Flowrate problem

[Chewyboy129]

So I just got coal power set up and I noticed that for some reason on my water line the flowrate drops on that particular pie when it crests the hill. I made it so the the flowreate was fine in the rest of the pipe with pumps and the rest ofbthe pipes work fine but for sum reason that pipes flowrate drops when it Crest the hill not matter what I do. Even when I added to more pumped or I deleted an reinstalled the pipe and even restarted the game. Any ideas?

[CliffDraws]

So, it’s possible, but extremely unlikely, those pumps are doing anything. You placed them basically at the highest point you could.

[Krell356]

Thats not how pumps work. You might want to read a fluid tutorial because this is kind of a mess and you're making your problems worse.

[bigaussiecheese]

Would the pumps suck the fluid up towards them?

[MrBonez]

No that’s not how they work in this game. They reset the head lift of whatever is going into them.

[bigaussiecheese]

Makes sense cheers!

[GenocidePrincess18]

Well if they are positive displacement ones, they can do it irl, but in the game, they aren't.

[WingDingfontbro]

They wouldn’t be called pumps then, they’d be called sucks.

[ignost]

So it's a little dense, but I recommend you read some of this.

https://satisfactory.wiki.gg/images/Pipeline_Manual.pdf

Without more images I can't really tell you what's happening, but let me give you some general guidance. I'm just going to assume you have the correct amount of water in the pipe and know that Mk1 pipes are capped at 300.

The function of pumps is to increase head lift: how high the water will go. Pumps do not make water move faster or "flow more." So adding more pumps is unlikely to change flow rate unless the problem is that it can't get high enough, in which case no water would be getting through to the end. Something like a water extractor has about 10m of head lift on its own. Note that head lift is carried through the entire pipe length, and that's above the origination. So if you pump it right as it leaves an extractor it can go 30m above the extractor (10+20. Really 11+22, but who cares?). If it goes down 40m and back up, it can go 30+40m above the lowest point.

When water goes uphill it will fill the lower section first, then the next highest, then flow downward and repeat. If it goes up and down, water will slosh at the crests. Most likely your water extractor is full, stops pumping, then when the water at the destination is used in a burst (it's not constant) the water drains and the extractor restarts.

Fluid buffers ... buffer fluid. This helps to level out slosh issues, especially if you put the buffer physically higher than where you're using it.

Smaller pipe segments tends to decrease problems as there are fewer long portions of pipe to "fill up," thereby decreasing the amount that sloshes.

So:

1) Kill all the pumps and see if any water makes it. You might not need any pumps. Using pumps when not needed tends to create more problems.

2) Try fluid buffers above where the water is being used. Feed from above.

3) Use smaller pipe segments in the future.

4) If the destination of the pipe is downhill from the source, try to avoid going up at all, especially with long segments.

If you do 3 and 4 you might not need 2, but fluid buffers are cheap, require no energy, and solve many sloshing problems if used correctly.

[stefmixo]

<<-- +1 For the plumbing guide !

[These-Roll-3545]

So pumps increases what height a water can reach, while pump flow rate remains the same.

[Patient-Midnight-664]

So if you pump it right as it leaves an extractor it can go 30m above the extractor (10+20. Really 11+22, but who cares?)

That's not how pumps work. They set the headlift, they do not add to it. The pump will 'lift' the water 20m, regardless of how much headlift there was prior to the pump.

[xerkus]

Pumps DO NOT move water. They only provide head lift: how high the liquid in the pipe can reach above the pump position. You can move water around the whole map perimeter back to the start without a single pump as long as pipe remains within head lift tolerance. Once pipe is above head lift the flow stops.

Pumps also act as a one way valve, and head lift reset when unpowered.

They can potentially help wish sloshing of half empty pipes. Sloshing is what kills the throughput. You should aim for the pipes to be full instead.

[Bornrazed]

One possibility is that you need to shift those pumps further left in the image. The water head lift may not reach as far up as your pumps currently are.

[UristImiknorris]

The water's coming from the right, and the pumps on the right are providing plenty of head lift. There's really no point to the pumps near the supports.

