Pipes



Note: I currently lack any photographs to be included in this article. If a contributer wants to add them after me, feel free. I will upload some eventually, but it will take time.

Pipes are one of the most useful machines in Stellar Exchange. They allow you to send resources from one machine to another without them being in immediate proximity to one another. This becomes very important when you start trying to create more advanced systems to create Tech, Data, and Missles. If you have not yet done so, you should read the Getting Started section on how to begin automatically collecting resources.

Pipes
The pipe can accept input from any machine in any direction. It will output its inventory into a valid machine block in the direction of the red arrow every five seconds. It costs 100 wood to build and It has a maximum inventory of 1000 units. As with most machines, any time this level is exceded the newly added items are deleted. However, this is the pipe you will use most in machine to machine transfers. Since machines only output items at a rate of once per minute, these pipes will likely never reach their maximum capacity on a planet with low to mid-level development.

If you find that your pipes are no longer adequate to transfer your items without losses, you should use research to upgrade your pipes system. As of the Research Update this is the only way to increase the inventory size of pipes.

Placement
Pipes should be placed immediatly next to the item from which you wish to send items. You should change the machines output direction to point towards the pipe so any produced items will automatically enter the pipes. Next place additional pipes and connect them so that items will flow from one end of the pipe system to the next. At the end, place another machine or warehouse or even your base. You should also notice that it is possible to connect multiple pipe braches to each other. Simple creat the intersection and set the output direction arrows appropritely. This will automate the transfer of items from one machine to another and give you the opportunity to make larger and larger production systems.

Machines as Pipes
In some cases it can be advantagous to use machines as pipes. This allows you to save space making your production systems much easier to use. However, there are limitations. With producers, only like machines may pass items to one another. Producers have a limit as to how many can be chained together without loosing resources. As of the Research update they default inventory is 1, but resources are moved every 5 seconds. Producers can also be upgraded so there is no set number as to how many producers can be chained together. However, the maximum number of producers that can be linked can be found for an individual set of producers using this function:

Num_Producers = (Is*C)/(Pc*Rt)

Where: Is = the inventory size of the producer. C = The time in seconds of the cycle. (Usually 60 seconds.) Pc = The rate items are produced per cycle in items per cycle. Rt = The rate at which the items are transfered out of the machine in seconds.

Using the stats for a standard lumber mill we get the following:

(1*60)/(1*5) = 12

So we can link 12 lumber yards in a row without loosing resources. This can be repeated for all producers regardless of any upgrades or configurations.

Producers can pass items directly into manufacturing machines without the use of a pipe and then manufacturing machines can pass some items back and forth without the use of any other type of machine to fascilitate the transfer. This can get very complicated and it is easy to make a mistake and loose precious resources. It is often best to use a warehouse to aid in the creation of large manufacturing systems.

It is important to note that while like producers can pass resourced through each other the same is not true for like manufacturing machines. Attempting to do so will cause items to become trapped in machines and eventually lost when the machines inventory fills. The only time it is appropriate to pass items from one manufacturer to another is when the output of the first is an acceptable input for one of the recipes associated with the next.

Special Transport Machines
In addition to pipes, there are three other, more advanced, transfer machines. These are your base and warehouse. They can function as pipes if you set direction arrows, though that would sacrifice much of their function so it is recommended that you do not do this. Since their function is much more involved, they will be given their own page.