share ideas.
It looks very well written to. The figures and explanations look like they'd be at home in a real life instruction manual on fluid mechanics.
@@storytsunami it's like a science paper from actuall physics class 😭
Or the game does a bad job explaining itself.
140 hours into this game and pipes are the bane of my existence. Have never once seen that blue ring to tell me where to place pumps. Thanks for the great guide!
Could be because your pipes are in a situation where they don't need a pump?
Honestly using pumps for everything sucks. I always, ALWAYS make a water tower system.
@@timmcgrath8742I don't see the hologram, but it usually snaps to the location.
Keep the pipe systems short and simple and it should be fine.
Anything I build consuming water I build over a body of water just high enough to fit a water pump under. Then connect each pump to the number of machines it can support (or each machine to the number of pumps it needs). Yes, it can take time to run smoothly when feeding from below, but if the system is small it resolves itself quickly.
Then use valves balancing byproducts. Again, it can take more time to smooth things out than other solutions if things go wrong, but not too much for. small systems.
This is one of the most complicated things in the entire game to balance and it's absolutely frustrating not being able to figure out where the problem in your piping network lies.
@Kailash Diengdoh before that, make sure to get an architectural degree before unlocking base building.
Agreed. Trying to supply 8 coal power plants with 3 water extractors and mk I pipes somehow always ends up with headache for me. Despite those flow indicators on the outside of the pipe it's kinda hard, at least for me, to see what's going on inside the pipes and diagnose the problem.
@@JackFou Did you manage to solve it?
@@filipgasic2642 Kinda. I mean I can make it work, eventually, but it's always a process full of hiccups and trial and error.
@@JackFou if you have discord I can help explain it I was having issues, but rn I have 8 pumps running 14 coal generators steadily
As a chemical engineer, I'm loving this game more and more.
@Hoon Turd Chemical Engineers often work in Chemical Factories, alongside Process Engineers, Equipment Operators, Maintenance Technicians, Factory Engineers, all inside a building designed by Architects specializing in the needs of Industrial Engineering, using large machines designed by Mechanical Engineers, wired up by Electrical Engineers and glorified Plumbers. In Satisfactory, the player takes on all these roles. So, naturally, it follows that people in many of these occupations will have an appreciation of this game. Saying that as someone who was an operator and technician in a factory at one point.
@Hoon Turd same here , what im playing is basically my work lol
Lol electrical engineers never wire anything up lol. I can't say for the other engineers but I'm pretty sure this game is the realization of your work. An electrician wires things up with instructions from engineers. This game is so appealing to engineers because it takes it right from you to the realization of the work instead of just giving instructions
@@Warp9pnt9 Engineers run the world. Its crazy how so many people dont realize this.
Construction Engineering here, don't know much about fluids haha.
Yep, love this game, about 12 hours in and got issues with my flow rates.
Cheers.
flashback to the first time i unlocked coal power in satisfactory and created such an unreliable unusable mess of a power grid (because i didnt realize that pipes could only carry so much water) that i had to restart completely from scratch lol
I started a 1.0 save and just spent 10 hours making a 5 gigawatt compacted coal grid at tier 3. Reluctantly, I log manifolded the water input to make the whole thing look better. In turn, the gens at the end of the line were getting basically zero water. The tip in your video about looping the end of the manifold back to the start fixed my problem and put everything back at 100%. Thanks!
Using the same principles laid out in the manual, you can set up your waste-water aluminum setup much easier than described here. The first solution I figured out was to have the water extractors filling buffers, but the buffers are raised to where they don't have enough headlift to fully fill the tanks. A buffer ~8m above an extractor will NEVER fill. Feed your waste-water back into that line from refineries that are higher than the extractors. This means that the extractors can only fill the buffer half way (or so), but the feedback water has more headlift so will fill the remaining space. Since the extractors can't add water when it's more than 50% full, it will exclusively use the waste-water until it is gone, then use the extractor water. It never backs up, doesn't require precise valves, and is resistant to failure due to cutting a line or something.
The second solution is far simpler and it made me very angry that my first "brilliant" solution was basically pointless. Just place a vertical junction on the refinery feed line. Extractors into the top, feedback into the bottom. Since pipes ALWAYS drain from the bottom first, this will never back up (even when the pipes are completely full). No need for sinking or any shenanigans. It just works. You don't even need a buffer.
