Ha! I guess that explains all the extra blueprint copies I have to clear out of my inventory every so often!

Yeah, I’m kinda going back-to-front here, LOL

Heya, thanks for the comment. You made me curious, so I tested it out and it works fine (even at 100 boilers). So we’re all good. Looking at the wiki and flow rate, here’s my best understanding of why it works. Each row of boilers is fed by two pipes with offshore pumps at the other end somewhere, and you are right that we need 25 * 60 = 1500 water/s at the first boiler. We can think in 3 segments: from the offshore pumps to the join point, from the join point to the first boiler, and then through the boilers. Each offshore pump can produce 1200 water/s but only needs to provide 750 water/s (half of the 1500 needed at the first boiler). Checking the wiki, we can sustain 750 even over pipe lengths over 200 segments. So that’s fine. Then we have the join point, which is basically 3 pipe lengths: a pipe and 2 undergrounds; this can support 2250, which is greater than the 1500 we need. Then finally, the trick with the boilers is that we only need 1500 at the *first* boiler. We need 1500 - 60 = 1440 at the second boiler, etc. so it works out ok. But like I said, I actually set it up and tested it and watched it run, and it works without pumps. :)

@@mysticfishgames I'm still a bit confused, but I think I get the general idea :) I think I'm misunderstanding how the flow rate is handled at junctions, so I'll try to figure that out later. Factorio pipe mechanics are weird... I'm happy that it didn't turn out to be a problem :)

Yeah, the wiki doesn’t explain how junctions work, and even the max-pipe segments-for-a-certain-flow is measured empirically rather than calculated, so this is my best guess as to why it works. Ultimately for complicated pipe stuff you end up just having to build it and see if it works. :)

@@mysticfishgames Unfortunately I couldn't do that myself for now because I still need to install the game, but I'll definitely have fun figuring the fluid system out when I finally get to play it :)

Ah! Good call! A burner inserter takes 1.667s for a swing and burns 94 kW while swinging, so it burns around 157 kW per swing. Without any stack size upgrades, it can carry 1 piece of coal per swing, so it taxes 156 kW per 4 MJ of fuel, or around 4%. With a stack size upgrade, this drops to 2%. With solid fuel and a stack size upgrade this falls to ~0.7%, which still supports 99.3 boilers (so we’d still have the full 100 boilers in the expanded blueprint). You’re right that if we are doing coal with no stack size upgrades, we can only support 32 boilers and not 34. We are probably still on steam power and coal by the time we get the first stack size upgrade, though, so at that point you are right that we have around 1 extra boiler.

@@mysticfishgames "A burner inserter takes 1.667s for a swing and burns 94 kW while swinging, so it burns around 157 kW per swing" 94 kW swinging and 157kW per swing?

Not quite. A burner inserter only burns fuel when it is swinging, and it doesn’t have to swing constantly (it can transfer approximately 4 MJ per 1.667 seconds, which is around 2.4 MW, but a boiler only consumes 1.8MW). It’s easier (for me) at least, to think about how much it burns per swing, and net out what it is transferring. Without a stack size upgrade and transferring coal, it can transfer 4MJ per swing but consumes 157kJ of it to perform the swing, so a net of around 3.8MJ per swing. I realized I had a typo and said it burns 157 kW per swing but it should really say 157 kJ per swing.