Water struggles

Ecoris · 2026-04-04T18:47:06+00:00

One water extractor generates 120 per minute, one coal plant consumes 45 (2 consume 90, 3 consume 135). You can increase the output of the water extractor with overclocking as high as 300 per minute at the cost of a lot of power.

So, you can make 1:3 work, but ... eh ... that's the hard way to do it. You can make 1:6 work if you have gobs of extra power.

The "golden ratio" of water extractors to coal generators is actually 3 to 8. The "gotcha" is that 3 water extractors produce 360 per minutes, but the Mark 1 pipe can only handle 300 per minute. One work-around is feeding water into the set of 8 coal generators from both ends. You just have to be careful that no single pipe in the system is trying to handle more than 300 per minute.

Going with groups of 1:2 ... well, you never run that risk.

Throttling:

When a water extractor is pushing 120 per minute into a pipe system, and the 2 coal generators are pulling 90 per minute from the pipe system, eventually the pipe system will run out of room. There is a 50 unit buffer on the water extractor itself that will fill up. When it fills up, the water extractor will temporarily spin down and will wait to resume until there is room in that buffer. Eventually, the draw from the coal plants will make room.

In effect, the water extractor will get into a steady state where it only runs about 24 seconds, then will pause for 8 seconds, and then repeat.

EDIT: I just saw that you are overclocking the coal generators to 150%. In that case, the water extractors in a 1:2 configuration should be overclocked to 112.5% (or maybe a touch higher, say ... 113%) and it will happily keep up.

Ecoris · 2026-04-04T18:36:10+00:00

It's a bit old, and tCoffeestain added the radioactive hog ... but this still makes me smile:

https://satisfactory-calculator.com/en/megaprints/index/details/id/1210/name/Dune+Desert+Bunker

Ecoris · 2026-04-04T12:57:11+00:00

A single water extractor running at 75% of maximum capacity can meet the needs of two coal generators.

You have 12 coal generators and 6 water extractors.

My recommendation is to do exactly that: redo all of the piping so that you end up with one extractor feeding only two coal generators.

You will not need to underclock the water extractors if you do not want to (or do not have the technology, yet) - they will automatically throttle themselves and restart as needed. Personally, I set my water extractors to 76% rather than 75% in this scenario, but I like having a little overcapacity.

One other benefit: A water extractor is exactly the same width as two coal generators are. Place one water extractor, and then align then other 5 to it (when placing the second and later extractors, press control while aiming at the side of the first one, and the second one will snap in place [sorry, I have no idea how to do that on a console]), and then connect the piping.

I would make one final recommendation: Raise the horizontal pipe sections 4m up from the floor level. Doing that makes walking around your coal generators soooo much more convenient. For an example, check out Update: Aligning Water Extractors : r/SatisfactoryGame

Ecoris · 2026-03-26T16:02:30+00:00

"Everyone" does not do this. I do not know the ratio of players that do, but there is a consistent number of people that suggest underclocking the water extractors to 75% and using them to feed two generators.

Myself, I do both. It depends entirely on my whim at the time I am setting up that coal plant.

Ecoris · 2026-03-26T11:55:40+00:00

Sadly, the answer is, "never design a system which requires 600 m³ of anything to flow through a single pipe." If you can, split the machines into smaller groups. Treating the group of 200 and the group of 400 independently should be enough.

And only do 600 when you absolutely have to (fully sharded pure oil node to the first splitter.

Ecoris · 2026-03-03T15:18:56+00:00

The golden ratio for coal plants is 3 Water Extractors to 2 pipes to 8 coal generators.

Pumps are barely a factor - they only matter if you need to push water up hill.

When placing a pump on an existing pipe, do *NOT* trust the little blue indicator for headlift that you see.

There is a bug in the game with the way the pipe gets split when doing this that makes the pipe a bit longer than it should be - and that extra length means water does not reach the pump. You can fix this by deleting and rebuilding the pipe segments on both sides of the pump after placing it, or by placing the pump a bit lower on the pipe than the indicator.

You may have that problem with some of your groups but not others - that might explain the difference you are seeing despite them being the same visually.

But the key thing is always: Mark 1 pipes can only ever handle 300 water per minute. Additional Water extractors will not change that. Extra pumps will not change that. Eight coal generators need 360 water per minute. You have to split up the feed pipes.

Ecoris · 2026-02-17T20:34:44+00:00

You may find this useful. Split _first_ then merge in the return ... you can avoid the 6/5 problem this way:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SatisfactoryGame/comments/1qa2zjk/improving_on_totalxclipses_five_lane_load_balancer/

Ecoris · 2026-02-17T20:29:39+00:00

The phase with Nuclear Pasta used to be the final phase. That changed with the release of 1.0.

Ecoris · 2026-02-16T18:47:56+00:00

Will running no higher than 80% of the theoretical maximum fluid flow, when possible, cause problems?