If you're pressed for space, just adding a powered pump to the recycled water line works. It provides a higher working pressure, which gives it priority over the extractors since even a mk1 pump has twice their headlift. Just be careful if the extractor line also has a pump on it.
easiest way I found was just matching the waste to production. 1 refinery for alumina solution uses exactly 1 water extractor and 0.5 from a scrap refinery, or more realistically, 2 alumina refineries use 1 scrap refinery and 2 water extractors. This setup works perfectly and theres literally 0 reason to have balance issues. if you're having flow issues, you could set it up in multiples of 360 ingots a minute to get exactly 180/min of waste water, which will perfectly feed 1 alumina solution refinery per 360 ingots.
@@james2042 That works but if any part of any of the production lines gets interrupted, the pipes all fill with water and you'll have to flush the lines to start it again (if you aren't using the preferential junction setup I mentioned). If you do the vertical junction, you can delete a belt to re-route something or whatever without worrying about your alumina factory shutting down.
@@psmitty840 it would never completely shut down though is the thing. If you're working on it, then turn it off so stuff doesn't back up, figured that was common sense. Otherwise if you design it right there shouldn't be interruptions.
@@james2042 "If you're working on it, turn it off so it doesn't break" sounds a lot like a worse design. I can disconnect whatever I want for however long I like on my alumina factory and when I plug it back in, it goes back to work, no breakers or cut power lines needed.
I mean you can do it however you like, but if someone offered you a factory that would need to be manually messed with every time you move a belt or blow a fuse and one that doesn't... I know which I would choose.
that lowest point filling 1st explains everything. I rage quitted my rubber factory and haven't returned to it for weeks.
Literally started this game maybe a week ago, this video really helps to understand what to do (sorta) with my absurd pipe setups…
ye i was scratching my head with this I was like damn I have like 7 water extractor and 6 coal burner why is 1-2 always tend to struggle with water
then it ended up with a spaghetti pipes
I just ended up watching a guide lmaoo
6:00 you just solved hours of frustration, thank you
I spent hours trying to balance the backflow with recycled water. I found a valve to be the most helpful on the extractor side limiting overall supply so that the recycled water takes priority. Just make sure to not supply recycled water to everything in line. Pick one or two items unless you really hate yourself.
I didn't realize the game factored head pressure relative to height before. I knew it did a little bit, but didn't realize a water tower would actually work! I'm putting one in ASAP.
I used to work in water treatment personally and love all the nerding out you did on this video.
I try to put a buffer before any major input line. I let that fill up before connecting it to the actual input manifold.
The reason? Having a max-flow pipe is a bit finicky, especially the mark 2s. Sometimes they'll drop to 298 or 598 for absolutely no reason for a bit and this will cause whatever is consuming to spin up and down and then causes the water extractor to turn off because it's full and then sloshing starts. Having a buffer (especially one that's elevated) seems to fix this problem. Actually, "dropping" water from a buffer into a manifold line is almost always a good idea.
ohh yes.
The reason is that the water extractors need a little bit of time to get started. The second that water is drawn from the pipeline, the water extractors need 1-2 seconds to get started and extract water. Causing there to be only ~598-ish water provided in a mk2 pipeline.
I can remember that the nuclear reactors needed 300 water each. perfect for a mk2 pipeline to feed two reactors right? but we needed a buffer as well to make it work, since its only 598-ish water in the pipe.
Hint:
When delivering fluids by train and you want to ensure a constant flow even during loading / unloading you'll need to double buffer on the side of each terminal. (Same principle as for solid goods.)
- Make sure to connect each input / output to a small, individual buffer (as there's no buffer with two inputs yet)...
- and merge them afterwards.
- Don't forget to add a valve right in front of the merging junction to make sure there won't be any backflow to the buffers.
- Add those double buffers to ALL stations, be it loading or unloading to avoid any shortages on its way
Pipes are too complicated for me xD
Massive respect for anyone who can create 100% efficient pipe networks
im a plumber.... and i cant figure the pipes out in this game.....
I love the fluid implementation in this game. As a civil plumber by trade, it feels very intuitive.
the concept of that loop on your manifold is called a re-circulation line, or a recirc for short. common in commercial plumbing.
