Satisfactory Water Towers
EA EX Beginner
With Update 6 in Experimental and Update 5 well underway, many are restarting saves or remodeling their worlds, including me. In this guide, we'll be talking about the key concepts of Water Towers in Satisfactory and why you may want to use them.
TotalXclipse 16255 2022-08-26
Satisfactory Water Towers (with and without pumps)
With Update 6 in Experimental and Update 5 well underway, many are restarting saves or
remodeling their worlds, including me.
The key concepts to use in a water tower are:
1. Always have full pipes
2. Build with gravity in the plan
3. Bends in horizontal pipes normally do not affect flow rate, however, they do make a
pumpless water tower tricky (more on this below)
According to McGalleon, “Full Pipes are happy Pipes”. I can't help but agree. You can find that
manual here: Pipeline Manual Ver1.3.pdf
It has basic and advanced concepts, well worth the read for all levels.
But if you just think water towers are cool...BUILD IT! And the water will come!
First, let’s talk about a small, one factory tower:
Let’s say you want to build a wet concrete factory above a gas field:
The build, before powering up, shows the “main pipe” going straight up to the desired elevation
and all the way back down. We are using pressure and gravity to feed the “network”. There is
some discussion as to whether this is a feature or a bug. I have experimented with many builds,
and as long as it goes straight up and back down into a network with full pipes, working
pressure is enough to work the system (more on this below). There is a pump of sorts on the
extractor, after all. So let’s power up, and after several hours of running into an Awesome Sink:
The same pumpless build works at higher levels, as long as we go straight up and keep the
pipes full. Next to the wet concrete factory, is the start of an oil based factory that will be going
up to the Red Forest (aka Red Jungle) level. The oil goes up and over, no pumps, as long as
the pipes are full (300m3 in the pipes flowing from the oil pumps for the Mark 1s, changing to Mark 2 for 600m3 at the junction).
Neat huh? But what if you want to add in some Pure recipes (found on this Satisfactory Tips list:
Best Alternate Recipes Update 4) with your wet concrete and a Coal Generator plant all in the
same biome at different levels? Do you put in a bunch of water towers?
NO! Just hook into your “main line”.
The Medium sized water tower needs to go higher than all your factories in that area. The
“straight up and down” principal still applies, but it doesn’t need to be all the way back down.
Just enough to provide your gravitational pull. Here you can experiment.
This tower is feeding the valley going into the Northern Forest and Spire Coast:
Still no pumps, although this one I had to work with a bit. For a medium tower, you still only
need one pipe, although here I chose 3. The idea is just to gain headlift and keep those pipes
full. To avoid using pumps on the rest of the network, simply stay below the maximum height of
the tower and hook into your network. This tower feeds under my railway to 20 refineries just
under the railway (top of the Desert Canyon going into Spire Coast) with no pumps.
Top left: There are limitless ways to connect your network. As long as the “main line” stays full
and feeds all other necessary pipes, you should have a working network. Some choose to put a
buffer at the top of their tower but I found it just changes the dynamics of the system.
Top right: The 3 “main lines” go under the railroad and anywhere you need. It’s not necessary
for them to have enough water to fill your factories. You can use the number of pipes for the
number of directions you intend to go, and feed more water in as you go.
Bottom left: Inside the medium tower is just like the small factory tower: straight up and right
back down!
Bottom right: Refineries under the railway. This is about 160 meters up. Another row sits
beneath.
So now I’m curious, how far can this go? I’m working on the biggest one yet. Once you get away
from the “straight up” build, you start to require pumps. My newest build (not quite done, but
perfect for the purposes of the article: you can see the old spaghetti system coming out to the
right and the new system feeds the whole building from above) is massive!
I did have to put Mark 2 Pipeline Pumps on the bottom right lowest level, but that was it, gravity
took the rest over the tower and this whole coal generator plant is fed plus I have a new network
ready to go.
I Love Water Towers.
So build your system with gravity in mind, and place the pumps last...ONLY where needed.
Once the system is full, you may be able to remove those pumps. Experimenting is so
Satisfactory!
And this IS how they work in our world. Give water a little direction and it will act on its own, so if
they changed this, I would expect to have to use a few extra pumps, but I would be surprised if it
was “fixed” altogether. Yes, this is an alien world, but they WANT us to create earth-like
networks to take over this earth-like place.
Melothrien is a teacher, independent editor/publisher and Satisfactory fanatic. This is her first
article on Satisfactory, but you are sure to see more.
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