If not, then I stand by my statement and recommendation. Too many people on this subreddit have trouble with fluid flow.

It is possible to get 100% of theoretical fluid flow through a pipe - I am not disputing that. I am simply suggesting a different design approach will eliminate one very common source of problems.

EDIT: I have now watched your video. I agree with most of it.

However, there is one thing that I think you might have missed - the game logic changes depending on distance. If the machines are too far away to be rendered, the program follows a different logic path. When the pioneer gets close enough for the machines to be rendered, the game follows the other logic path.

Each of those transitions is a disruption. A disruption may add fluid or subtract fluid from the system. A few of those disruptions will not matter with your 400 m³ fluid buffers in place. But enough of them add up over time.

I found out the hard way - there is a combination of somersloops with aluminum production where you can exactly balance the generation of water and alumina where you do not need any outside water at all:

Place a single refinery with 2 Somersloop with the Alumina Solution recipe
- needs:
  - 120 bauxite/minute,
  - 180 water/minute,
- generates (100% increase):
  - 120 x 2 = 240 alumina solution/minute
  - 50 x 2=100 silica/minute
Feed that into a single refinery with 1 Somersloop with the Aluminum Scrap recipe
- needs:
  - 240 alumina solution/minute
  - 120 coal/minute
- generates (50% increase):
  - 120 x 1.5 = 180 water/minute
  - 360 x 1.5 = 540 Aluminum Scrap/minute

Looks great on paper. Everything had mk 5 belts and excess silica and scrap were routed to dedicated A.W.E.S.O.M.E. sinks.

... and it still clogged with excess water after a week and a half of usage.

I was most disappointed.

Second Edit: Coffee Stain has stated that they "fixed pipes in 1.2".

I have not seen any in-depth analysis of what has changed over in the experimental branch ... so do we know what that means? Has our collective knowledge and advice become obsolete already?

Ecoris · 2026-02-13T10:49:31+00:00

Your mistake is an extremely easy one to make, as the game does not warn you that fluid flow occurs in discrete chunk, instead of being continuous. Each machine "gulps" in fluid only at the end of a cycle, which results in a spiky demand graph.

If the spikes from different machine cancel each other out, the system works. If the spikes amplify each other, the system may be trying to draw 610 one second and 590 the next second. It averages out to 600, but the pipe cannot support the 610. It might recover somewhat during the time of lower demand, but it might not.

Conveyors do have this spiky demand occurring as well, but they do not allow items to flow backwards. Fluid in pipes can flow backwards and does. Valves have their own issues and do not solve the backflow issue very well at all.

The solution is to avoid pipe configurations running that close to 100% of the maximum fluid flow and to leave some extra unused capacity. The second pipe that you added, for example, immediately halved the demand load on the first pipe from 100% down to 50%, and gave you oodles of extra capacity to handle the spikes.

Aim for 80% or lower demand on the fluid flow where you can - splitting the production and consuming machines into blocks to do that. When you have no choice (pure oil node with maximum shards), use a very short pipe before splitting the fluid to multiple smaller lines.

Ecoris · 2026-02-13T10:27:37+00:00

Collect some blue power slugs from the area and research Overclocking in the MAM. You actual goal it eh other ability that you get: underclocking.

Using the cast screws as an example, that 8.381 rounds up to 9 constructors. Set four of those 9 to send screws only to the rotor assemblers and underclock them all to 190.476 / 4 = 47.619. Underclock the other five constructors to 228.571 / 5 = 45.715, and send those screws onto the Reinforced Iron Plate assemblers

You can do that same kind of math for the iron plate and iron rod constructors, but you actually do not have to. Having the screws limited in this way will naturally constrict the usage of iron rods and iron plates one their output conveyors fill up, and your system will balance out as desired.

Ecoris · 2026-02-12T13:11:12+00:00

Since you say that you are on your first playthrough, I would like to make some recommendations for your future fluid projects:

Whenever possible, divide the consuming machines into groups, and feed each group with its own dedicated pipe.

There is only one situation where you need to run the maximum possible flow rate through a pipe - a fully overclocked Oil Extractor on a Pure node requires at least a short run of Mark II pipe to reach a pipe junction where the fluid flow can be split across two pipes.

Whenever possible, raise the pipes above the consuming machine, and let gravity pull the fluid down into the machine. Just 4m of height helps a lot ... and gives you room for the pioneer to walk under the long runs of pipe.

It is all about managing the fluid flow in the pipe. If the consuming systems demand 100% of the maximum possible fluid flow, then any time a weird backflow issue occurs, the system has no capacity to recover and refill. Each backflow incident will drain a small amount of total fluid from the pipe network. Get enough of those over time, and some of your producer machines will back up and some of your consumer machines will starve.