That feeling you get after watching this video and using valves to get everything to perfect efficiency. 🤩
Max Headlift is my favorite 80's commercial mascot.
4:45 pumps can also be used on horizontal pipe, if you want to make sure that a section of that pipe will be filled with priority.
Also useful for feedback loops. Take uranium cell production. It requires sulfuric acid and outputs sulfuric acid. You can use a pump on a horizontal pipe to prevent backflow to make sure the output side of the blender is always open and able to flow out.
I had water recycling issues for both my alumina solution and uranium recycling where at less than 100% efficiency the input water would saturate the line and not allow for the recycled water to leave the machine, causing them to halt. The priority merger shown fixed those issues right up since the recycled water on the bottom always has priority over the water to refresh the loss.
omg you saved me, I spent hours yesterday trying to troubleshoot a fuel power plant that just wouldn’t work right and got so frustrated I almost quit my save. The solution? At 6:40 MAKE IT A LOOP. It works perfectly now.
time to destroy my 50 hour oil setup....
best game ever!
I spent 2 hours trying to figure out how to load balance my water for my coal power plants just to learn that I do it need to do it. This makes it so much easier
Had to come back to this one because I ran into issues again, got some ideas for troubleshooting again 😊
This was helpfully to explain why my last two coal generators weren't getting water. Thanks for this helpful vid.
This is a beautiful work of art, not only the content but the video production itself is stellar. Great job, we love your content.
This comment alone is worth the 3 days it took to produce :D
Thank you.
This video has helped a lot. I've been having issues with supplying Coal generators and it's because I've been supplying them from below. Won't be making that mistake again!
You are a lifesaver! Thanks for the explanation and references. I'm still struggling with my fuel production and generators.
Still new at the game, fluids were a tad puzzling, this video helped to clarify a lot. Thanks!
I never really had problems with backflow but it's interesting to see all these weird contraptions
Coming back to this video after 2 years, because I'm having trouble with flow rate in horizontal pipes.. I'm not sure why it's happening, but it's lacking flow the further down the oil pipe I go. There's a buffer somewhere early in the circuit, but it's quite leveled with the oil extractors as well, so was thinking headlift should never be an issue here. Input of oil is also higher than what it needs, because it made it somewhat stable for a while. Though I still lack flow rate in the pipes further away, on a surfaced level
Game: “pumps have a max fluid lift of 10m”
Also game: *doesn’t have a ruler, forcing you to guess *
walls are 1m high. do with that what you will.
@@Akomarongg
I good idea but walls can’t take slope into account.
@@slimeinabox Slope doesn't matter? 10 meters headlift is 10 meters headlift regardless.
@@TobiasHJohansen yeah, i just dont like guess work.
@@Akomarongg walls are 4m
Thanks - just what I needed. My pipes were almost literally killing me 🤣
For "liquid recycling" as you put it , something you don't touch on is pipe LENGTH. The shortest pipes will get cleared first.
Great for prioritising the waste output of refineries over the water extractors
That's only if the water extractors pipes aren't full, which is a possibility if not thought about, that's why it's better to use priority pipes like the upside down U bend or priority junctions ☺️
Been dealing with fluid issues for like 2 weeks with my fuel setup. And it's probably because I'm feeding them from below. It just looks so much nicer. Guess I'll be redoing my piping. You explained the issue very clearly. Thanks!
Honestly I do mine from below as well. I have a Mk1 from the refineries into my storage tanks, then it goes below to the left where there's a Mk2. From there it goes left for 3 generators and loops around into a manifold for all 12 generators. I've had zero problems with it.
@@Stratus41298 yeah, with 12 I probably wouldent have a problem either. But I've got 55 I believe and about 15 of them get almost no fuel.
Doing it from below actually SOLVED my issues at machine level. Not entirely sure why, since I had fluid buffers elevated far abouve the entire system
Wooo wooo Thats total, I just practiced running Four oil pipes side by side up a 100 plus meter wall,,, valves Matter!!!
fist time seeing your channel and I feel like I learned more in this 1 video than I have from all my time playing. Definitely going to check out more of your stuff, very interesting.
