I'm thinking of making a steam boiler, but i don't know what kind of pipe ill use to transport steam to my engines. Anyone know the pros/cons of golden waterproof pipes, liquidducts, and rp fluid pipes? How do they compare with each other? I really like the look of fluid pipes though, but idk how well they transport fluids compared to the others.
pipes for boilers...
- Thread starter graydaze
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Celestialphoenix
Too Much Free Time
Golden pipes cant be placed adjecent to each other without making loops and bugging out, if you keep them apart its a cheap way of doing it.
Liquiducts are more space efficient, and carry twice the steam. They can be placed next to each other, and by default an empty duct will not connect to a full one, so use a wrench/crescent hammer. However they are slightly more time consuming to mass produce.
Generally no-ones tried fluid pipes yet.
Liquiducts are more space efficient, and carry twice the steam. They can be placed next to each other, and by default an empty duct will not connect to a full one, so use a wrench/crescent hammer. However they are slightly more time consuming to mass produce.
Generally no-ones tried fluid pipes yet.
Might also look at denoflion's industrial pipes. Twice the capacity of golden waterproof pipes and come in both cobble and stone variants for more compact pleasantry.
Have not utilized it yet though as I'm doing legit play and don't spoil things for myself in creative 99% of the time.
Have not utilized it yet though as I'm doing legit play and don't spoil things for myself in creative 99% of the time.
Depends on your resources and how compact it needs to be. If it's just machines in your base, go with some engines hooked up by golden pipes or liqueducts a couple blocks away and wire up all the energy. If you have engines elsewhere take some golden pipes down to them to fuel the engines.
RP2 fluid pipes treat steam like it would be water, so I wouldn't use them for it. BC pipes are completely unrealistic and overall terrible (I love the rest of buildcraft, specially item transport, but this liquid pipes are behaving so weirdly). Liquiducts are a lot closer then BC pipes to real ones and base it's transport capabilities on what liquid is transfered, so they are the best choice for the boiler. However boiler and turbine have limited output/input, you need one connection to the liquiduct per 160 mB/T IIRC. If you configure nuclear reactor to output steam, you probably will be able to transfer all the steam through one connection to the liquiduct (I tested it with 420 EU/t reactor).
After doing some testing using a steam boiler and steam turbine, here what I saw what a single line of pipe can provide to the steam turbine.
the turbine ran at 12-13% using the golden waterproof pipe.
24-25% using the liquiducts
and 66-67% using redpower's fluid pipe.
It appears that fluid pipes are far superior and as compact as liquiduct.
Although could only get the boiler to output the steam with fluid pipes. The boiler appeared to not accept any input using them whether it be water or liquid fuel. ( I used biofuel for this test)
edit. after further testing fluid pipes do treat steam like water. The longer the pipe the slower the steam gets to the turbine : ( a pipe 2 blocks long can provide enough steam to run the turbine at 100% and a pipe 27 blocks long drops it down to a measly 10%
After testing with steam engines fluid pipes were down right terrible, they performed worse than waterproof pipes.
the turbine ran at 12-13% using the golden waterproof pipe.
24-25% using the liquiducts
and 66-67% using redpower's fluid pipe.
Although could only get the boiler to output the steam with fluid pipes. The boiler appeared to not accept any input using them whether it be water or liquid fuel. ( I used biofuel for this test)
edit. after further testing fluid pipes do treat steam like water. The longer the pipe the slower the steam gets to the turbine : ( a pipe 2 blocks long can provide enough steam to run the turbine at 100% and a pipe 27 blocks long drops it down to a measly 10%
After testing with steam engines fluid pipes were down right terrible, they performed worse than waterproof pipes.
RP2 pipes actually have a pressure component in function. Did you test them with a reader to see what the pressure was?
I believe they lose 1 psi per block, so consistent with your practical tests.
I believe they lose 1 psi per block, so consistent with your practical tests.
You're all misusing the liquiducts in these setups >< The limiting factor on the throughput from a single boiler is the boiler itself, not the ducts. Each boiler face can only output 80 steam a tick into a liquiduct, so as long as you have 9 faces attached to a liquiduct system you can then use a single pipe to transport all of the steam from the boiler. It's essentialy the same as hooking all the engines directly to the boiler and then using energy conduits to transport the energy, except instead of connecting the engines to 18 sides you connect the liquiduct to 9 sides, and then connect 18 engines to the ducts.