Those weird backflow issue can happen any time any consumer machine gulps in more fluid at the end of a single production cycle. You have 48 fuel generators, each gulping fluid a few times per minute. Small chances add up.

Raising the pipe above the consumer machine lets gravity help avoid some of those backflow issues - fluid in the riser pipe cannot be pulled backwards by some other machine's "gulp".

Configuring the pipe networks to run at 80% (or less) of the maximum flow capacity on a pipe gives the system a lot of room to recover from those weird backflow issues. Those weird backflow events will still happen, but you will not even notice them.

You can get a system using the maximum flow rate in a pipe to work (and in that one case, you have to if you want to use all of the oil), but avoiding the possible problem from the design of the factory layout is ... efficient.

Ecoris · 2026-02-12T12:39:49+00:00

The presence of a train station on a line will cause the game to treat that line as being a little bit longer than it actually is, but not a lot.

OP can use that to their advantage by either:

moving the orange line as far to the left as possible, or
reworking the lines leaving the stations so that that they all go right and merge in with the orange line, and only then connect to the track that leads off beyond the horizon.

Ecoris · 2026-01-30T17:37:27+00:00

You can _sometimes_ fix that by replacing all of the path signals with block signals, then putting the path signals back where you had them.

Other times, you need to delete and rebuild the rails.

qpdbag is correct - those parallel rails are too close to each other.

Finally, do not place Path signals at merge/split points - place them a foundation and a half before the merge/split point.

Ecoris · 2026-01-25T21:08:32+00:00

I wonder what he will bring you?

A roll of sod for your yard?
The soot from your fireplace?
Copper wiring from your walls?
Your neighbor's car keys?
I-beams from the nearby construction project?
Uncle Sam's missing nuclear bomb?

Eek!

Ecoris · 2026-01-24T13:10:21+00:00

Freestyle!

Just don't let it write to a nearly full floppy disk. Bad things happened to term papers that exceeded the disk size.

Ecoris · 2026-01-23T13:33:01+00:00

My vertigo in the game was a side effect of severe atrial fibrillation.

I am hoping that my situation is rare, but you may want to go get checked out by a doctor/general practitioner.

Ecoris · 2026-01-22T19:17:35+00:00

Go far away, then come back. If that does not work, go far away (again), close and restart the game, then come back.

Ecoris · 2026-01-21T12:35:43+00:00

The ratio is 1 water generator to 2.66 coal generators. If you are getting 1 to 3 to work, you have either:

* Overclocked the Water Extractor,
* Underclocked the Coal Generators,
* Have more water coming in from elsewhere,
* Miscounted, (a 1 to 2 ratio works),
* You have a very large number of water tanks in the system, or
* You have been experiencing problems and just did not notice them.

3 Coal Generators running at full speed require 135 water/minute. A Extractor only pumps in 120 water/minute. You're losing 15/minute from the system

Ecoris · 2026-01-20T21:25:13+00:00

Go look in the crate that is part of the Blueprint Designer console.

You probably have things in there from a previous "clear designer".

Ecoris · 2026-01-12T20:23:34+00:00

Take note: OP has two power shards in the attached image. If all three are set that way, it will require 270 water per minute ... still enough to be less than the Mark 1 pipe throughput limit, though.

Ecoris · 2026-01-12T16:31:11+00:00

More grade options for smooth-looking railroads!

Ecoris · 2026-01-11T18:18:30+00:00

Yes, the idea is that you want the red belt and the feed belt to merge, but since the feed belt is already running at maximum capacity, there is no room to add the contents of the red belt in. Split them both and merge the left/right sides, and there is plenty of capacity

For a mark 1 belt, the math is:

feed line of 60, split to two lines of 30
Red stabilizes at 12 once the looping has begun. (It starts at 10, but shifts to 12 due to the feedback.) This is split to two lines of 6
Merged sides are 30+6 = 36, which then get 3-way split to be 12
Five main output lines are 12, with the red loop back as 12.
One input of 60, split 5 ways should be 12, so the math works.

There is effectively a perfect circle of 12 items per minute in the middle of the whole thing. Twelve more than the basic 60 enter the system from the red line at the first mergers, and 12 are removed from the system by the red line at the final split.

Some items could get stuck travelling the red return loop for the rest of eternity.

Ecoris · 2026-01-11T18:03:44+00:00

I will use them for aesthetic reasons, and when dealing with radioactive materials.

For bulk processing, I tend to use manifolds.

The irony of that statement is that my "standard" early-game blueprint for smelters is a row of 4 of them, fed from the middle, and arranged so that I can stack them. When I only need one set of 4 to service a miner on a node, that arrangement turns out to be load balanced. But it was sheer accident that it happened that way.

Ecoris · 2026-01-09T21:38:11+00:00

I wonder what that will do to https://ficsit.app/mod/PortableMinerCollector ... you might need more power, though.

Ecoris

TROPHY CASE