There seems to be some kind of directional priority for pipes as well - they will prefer flow in the direction that they are placed. This can be checked using the default orientation of a valve on the pipe
I noticed this problem once once deleted the pipes and reconnected the other way the problem was solved. Good to know about the check, didn't know that, thanks! Been worried about making the mistake again in a bigger build.
@@anneputseys4441 That's how I came across it too! Had a basic 3 well oil->plastic,rubber,power station, and was running really unreliably. Losing as much as 15% uptime.
After trying a bunch of stuff that didn't help, I remembered that someone had found a similar issue in Factorio at some point, reconnected all my pipes in root->stem order instead of just whatever I did initially, and it's 100% solid uptime now.
Point of video: Just read the awesome guide from Mcgalleon.
Anyway, nice visual addition to his guide. Gives good introduction for it.
Pipes are the hardest thing in the game to build neatly but this information helped a lot! Great video and absolutely beautiful builds/examples within!
The most confusing thing i have watched on satisfactory to date, good video none the less as always - but above my pay grade at this point - i would like to see you make a video like "water transfer for Dummies" or perhaps show us in a linear progression style like start with a less complicated set up and progress through the options in terms of complexity.
just a suggestion.
you can also use mk1 pumps as a sort of check valve to ensure fluid only flows one way past it. this is one way to cope with buffer backflow. you can also just build the buffers stacked vertically if you want them in-line.
1st Commandment of Plumbing: Feed from above, not below.
Me: But I really need to feed from below...
You just need valves for manifolds that feed from below. The fluid still balances into the level pipe, but then can't backflow beyond the valve, forcing it into the building.
Pumps work too, don’t they? (As an alternative to valves due to them being unlocked later in the game)
Thanks for explaining this Total, it was really helpful! Even for experienced players this might be the reason why things are not that good in their factory! I'm glad you did this :)
Appreciate this video a lot, so thank you! Dealing with fluids is my least favorite part of the game and this video helps!
Thanks for sharing the info, maybe I would have built my 12 floor power station a little differently lol but I enjoyed myself anyway.
Thank you this helped me fix my fuel generator set up!!
Probably the only part of Satisfactory that wasn't self evident, which is a fantastic design result for Coffee Stain!
Buffers actually have a real fluid level. That is why full buffers have a higher head lift. But that also means that if your buffer is at the limit of its input head lift, IT WILL NEVER GET FULL, because you need extra pressure to raise its internal fluid level.
every time i've lifted water from below it's worked perfect for some reason
You really gotta watch it when you upgrade pipelines too, I personally found you're just better off deleting the existing pipeline entirely and then rebuild it using the mk.2. The problem is when you "upgrade" a pipe from mk.1 to mk. 2 anything underneath existing attachments, like valves, intersections, pumps, etc. doesn't get upgraded, even if you go back after and upgrade the mk 1 pumps to mk 2 pumps, the pipe it's sitting on will remain a mk 1 pipe.
So yeah, just delete the whole pipeline and rebuild it, you can leave the support poles and ports to be your guides if you wish, but bare in mind your pumps can be spaced further apart, so you may just want to rebuild it from scratch.
Feeding my coal generators from below is just pure black magic. Some times it works, some times it doesn’t. It’s a complete mystery. Once I accidentally stumbled upon a configuration that worked for no apparent reason, I just never touched it again. Come to think of it, I should probably rebuild all my power stations to get rid of any unpredictability. Just feed the coal from below and water from above.
I recall having issues with my coal plants as well. I just waited until I could make some Fuel Generators instead and upgraded.
You're probably using pipe floor holes. These are incredibly finicky and can stop headlift from passing through completely.
They will basically only work if you build the pipes into the floor holes in the correct order. If your water comes from below, then you need to build the pipe on the bottom side first and then build the top pipe.
You can verify this when placing a pump. If the blue headlift marker stops at the floor hole, rebuild the pipes first.
Around 8:27 you mention working pressure and talk about "a 100 meter pipe" ... now you mixed up meters (which measures a one dimensional line) and the cubic meters (with which you actually measure volume in a 3 dimensional space). But besides that, great video. Wish more people would look such good explanations. Troubles with pipe system and the most frequent reasons, people come to the official discord server and ask for help.