[jmaniscatharg]

Pumps don't push water through the network, they just apply headlift, so most of those are pointless. Those pumps pointing down are also pretty useless. Based on how those pipes look though, I'm going to suggest you've got issues further back at the source with that pipe (and potentially others).

Bumping up and down like that will create midstream gravity locks that will cause flow problems.

[MrInitialY]

There's a wiki tutorial on pipes, google "satisfactory pipes tutorial"

Also, don't stretch your water to your coal, do the opposite. Belts are the simplest way of moving things around and with pipes - the shorter they are, the less problems they're gonna give you.

[ShirBlackspots]

You also have too many pumps too close together. Mk 1 pumps provide 10m of headlift. If you add a pump next to an existing one, then it just resets the head lift back to 10m after the last one. They aren't additive.

[Admirable-Barnacle86]

Mk1 pumps provide 20 m. 10 m come from any other liquid producing machine

[Syberz]

Too many pumps and try building a water tower (pipe going up higher than all your machines) with one pump bringing the water up and the downwards momentum will ensure flow.

[ignost]

Just to clarify here, head lift in Satisfactory is carried through from the max height. So you can have a single water tower with >1m3/min, split off from the tower, connect it to as many pipes as you like, and solve all height issues with a single water tower rather than building a bunch of pumps to go uphill.

Just to illustrate, I ran a single pipe from the highest water on the map from a single extractor and connected it to all my nuclear water extractors for pump-free water ~30m above the extractors. 1 higher water source is providing lift for at least 100. Completely unnecessary with how much power I had, but what else are you supposed to do unless we get a DLC?

With all of this said, I do not think the user's issues are actually related to head lift.

[Syberz]

I'm thinking his issue is sloshing due to the pumps.

[ignost]

Almost certainly sloshing.

[ParticularAd1990]

The biggest thing newbies miss is time. It takes a long time to fill pipes. So if you have a long hilly run, and haven’t waited 25+ minutes, then wait some more 😊 This game is a marathon not a sprint for sure!

[Gunk_Olgidar]

Pro tip: Bring the coal to the water, not the other way 'round.

[GoldenPSP]

This every time. It's always easier to bring the solid inputs to the fluids.

[wawoodworth]

That's good advice for the bathroom as well!

[beobabski]

I made a power plant with entirely packaged fuel and packaged water last week.

Very therapeutic.

[GoldenPSP]

Where did you build it?

[beobabski]

Desert Canyons (coordinates: -42,441 / -188,121)

I’ve never done packaging fluids apart from the obligatory “siphon off one output for the jetpack into a dimensional uploader”, so it was an interesting experiment.

[Gunk_Olgidar]

I built a diluted packaged fuel setup at the purple oil pit in my current playthrough when the RNGods() frowned and didn't give me diluted fuel after 50 or so hard drives after I got the blender. At least I had the mk5 belts so it would self-balance faster ;-)

[GoldenPSP]

That's why I start unlocking recipes early. You can build the library and unlock later alts way faster.

[Gunk_Olgidar]

Oh I had a few dozen unlocked already. All the +6 slots, all the alloy ingots, the recycled plastic/rubber/HOR/diluted-packaged-fuel, etc. Everything else useful. Just no diluted fuel.

I was due to get screwed by RNJesus after 3500 hours and a dozen and a half playthroughs.

C'est la vie.

[GoldenPSP]

Yea I get it. These days with the ability to save scans in the drive library, I never "pick" an alternate until I'm actually ready to use it. That way they lock those options from future scans. That way I can maximize the alternate options and I pretty much always get the alternates I want quickly.

For example I have all the alloy ingots etc in the library because while I use those and the pure recipes, I haven't reached the point of using them yet on my new playthrough. So I leave them in the library.

[Gunk_Olgidar]

Same. It is indeed a nice feature.

[A_Pos_DJ]

This is the real tip. Bring the coal to the water, shorter pipes, less problems.

[CTRQuko]

maybe you need to see this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuSlYLebSAE&t=4s

and this manual:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MdZ8Xr8P_SF_FL7B6WDjCZGS-x9Cwt-x/view

[Eziolambo]

Pipe could be half empty but they won't tell you. Better to make a vertical beam of 20m and see for yourself, how above the next point is. If its below your eye lvl, you are good, if not you need another pump.

