Pipe Tiers

When using various mods that add new pipes to the game, I felt there was a lack of progression to make anything but the default iron pipes worth using. To make high-tech modded pipes an appealing option, they are each assigned a tier which grants them different extents and pumping speeds:

Tier 1 - Basic

Early game iron pipes with reduced stats.

Max. extent: 128
Pump speed: 600

Examples: Vanilla iron pipes

Tier 2 - Mid-level

Mid-tech, more expensive pipes that inherit similar stats to vanilla.

Max. extent: 256
Pump speed: 1200

Examples: K2 Steel Pipes, Pyanodons niobium pipes

Tier 3 - Advanced

High-tech utility pipes with a significant edge over vanilla.

Max. extent: 512
Pump speed: 2400

Examples: Paracelsin zinc pipes, Pyanodons multi-purpose pipes

Tier 4 - Mass Fluid Transportation

Big pipes with massive throughput, satisfying all your fluid moving needs.

Max. extent: 8192
Pump speed: 24000

Examples: Fluid Must Flow ducts

If you don't like any of the numbers, they're easy to change. See Configuration.

Usage

When added to vanilla Factorio, this mod doesn't do much except downgrade your pipes. It's intended to be included in a larger set of mods to make their additions more valuable. The below example uses K2 Steel Pipes, Planet Paracelsin, and Planet Maraxsis with Fluid Must Flow, forming a nice progression.

I highly recommend at least using K2 Steel Pipes since they're configured to have similar stats to vanilla pipes by default, or using something else you can assign to Tier 2.

Configuration

Each tier has its own pipeline extent and pump speed:

Extent is the maximum size of a pipeline. For example, the default value of 128 for Tier 1 pipes means that you cannot create a pipeline larger than 128 pipes in length or width. If you add a Tier 1 pipe to a length of Tier 3s, the entire line will be downgraded to Tier 1 extent.

Pump speed determines how much fluid is moved through a pump per second, limiting the throughput of the pipe tier by its pumps. Vanilla pumps are at a higher tier by default due to there being no built-in alternatives.

The settings to configure these for your pipes include:

Default tier: All pipes not covered by the mod are assigned to this tier.

Custom overrides: See Adding custom pipes.

Tier options: With the drop-down options you can assign each type of pipe per-mod to a different tier.

Pipe extent/speed options: Here you can change the values for each tier.

Mod options will show/hide automatically depending on which mods are installed.

Adding custom pipes

Adding pipes from non-supported mods or overriding existing tier settings can be done through the Custom overrides entries on the mod settings menu. Just add the entity name of any pipe, tank or pump and its settings will be overwritten with those from the given tier. Entity names must be separated by commas.

You can find the entity name of any building by pressing F4 to open the debug menu, enabling show-debug-info-in-tooltips, and hovering over the building with your cursor.

Special thanks

• notnotmelon for writing Extents Begone, which I adapted most of the extent updating code from.