That's a nice fluid system you've got there. Be a shame if someone were to stubbornly circumvent it by just packaging everything no matter how inconvenient that is.
Had trouble with my Coal power plants. Rebuilt them yesterday. Still issues. Now I know why.
I have always used valves as a rule of thumb. I didnt actually know the game had backwash so I have been accidentally preventing it all this time.
Plus i think it looks correct to have them near junctions anyway.
Great video! Trying to figure out how to minimize pumps is so hard to figure out sometimes. I just built a plant with 130 Turbo Fuel Generators, everything from nodes on site, with each stage moving vertically upwards. I said F-it and just put in like 100 pumps.
Next time do it backwards: put the first processing refineries on top and leave the rest to gravity, going levels down as many floors as needed. Then you’ll need pumps just to lift the crude oil.
I need this manual. Thanks for letting me know about it. I've been making blood sacrifices to the pipe gods
Valves can also except numeric input to change limit, for more exact input than slider.
Thx for the new music!
Thank you! This video has been so helpful for me.
i have no idea what you say but it fire 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
To some extent the game is fun, but to some extent to complete it you need math, learning, knowledge and patience, which is why I have over 100 hours and never get anything really fully built. Im on my 100th restart.
This is pure gold.
So much information! this is great. Thanks for taking the time to make this video!
Make sure everything is built next to each other so any fluid doesn’t have to go far.
And do the math on the output if the next refinery only needs 50 units, set the input to 50 units and so forth.
And packaging fluids is the only way to move stuff.
It's funny cause some of this I learned on my own from just experimenting in the game, though I also learned a bit from this so thanks for the video
So here's the preface: I just unlocked Oil refineries and all that jazz... and here's the dumb question...
I know the pipes say they can't be connected to pipes filled with other liquid... But..... Is it actually true?
I'm convinced you can use a combo of buffers, junctions, backflow, valves, and pumps to negate this. I just can't comprehend how if it is possible.
Was just making my first coal plants and water was not flowing, so I look up a tutorial. I get jumpscared by the biggest power plant I've ever seen in my life. This game can be even crazier than I thought.
I try not to use that headlift hologram indicator on the pipes as I'm placing pumps. I've had it be wrong before and my water was failing to reach its destination. Now I always go about 5-7 meters below it.
There's a method that I use that works very efficiently and has never created any problems and I'm surprised you don't mention in your video.
I take three buffer tanks I stack them one on top of the other. Then I use the pump lift system to fill the top tank and allow gravity to fill the middle tank to the bottom tank thus increasing the pressure and creating a situation where I have no problem running my coal plant efficiently and I have also use this on my fuel generator plants and it works very efficiently as well.
However I've had people laugh at me when I post my designs and say it's an efficient when I tell them no it is actually very efficient and they still don't understand it.
I love the fact that the DEVS change the flow rate in this game where gravity plays an intricate part to it and it makes the game even more fun to play.
I don't get how is your design different than just having the pump deal with the headlift
Cool, I've been struggling with oil processing, fuel generators, and fluid buffers all day. This didn't help, but only because liquids are far more complicated than I assumed in this game.
so if u run a pipeline that is for eg. 400 meters long, but its on the same high from start to end, then u dont need any pumps?
hi, thank you for fluid' tips ;)
wow. today I learned you can achieve vertically aligned junctions WITH foundation grid snap using walls. I wish I knew that a looong time ago. Is that the only way to do this, or is there some simpler method I've also overlooked?
Love the video!
After a mild annoyance setting up my coal a while back, and now ramping up for oil power, reviewing this video... realizing real engineers with pamphlet making expertise play this game too XD thats wonderful.
Water towers! Probably gonna snitch. Hummm gonna look into how to build round like that too, is it just like twenty to fifty sided or are ther CURVED WALLS?! WHY NOT??!
I'm definitely gonna use the double back circuit if I have to expand my coal at some point again before I get the TURBOFUEL up and running, woo!
2:00 this part made me ralise i can see the filling level of the pipe without tapping on it. From the distance of the 3 rings 🤯
Oh my God. I just realized this is actual fluid mechanics.
Yeah, but i have a pipe fully pressured and the next pipe segment connected to it (horizontally!) is completely empty. Somehow the fluids just seem to randomly disappear at certain connections.. can someone explain to me wtf is going on there?