Really? I'll have to do some testing on that. I know that if you provide a redstone signal to the liquiduct pipe, it goes from 80 steam to 240 steam on a single face. That's a function of the liquiduct powered draw, I believe. A combination of the two could get the entire steam output of a max size HP boiler into a single liquiduct if it can handle the throughput.
We went a bit further in the thread which is why I was able to come out to exactly 80 s/t on unpowered ducts. I didn't know they would draw even faster if powered though.
Yes I did see that, and I tried using a pump to try to increase the pressure in the pipes, but it didnt help at all in fact it made things worse in most cases.
Oh I see, although from the test I did using fluid pipes, a single line to up to 2 blocks long of fluid pipes were able to run the turbine at 100% so it appears to be circumventing the boilers output limit, then at 3 blocks long it drops down to 67%. On the other hand a single fluid pipe could only run an industrial steam engine at 5MJ. The boiler/steam mechanics for fluid pipes needs to be worked at.
That's an oversight on my part - things shouldn't be able to output into extraction-mode conduits as that presents a control issue. Also, Liquiducts might get tweaked a bit - the way they distribute liquid means they don't need quite the raw throughput that they currently have, and I mistakenly thought that gold pipes were 80 mB/t.
Also, depending how item conduits go, the underlying mechanics may get altered a bit. You just never know, eh?
Celestialphoenix
Too Much Free Time
RP pipes work on fluid pressure. Default output pressure is 100PSI (from tank/boiler ect), and they loose 1PSI/Length.
A RP pump can wind it up to 1000PSI (I think), so it could potentially suck steam out faster than the liquiducts.
I had suspected as much. Still, extraction-mode is still better than what a boiler will naturally output, so it'll still be superior to use, even if they no longer stack... unless the overall throughput or extraction mode itself gets a nerf.That's an oversight on my part - things shouldn't be able to output into extraction-mode conduits as that presents a control issue. Also, Liquiducts might get tweaked a bit - the way they distribute liquid means they don't need quite the raw throughput that they currently have, and I mistakenly thought that gold pipes were 80 mB/t.
Also, depending how item conduits go, the underlying mechanics may get altered a bit. You just never know, eh?
But hey, what's life without these little uncertainties, eh?
And this is why I am always iffy about posting optimization threads on forums that the mod authors frequent. Oh well. You gain some, you lose some.That's an oversight on my part - things shouldn't be able to output into extraction-mode conduits as that presents a control issue. Also, Liquiducts might get tweaked a bit - the way they distribute liquid means they don't need quite the raw throughput that they currently have, and I mistakenly thought that gold pipes were 80 mB/t.
Also, depending how item conduits go, the underlying mechanics may get altered a bit. You just never know, eh?
BTW, do you know that currently sawmills are currently (barely) the most efficient way to generate power (BC or IC2) from wood?
That's an oversight on my part - things shouldn't be able to output into extraction-mode conduits as that presents a control issue. Also, Liquiducts might get tweaked a bit - the way they distribute liquid means they don't need quite the raw throughput that they currently have, and I mistakenly thought that gold pipes were 80 mB/t.
Also, depending how item conduits go, the underlying mechanics may get altered a bit. You just never know, eh?
Did you say item conduits??!! Now I'm excited. There's currently no reason (aside from cost) to use BC liquid or conductive pipes, and I'd be perfectly happy to get rid of transport pipes as well =)
Agreed, but there are some things that BC pipes do a bit better that'd be nice to implement in a ground up redesign. Compare, for example, conduits to conductive pipes. I'd argue that order of magnitude improvement would make TE pipes an attractive option to RP tubes. And, if we can get similar functionality to Logistics Pipes....game on.
Even without LP functionality, as long as they have the same kind of connectivity options that Liquiduct pipes have, so you can run them parallel without them connecting, and have an 'auto-pull' option like Liquiducts have... it would be well worth it. If they have the reduced lag that liquiduct and conduits have compared to their BC counterparts, it might well be even less lag than Tubes.