I didnt know this one existed. Been using a different one for years now. Found your vid on Youtube Kev.

I made a tutorial for your mod, because its pretty amazing. https://youtu.be/3RJ_4FJhZyA?si=zsbe4D2EtaE_I7Z8

In the pictures I see you've used piston tops as junctions to curve the line. I can't seem to make this work. If I use the appropriate gas tank with a piston part on the outgoing side it works but just a piston head does not work for the transfer of anything.

this is working as i am left clicking on rotor and nothing is happening

this mod is amazing - I've been using the tethers mod for a while, and I appreciate that it exsists but klang me its janky and confusing

This simplifies tethers and I get pipelines (which is a whole new thing to me).

Would be amazing to get a 'fuel line' or something for gases, but yeah I can appreciate re-calculating pipelines for small grids would a nightmare. Honestly I'd take a chonky looking 'tether'.

My use case is often refueling small grid crafts, occasionally drones with only the tiny connectors - or emptying hydrogen/oxygen tanks from salvaged ships.


Anyway. Amazing work, 10/10

maybe using the square piston head?

hear me out maybe just make a it seperate or maybe just another selection but what if the tops of the pipe on planets also had a cat walk spawned ?
maybe not a replacement but maybe another set of pipes

I cant seem to get the pipeline to construct for gases, and when I can get something to attach nothing is transported through,

Can you make a tutorial video on how to set these up? I tried following instructions but can't seem to get them to move ice from my drill to storage.

some dissapear some dont on a restart for dedi server its hit or miss

I have not had a chance to check up on my mods since this new update. If restarts zap pipes, that's new since the update and I'll hopefully be able to get it resolved in the near future.

server restarts seems to undo pipes

lmao the datalinks work great for "electrical outlets" for if one is building a realistic house! You can even make extension cords lol

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2531506602
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=774667009
Found these 2!

Yup, that is how I realized I really need to learn how the power cables work so I wouldn't end up cluttering the terminal (or worse, copy the whole network if I wanna save one structure in it)!

This did make me think if there is any mod that already has implemented batteries where one is incredibly fast to discharge but slow to recharge, and the other way around for another? That could probably work great with this mod, though it does ruin the idea of keeping out modded blocks (which isn't a concern for me) :P

Also switched my power poles with ones that have just one battery set to Auto, just to see if it works any better, as it seemed like the previous poles couldn't support such a network where the power would go between 2 or more consumers (it left no power for the first consumer, at least it seemed like so). But this too seems to have failed (only the first consumer has power), so I'm out of ideas how to do it :(

KEJWII, no, this mod works on its own. There are no new blocks, you use vanilla rotor parts and piston top parts.

AgitatedAlice, I wish I could make the powerlines work without the battery dependency too, but an engine limitation prevents grids that aren't logically connected (terminal access) from sharing power. I spent a lot of time trying to come up with a workaround, but ultimately using batteries was the best option I could come up with.

SourceStick, yes, battery size matters; on the sending side, how fast it can recharge itself from the grid its on, and on the receiving side, how fast it can provide power to its grid. That's just normal battery behavior. The powerlines don't connect power from grid to grid, they transfer power from one battery to another. Datalines directly connect grid power, but then you also get the terminal connection which is a bummer when you don't want it.

(Tried to write this right after the previous reply, but Steam's Tuesday server maintenance got in the way) My current power setup is: Producer -(dataline)> Power poles connected together via powerlines, from Recharge battery to Discharge -(dataline)> Consumer

Oh... Guess what? I got confused by powerlines too :P
I believe I understood how it travels, but I'm now wondering if the size of battery has any effect on it? (I made small power poles with 2 tiny batteries, one set to discharge and the other recharge. But it feels like it can't feed enough power to some of my heavier machinery)

Hello! I got quite confused as to how gas transfer works, so I would like if there were example pictures of how to connected them (I read some of the previous comments here to get it to work). Same could be useful for the other 2 lines!

Cool mod but I would wish the power lines didn't require a battery block to attach to so I could actually do this before finding lithium in Industrial Overhaul. I really just want the power lines without terminal or conveyor access because that would solve an issue with assemblers being annoying and taking "priority" over all other blocks even when on a connected grid, meaning it opens up that block regardless of what other block I use and all the other blocks play nice with each others.

Helo. Nice to have screenshots with first steps , guide screenshots. Stay save.

Does this mod need the original mods to work? I can't find these blocks.

The pipelines absolutely require connecting to stationary (static) grids; their models and collision are essentially even more static than static grids.

To support connecting moving grids would require recalculating pipeline piece placement and generating a new collider every time either end moved (potentially every frame), doing a bunch of collision checks for validity, and synchronizing it all in multiplayer. The performance cost wouldn't be unworkable for few pipelines (but still expensive for what it is), and would spiral out of control for one of the intended use cases (which is long and numerous pipeline arrays). The current way they work keeps their performance cost very low.

Powerlines are currently redrawn every frame and have no collision, so there was no real reason not to support moving grids (and their distance limit is mostly arbitrary).

is their a way to toggle it being stationary, like i have a subgrid on my station i would like to rotate
to make pipelines more convienent

i believe all it does is try to balance power

datalines work perfectly fine

i dont think powerlines work right even with batteries on either end it doesnt seem to transfer power

Rotorhead has to be completely built and has to be physically on a battery.

Furthermore, ir only wont let me connect *power* lines.

Heyo, am i missing something? i have the basic rotorhead and it dosnt seem to work. i have my welder and everything. am i being stupid?

Would it be possible to add the Truss Light as an optional connector for the power lines? Would give a much cleaner look especially on large grid.

