| Wube's FFF #416 and #430 (2024) describe 2.0's fluids: connected pipes, underground pipes and storage tanks form one segment holding one fluid, and a pump splits one segment from the next. Fluid put into a segment is available at once anywhere along it: there is no flow from pipe to pipe, so pipe length and junctions no longer cut throughput as they did in 1.x. Each transfer is capped at 100 units (6,000 a second) and scaled by how full the source and the sink are, so a machine pushing in slows as the segment fills. These rules are the posts'; they weren't re-checked against 2.1.23. | Pipeline extentsAlgorithm tweaksAlgorithm tweaksAlgorithm tweaks | Dev blog |
In 2.1.23 a pipeline's extent is limited by default_pipeline_extent = 320, which a fluidbox can override; a pipeline takes the smallest extent of its parts. The data doesn't say how the extent is measured. When Wube introduced the limit in 2024, FFF #430 described it as a 250 × 250 tile area whose overrun stops all flow until pumps split the pipeline. | Pipeline extentsPipeline extents | Code |
A pipe and an underground pipe each hold 100 units and a storage tank 25,000. An underground pipe pair has a max_underground_distance of 10. A pump moves 20 units a tick (1,200 a second) for 29 kW, a tenth of its earlier rate: Wube cut it in 2024 when pipelines gained their extent limit. | Balance tweaks | Code |
| Water turns into ten times its volume of steam: Wube cut the water a boiler or heat exchanger needs tenfold in 2024 without changing any machine's power, so fluid wagons and barrels can carry a power plant's water. | Balance tweaks | Dev blog |
| Factorio 2.0's fluid segments match the description of Thermal Dynamics r2.3.9's design: connected pipes or ducts merge into one unit that holds one fluid, its volume summed from its parts, and fluid put in is available anywhere along it at once (FFF #416, 2024). In the design as FFF #416 first described it, machines push in at an unlimited rate, as Thermal Dynamics takes fluid up to the tank's free space, and pull at a rate proportional to how full the segment is, half the maximum at half full; each Thermal Dynamics outlet duct instead hands its neighbours between half and all of the fluid's throughput, scaled by how full the tank is (three-quarters of it at half full), and no more than the tank's amount divided by its duct count (or the remainder, when that rounds to 0). FFF #430, still before 2.0's release, gave the rules as changed: pushing in is now slowed as the sink fills, and every transfer is capped at 100 units, a limit that already existed, multiplied by the fullness of both source and sink. The scaling by the source's fullness has a counterpart in Thermal Dynamics; the 100-unit cap and the scaling by the sink's fullness don't. FFF #416 doesn't say which version of the mod Rseding played. | Algorithm tweaksAlgorithm tweaksAlgorithm tweaks | Dev blog |