What power do you run on while building the coal plant? I can get the steam turbines running but I quickly run out of water. I think it's because my pumps don't have enough power to keep the pipe filled.
How do I float around in the sky to build? That looks very helpful.
You might have mentioned it, but I'm 99% sure that valves are directional, and thus, will prevent backflow.
Hi great video, but I have a question, is it possible to create "Tesla valves" to create directional flow in satisfactory without the use of actual valves ? And will it work ?
You don't need to limit flow rate when recycling water, provided priority is correct (giving priority to the waste source instead of the fresh source).
So I have never truly tried to make my machines perfectly efficient, and I'm still not there yet. I'm interested in making my own king of design and learning how each item in the game works individually and together. I like to take my time learning slowly and on my own normally. However I was getting frustrated with why my pipes were either full or mostly full and staying that way most of the time, but not always. I had learned own my own that there was a back flow and sloshing. But I couldn't figure out why the pipe connected to my coal generator wasn't taking in water as fast as the pipe connected to it was filling up. Admittedly right now my design is very flawed but I learn from mistakes and I like to do things unconventionally many times. However my point for this comment was that this video has aged well for my need and I appreciate it. I just had to figure out if it was a bug or my misunderstanding of the mechanics in the game. And I have found out that it is my misunderstanding. I didn't understand the gravity and pressure aspects in the game. This is why I love this game though because you have to think through every detail. So now my coal generators are taking in water and doing it consistently and more efficiently. Now I am going back and learning more and probably going to have to redesign and do better but I love it. Thank you for the detailed information even when it didn't quite fit my situation, it helped tremendously.
Satisfactory should be a dedicated subject for Mechanical or Manufacturing Engineers
Great video, helps a lot!
That reload bug might explain why my "100% efficient" nuclear setup with 100% recycling was failing miserably after I loaded it a few times and not let it run long enough to become stable again... annoying. But maybe I can work out the issues now xD
A year late to things, and I just realised the "Don't feed from below" is why my blenders are getting starved... but in that case, how *do* you feed something that's higher up? Typically my fuel plants start with making fuel on the bottom floor before going being pumped up to fuel generators on higher floors... if I reverse that, then I still have to pump all my oil/water to the roof then feed down, so it's the same problem isn't it?
Oh... re-watched the video about three times and I think I get it... I can lift the fluid as needed, but then should "Drop" it into the manifold and have the feed points at the level (or below it)
... And just to close the loop, that fixed it, everything is working like clockwork now! Thanks to McGalleon for the guide, and TotalXclipse for highlighting it in this video!
My latest build has been all underground - so the entire factory is below the extractor height - meaning nothing from the extractors require pumps to get anywhere - its only if you need to elevate up from a buffer or the output of a buildable do you need a pump.
Seriously your builds are so well made, have you done a tour yet?
I also like to complicate things, so I recycle all water in my battery factory.
Problem with water dissapearing at save load.
Problem with moving more than 600 water in one pipe system.
After adding several pipes to load balance I decided to bring limestone to sink excess. Still had not enough water for sulfur, added pump on that side of system. All pipes are bottom fed with enough headlift.
Then new problem: last 2 refineries did not receive enough sulfur, while sulfur has been clogging at miner sey exactly to 780 with mk5 belts. Why? Shenanigans!
The problem with my system was that one fuel generator was a fraction of a meter higher than the others and got fuel extremely slowly. The pipes for the other generators never filled up though, so I don't know where the extra fuel went.
Great information, thank you!
The best games are the ones that teach you real life principles. Satisfactory, factorio, KSP and Minrcraft Industrialcraft/Buildcraft Mod are great examples of this.
Pipes are the only thing i have issues with in this game... it's almost as if the pipes flow is halved like a splitter, but since it has back flow, it returns what isn't used, so in the sense of a manifold of pipes with the pipe slightly above each machine (fuel gens) it doesn't matter what you do, the flow will more or less cut itself off.
valves do nothing when you're flowing a pure oil extractor to a 16x fuel gen... makes me wonder if it's worth overclocking the generators.
Lecturer : Why are you taking a degree in Engineering ?
Me : I'm trying to play Satisfactory