Two separate pipelines. Stuff transferred is based on the destination container; if it's a gas tank, it checks the start of the pipeline for gas to transfer, if it's not a gas tank but is a cargo container or sorter, it checks the start of the pipeline for items to transfer.

Can one pipeline transfer both gas and blocks (assuming they are connected properly), or would I need to do two separate lines?

Super cool. Tyvm for the reply and guidance. Once I fix my missing g-menu blocks issue(something to do with the update), I'll get back in game and test it out. Will report back with my findings.

The distance limits were primarily selected for gameplay / balance reasons. Shouldn't be any stability implications. Minor performance implications for cables due to needing to increase render distance for them, probably slight performance benefit for pipelines to be longer in place of multiple shorter connected pipelines. Shouldn't be any literal engine limitations, but math approximations may make some of the pipeline positioning sloppy with large enough distances.

You can just change MAX_STATIC_LENGTH up near the top of the file. Pipelines should tolerate increases fairly well, cables will have rendering issues unless you increase MAX_RENDER_LENGTH to compensate (should probably remain half of MAX_STATIC_LENGTH) which will have a non-zero rendering cost if you have it turned up high and have lots of cables placed.

All testing was done with the current limits and while I tried to make sure the rest of the code would adapt to those values being changed, no guarantees.

Is the 1km limit due to engine limitation/stability requirements/performance load, or can it be increased safely? I think I've found where/how to change it in the script, but I would prefer it work correctly instead of being able to have lengths over 1km...

Yeah did figure out that putting another piston head a few blocks before on the same grid worked well, though there's still quite a bit of clipping when it comes that due to how it's oriented.

Been thinking about if it was possible to, exclusively on the midpoints if needed for balance, make it so that instead of 45 degrees it was 180 degrees instead and had no collision detection on the receiving piston head.
This would allow you to place a piston head with the port side down and the blank side facing up, making both the input and output pipe able to hit the node connecting them with no clipping.

I did peek at the code a bit before heading to bed and it seems possible to try out pretty easily, just need to be more awake to figure out which raycast check to nuke to let it do this without allowing for it to go through other blocks than the piston head. Feel free to ping me on the discord(same name), if it's easier to talk about that there.

The logistical overhead of letting the piston tops be usable effectively backwards, only at the destination if attached to a suitable destination, and then how to have it behave if the destination is removed, plus the confusion for a new user learning that they can only connect pipelines within certain angle constraints between piston heads, but then the rule being way different for the destination? I am wary of doing any of that.

What you could do, is place a piston top adjacent to your destination to guide the final one-block-length of pipe in at an angle you find more aesthetically pleasing. With the small gas tanks for example, I try to have a pipeline only enter from the top or bottom end since it looks much better than at a weird angle or from the side.

The computational cost of an additional piston head along a pipeline route on the same grid as another (in this case, the same as the destination container) is practically nonexistent.

Or even just having the midpoint check ignore collision so it doesn't clip into that model, would help a lot with the clipping of the endpoint since then you can at least align it properly before sending it into the storage.

Any chance you could put the node start point model also on the end point? It just clipping into the cargo model(especially if it's not a 1x1 block) just doesn't look great.

Powerlines are slightly on the tricky side to use. They don't connect the power subsystems of two grids, but instead balance power between the batteries directly connected to the (basic) rotor part on each end of the powerline.

Why do they work this way? Game engine limitation; unless you have a full logical connection (terminal access) between grids, an electrical connection won't work. Magically transferring power between batteries allows for some method to move power between grids that aren't otherwise connected so was better than nothing.

they connect but they do not transfer power

can confirm power lines do not work

well as it turns out i need to learn how to read instructions better the only one that doesnt work is the power lines the data lines work though

pipe lines and power lines are not working but the data line is working fine i have tried with just vanilla and this mod only and got the same result

Overhauled pipeline visual and collision creation. Should be far less picky about obstructions right near the final point of connection. Also even more efficient for physics collision tests related to the pipeline.

Okay, added some voxel collision tolerance to pipeline placement. A voxel that blocks the dead center of the pipeline will still block placement, but for the 8 raycasts done along the circumference of the pipeline, up to 2 can be blocked and still allow placement. For example, this should allow placement where a pipeline skims along the ground.

Also added a feature to help with fixing blocked placement: with the welder, aim at an otherwise valid endpoint where it shows the yellow obstructed symbol and left-click; then switch directly to a grinder or drill and the preview with collision checks will persist and let you drill/grind away obstructions and see an updating preview of placement validity. Unequip any tools or switch to welder and build/cancel to remove the preview.

Currently there's no easy way.

While I generally have just hand-drilled small sections of ground that I was barely colliding with, I did have a location where I gave up and used voxel hands with a long cylinder oriented like the pipeline to obliterate a path for the pipeline.

I've been brainstorming ways that would feel fair but haven't settled on anything yet. For anyone who has played Deep Rock Galactic, I was considering their approach where the basic pipeline path has to be valid, but then anything that's slightly still in the way gets magically carved out when the pipeline is placed. I think the equivalent for this would be if the dead center of the pipeline path was clear of voxels, pipeline placement would be allowed.

But I'm also not sure I'm okay with the pipelines clearing voxels on their own, so I might just make voxel collision more tolerant than grid collision when connecting (and let the pipelines be slightly sunken in to voxels).

i was wondering if there was a way to make it so i could put pipelines through voxels, not a lot just a little i dont mind having to dig if i want my pipes to go through something i was just wondering if i could have the pipes slightly in the ground

Oh, and mod load order is unlikely to have any effect. A shot-in-the-dark guess would be some other mod doesn't like the game objects that make up the physical pipeline model.