Volume Flow Rate for Conveyors/Tubes

So I've been building a big freighter (3840 Large Cargo Containers) and something that's jumped out at me is how minimal the conveyor system needs to be. If I felt so inclined I could transfer the entirety of the stored cargo off the ship one second, and then back on the next second.

With this in mind I can build the freighter with a single conveyor tube running the length of the ship and just branching off where needed. Doesn't seem overly realistic.

What I've done instead is essentially have a conveyor 'highway' running down the centre of my ship with 'side roads' running to the individual container groups.

What I'd like to see is a limit in how much can be transported through a conveyor in a given time frame to increase realism. Eg 100L/sec or 1000L/sec or something like that. If you want to move your cargo faster you have to use more conveyors.

Imagine an interceptor coming back to a carrier to refuel and rearm and it needs to be docked for a few seconds to get everything on board before taking off again. Our how about your shipyard comes under attack and you can't launch your battleship or battlecruiser until it's armed/fuelled, or you need to wait for your precious cargo to be loaded before you can try to make your escape.

What are your thoughts?

 

+1 the more limitation that are in place, the harder it is to come up with a workaround. for this one, accept a slow transfer rate in exchange for lower mass/volume and power use, or go for a rapid transfer system that is necisarrily large, heavier and power hungry.
at the moment the only puzzle to solve is where to place them to use as few as possible. there is no disadvantage to a single pipe other than lack of redundancy in combat vessels.

 

So a quick calculation:

Assuming conveyor tubes are 2m x 2m x 2.5m they can hold 10m^3 or 10,000L. At a rate of 10,000L/s it would take approximately 42 second to fully fill out empty a large ship large cargo container.

I think that's reasonable, but could be even higher while still being within the bounds of reason, eg 20,000 or even 50,000L/s would be ok in my mind.

Edit: Small conveyors seem have a volume of 125L, so at 125L/s you could fill a small ship large cargo container in 125seconds.

 

Hey, finally a reason to use large conveyors on small grid miners! Wait, whats the max liters per second for a small grid drill? Will 3 small conveyors be enough?

Also: bottlenecks and how to handle them. Lets say you empty a large container via 3 ports, but those three tubes all connect to a single tube. Behind the scenes, do you reduce each leg by 1/3 speed, or do you have them running at full speed and let pull/push reuuests over the capacity...
Wait, it all works of push/pull. maybe impose a 10 push/pull per second limit on each conveyor? I suppose you could then look along the 'route' for the lowest capacity section then apply a maximum package size limit, that would effectively throttle the transfer speed. We would need a whole new set of flags for conveyors. As well as an overhaul of the push/pull mechanic. And possibly route finding for fastest route.
Simple suggestion, but wow thats a major overhaul!

I still want it though.

 

I was thinking that you can increase flow rates by having multiple lines connected to the single block. Definitely handy for a case of a drill or grinder.

I'm no programmer, but it seems there's already done kind of path finding function in the game, or else we'd have issues with conveyor sorters.

That being said I'm no programmer so it's probably a whole lot more difficult than I think. Just like you mentioned... Still, would add an awesome new challenge to designs

Edit: so kinda responded to a different statement than what you posted... I should be a politician! Tortoise4President?

I think you'd have to go down the road of path finding, you'd probably have to give each conveyor component a storage volume, and only have it able to transfer to adjacent conveyors. If the adjacent conveyors volume is used then the transfer can't proceed. You'd have to do this to allow for more than one transfer to happen at a time on your ship. Maybe use google maps navigation software for path finding? (not apple maps. I don't want my fuel that's meant to be transferred to my reactors getting dumped in the 103rd dimension)

Of course this then raises the question of whether it's simply a rate that limits the transfer, or distance. Eg does it take longer to move your stuff through 500 conveyor tubes compared to 50...

So yeah... Massive overhaul!

 

+1 I like the idea. Unloading dozens of cargo containers in an instant is a bit silly.

 

Hmmm... I would not be opposed to this. When I play, usually I mine resources way faster than my refineries can handle. If my ship took some time to unload it's ores or other supplies, it would ease up the pressure on my other machines to keep up. Plus, it would give me some time to get out of the flight seat and stretch my legs a little between jobs.

As to the actual speed of conveyor unloading... 42 seconds doesn't sound too bad overall. They could probably decrease that to 30 seconds without it feeling too cheaty,but I kinda like the idea of a passive method for slowing down the pace of the game. (personal preference obviously)

 

(you could simulate this mechanic using a pipeline of filters, set to an empty blacklist)

a problem i see with this, is the amount of calculation and complexity involved: if a conveyor is used to connect 2 blocks, the calculation is easy. but imagine most current ships with their single conveyor system connecting everything.
how is the max flow rate split between all the components? how about stuff going the other way / splitting up? would using multiple lines speed it up?

don't get me wrong, i'd like having a little more challenging management.

 

I've created a thread about conveyors flow rate some time ago, check it out
https://forums.keenswh.com/threads/conveyor-insta-transport-yes-or-no.7365554/

 

I searched originally but I guess I didn't search right

From that thread the main things seems to be that it should be a togglable option, and concern over performance hit.

I think the option should definitely be able to be toggled on and off. Maybe even have the options like storage/refinery/assembly etc. where you have a x1 speed, x3 and x10.

As for the performance thing it seems to me that the most resource efficient way to handle this would be to stop the tubes from being a 'functional' block, but rather change the back end to cause delays based on paths available and bottlenecks.

The main issue is then path finding and how this is handled but would it be possible to use existing mapping tools for this? After all google maps calculates multiple routes to a destination including time taken and it does this very quickly with a system of streets that would be far more complex than our conveyor systems.

Just a thought. Maybe someone familiar with programming and the back end of space engineers could shed some light.

 

For now, only moving cargo by hand is instant in any quantity. All pull/push requests are realized in "ticks" based on internal game clock, capacity of involved blocks and other settings. That gives some sense of limited output when you try to move things from storage to storage. I don't think, that conveyors should work based on flow rate calculations. Actual system is not bad, it needs only some tweaks.
Second thing. I'm not sure if "real" flow of components is possible to implement to current game engine, because of way how game is handling inventory mechanics.

 

I agree with the OP. It would make cargo feel more tangible, as well as add realism and more design challenges.