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Pipelines And Powerlines
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Type: Mod
Mod category: Script, Production, Other
Tags: ServerScripts
File Size
Posted
Updated
11.338 MB
19 Nov, 2024 @ 2:53pm
31 Dec, 2024 @ 2:52pm
21 Change Notes ( view )
Created by
qm
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Pipelines And Powerlines

Description
Uses vanilla blocks to implement cargo and gas pipelines and electrical powerlines.

Equip a welder. All actions require a welder to perform.

Pipelines:
- Left click on a stationary unconnected piston top to start building a pipeline.
- Left click on another stationary unconnected piston top that has clear line of sight, is within 1km and within a 45 degree angle of the first to make a connection.
- Left click on a stationary cargo container or gas tank to finish a pipeline.
- There must be a block with an inventory on the port side of the first piston top to pull cargo or gas from.
- Pipelines only transfer in one direction approximately every 5 seconds.

Datalines:
- Left click on an advanced rotor part to start building a dataline.
- Left click on another advanced rotor part on a different grid to connect power and terminal access between them.
- 1km range limit between stationary grids, 50m range otherwise.

Powerlines:
- Left click on a (basic) rotor part to start building a powerline.
- Left click on another rotor part on a different grid to connect a cable between them.
- 1km range limit between stationary grids, 50m range otherwise.
- Both rotor parts must be attached to batteries for this connection to do anything.
- Different battery charge modes affect how the batteries balance power between them.
- Connected batteries balance power approximately every 1.5 seconds.

Removal:
- Right click on an existing pipeline or rotor part with a connected cable to start disconnecting.
- Right click again to finish disconnecting, or left click on a valid target to change the connection.

The advantage to powerlines over datalines is avoiding grid terminal connectivity, but the battery requirement makes them more involved to set up. Use datalines when you want terminal access to the remote building and use powerlines when you want semi-autonomous structures to share some power. For long distance (>1km) power connectivity without terminal access, use datalines for most of the distance, then make a substation of batteries with powerlines bridging the final gap.

Powerlines inspired by Tethers by Klime/Twertoon/TwitchingPsycho/Faolon:
https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2648152224

Pipelines inspired by Klime and using the pipeline model by enenra (with permission):
https://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2499720849
23 Comments
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Moros 10 hours ago 
Testing out the pipelines, and I'm running into a similar issue that Evanion was: it's way too picky about obstructions, to the point that two cargo containers almost in line with each other won't allow a connection.

Actually, more testing has shown that they straight-up won't even connect if they're they're individual unsupported blocks. That's... strange. Something might have gone wrong with the most recent update?
AvaAvari 3 Jan @ 2:55am 
Aplogies sorry i kinda forgot i commented lol! Thanks for the info i might just try to use this in my save hopefully itll be more stable in the long run then our well.... clang skirting version, rotor 2 hinges piston lots of conveyors 2 hinges rotor, its not exactly safe heh
qm  [author] 30 Dec, 2024 @ 7:23pm 
The update today made no changes to battery balancing; still investigating. Just stating that to avoid confusion.
Moros 30 Dec, 2024 @ 6:33pm 
Further testing has shown that when a battery become full (from what I can tell, at least), any wind turbines (and likely other primary power producers) simply cease producing ANY power for anything at all. This is deeply strange, and has a lot of specifics that would need to be explored to actually figure out anything, but it might be easy to reproduce. The circumstances seem to be 'there's a primary power producer, there's a battery with a power line, and it becomes full.'
Moros 30 Dec, 2024 @ 6:21pm 
Turning the Auto Batteries on the Array and Station off did not *seem* to have a noticeable effect. It's odd that they're still draining when they actually are on, but I assume that will cease when the powerlines system is fully charged and maxed out. As it is, it seems like the system's batteries are sharing an equal load with non-system batteries on the same grid, which is kind of expected but ultimately renders non-system batteries useless, because (again, as expected) the Discharge Battery does not shunt toward Auto Batteries, but it DOES provide power to Batteries on the same grid set to Recharge.

In practice: when using the mod, behavior may be improved by ensuring that major consumers (like the station, but NOT the power pole) have SOME sort of basic power generation, such as a single wind turbine or panel, along with an unconnected battery.
Moros 30 Dec, 2024 @ 6:19pm 
Okay, so... I've... *kind of* solved the problem.

To be clear, the system is currently as follows:

Wind Array. Auto Battery with no line. It's sloooowly discharging to the rest of its grid. The only consumer on that grid is a Recharge Battery, which is actually now steadily increasing in power. It's connected to...

Power Pole. Auto Battery with a connection to the array. It's sitting at steady power. It's also connected to...

Station. Discharge Battery has a connection from the Power Pole. It's slowly increasing in power now. However, there is also an Auto Battery on the same grid with no power lines, and *it's* also slowly discharging. Overall, the grids are now net-positive, as they should have been, seemingly caused by reloading the world. Notably, the Discharge Battery is also full.
qm  [author] 30 Dec, 2024 @ 1:42pm 
A minimal test has it working as expected:
https://i.imgur.com/tHMIdlu.png
That shows a tiny charge (one tick of power from a wind turbine) on a Recharge battery, just before it gets sent to the other standalone Discharge battery. Next I'll scale things up a bit.
qm  [author] 30 Dec, 2024 @ 1:19pm 
The "clutter" is fine. Steam comments are a pretty janky forum, so use them as well as they allow us to.

I'll try building a setup like you described and see what I can figure out. I have a few cosmetic tweaks to release today (fixed the "up" direction on a pipeline when using the new square piston top, reduced log spam when shutting down a world), so if I can find an issue with the battery charging, I'll include that too.

Currently, I've mainly been using Powerlines for lazy instant small grid battery recharging off of a single large grid battery that's covered in basic rotor heads, and to keep tiny constructs permanently powered in my main build yard (think Satisfactory factory cart). So I haven't really put it through its paces for the building-to-building transfer I even envisioned it for. That said, what I have been testing has been working, so need to figure out what the missing link is here.
Moros 30 Dec, 2024 @ 12:24am 
I don't mean to clutter, but I thought on it a bit more so here's the basic issue:
TL;DR Recharger won't accept energy, so it can't transmit energy, so the rest of the system just isn't working.
Moros 30 Dec, 2024 @ 12:22am 
Also, to be clear on the logic states:
I am writing them as two states (one/two) with reflected portions (A/B), based on assumptions from your original explanation, which inverted what you'd said because it just didn't seem right.

You mentioned how, in Auto/Discharge, the split was '2 to 1' but it's actually 1 to 2: the Discharge battery is left with more power, since it's fed power. 2 to 1 would be Discharge/Auto, not Auto/Discharge.

So, for Discharge/Recharge, it's 1:0 because the Recharge sends everything to the Discharge, leaving it 1 out of 1 portions, and the Recharge with 0 out of 1 portions. The Recharge *should* be pulling power from its own grid, which is then sent over to the Discharge... right? But at least, that's not the behavior I was seeing with the Recharger, though it has been with the Discharger.

It seems like the ultimate root issue I'm having is that the Recharger simply wasn't accepting any power, when it really, by all accounts, absolutely should have been.