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[Meneth]

Pardon me if this sounds silly, but if you want to find out what happens during a single tick, why don't you just use the dot key (.)?

[Tacomagic]

Pardon me if this sounds silly, but if you want to find out what happens during a single tick, why don't you just use the dot key (.)?

I did, but it was unclear what was happening because of the fuild dynamics.  Due to the pressurization of th output, using the (.) made it appear that it was pumping far less than it actually was.  Using the (.) key, it looks like it's only pumping once every second or third turn.  However, once the whole pump action is done, the amount of collected water tells a different story.

[GavJ]

@jcochran

Yes, but generally you don't want your water supply to be elastic. The slower one bounces around slowly in how much water flow it provides, mostly outside your immediate control. The faster one gives immediate and perfect control, to the extent possible.

For example, you can have two sources at the bottom (and I often do): pressurized and unpressurized. Depending which one you expose to the bottom of the fast stack, you get immediate flow rate control at the top of either 7/tick, or [whatever less amount]/tick. Without having to clear out the pipes in a way that might break various machines or trap designs, etc.

So the fast is pretty much always better. Unless for some bizarre reason, a reservoir elasticity of exactly [size of stack time]*[7-typical bottom flow rate volume difference] is desirable to you... which is basically never.



Think of it this way: Do you want a bathroom in your house with a showerhead that has to run for 20 seconds to heat up or cool down, based on the whims of whatever happens to be sitting in a long network of pipes, and sputters out low pressure with air in it no matter what for that same time? Or one that puts out at-temperature water almost immediately -- WHATEVER amount and heat you demand right then?