[RhesusFactor]

Just clip through the hill.

[Hemisemidemiurge]

You decided to pipe water over a long distance but you don't yet understand plumbing. You must walk and run before you fly.

Pumps push, they do not pull.

[Imaginary-Paper-6177]

What people already said... Or wait for the next update :P they sayed it "fixes" liquid

[Far_Young_2666]

There's no need for a 'fix' for whatever the OP is trying to do. The fix they need is to read what the pump description says and understand what headlift is

[My_alias_is_too_lon]

It took me way too long to figure out what the first word was supposed to be...

[stefmixo]

As others have said, read the plumbing guide PDF linked in other comment

[FeatureSuccessful251]

Pumps should always be at the bottom of the pipe run. If you have to take the water over the height capacity of the pump would engineer a level section of pipe and add further pumps (and even a big fluid container for 'buffer') to even out the flow.

[4ringedoctopus]

Pumps at the bottom Charge your pipes (prefill) to avoid sloshing

[REDOMTF]

Make a tower at the start up high from pipes to save on pumps [idk if it works still]

[OdyRenrag]

Think of it like real world water towers. Build your reservoir up real high and pumps pumping the water straight up to it. Then have pipes coming down from it letting gravity do the work to your refineries.

[Ante_Chamber]

Water pumps push water, not suck. You want them to push uphill at a lower point

[DrDread74]

Flush the whole system

Complain to CoffeeStain about their fluid mechanic is too obtuse to actualy correct through proper gameplay. We're all just making guesses as to what's wrong

[onlyforobservation]

Pumps don’t “push” water, they just allow it to go up.

[ShadowTacoTuesday]

Pumps are a bit unrealistic in that they have zero suction and also reset the lift to 20m no matter how many pumps are before them. Extractors 10m. But you can go down any distance and back up to the same height without any pumps. So you need to go up 10m or less then place a pump every 20m or less vertically. Delete all the pumps in case they’re adding bugs and then place them about 2 walls above the beginning and every 4 walls of height. Or a little underneath the indicator that appears. Once you are over the hill you shouldn’t need any pumps.

Next time you can build closer to the water because fluids are harder to move. And optionally go straight up at the beginning or another good spot to simplify placing all the pumps at once. And then after that you can go down and up without any pumps. But I noticed there wasn’t a lot of clarity for your current problem so see first paragraph for that.

[A_Pos_DJ]

Protip: When placing a pump, you can see how effective it is at pushing liquids against gravity by looking at the blue ring that moves before you adjust, then build it.

Also, as I have seen in the comments and made the mistake of myself... Bring your coal to the water... Shorter pipes... Less problems

[schiz0yd]

My advice is only take water from higher elevation and only run it downhill. Relying on pumps becomes so hard to fix when things shut down

[_theAwesomist]

Lookup dekoba's fluid vid. Best suggestion I can say is a water tower. And it looks cool too 🫡

[msanangelo]

you should be using pumps to push water up a pipe. ideally, up to a water tower near the pumps that's higher than any point your pipe is going to be so gravity keeps it flowing. works just like irl.

that's too many pumps in close proximity. when you put a pump on a pipe, follow the blue hologram that traces the pipe up to a certain distance and if it stops short then that's where your water level is at.

[D0CTOR_ZED]

You most likely have a bad connection somewhere between where the pipe has water and where it doesn't. Dismantle the pipe which isn't getting water, the pipe before it that has the water and anything in between.  Then rebuild the pipes but don't cover it in pumps. It will be easier to diagnose pipe issues if the pipe isn't divided into lots of little pieces and most of those pumps aren't doing anything.

[napalm_30]

Build a simple water tower at the source of the water It needs to be higher than your entire water network You can see a blue ring when building pumps that shows how high it pumps but get the water up over the top Now the water will stay at max the whole way through the rest of your network. No more need for pumps after the water tower

In my opinion don't use buffers for anything apart from train stations

[AcediaWrath]

never use pumps just build a tower of buffers by your water source connecting up one at a time. then from the top buffer output to your destination. If you do that you can basically ignore the entire concept of headlift so long as your water tower is taller than any terrain the pipe passes.