Jan Melcher
Currently, it's very hard to figure out what you need to do to get a sufficiently high water flow.
  • there is no documentation in the object description of what flow a water pump can provide
  • once placed down, there sometimes is a flow indication in the pump, but I guess it's only the current flow, and not the capacity? It does not say it, but it fluctuates. It's hard to figure out if there could be an issue with the source pipe.
  • users like the combustion generators say something like "available at x (of max y)" but it's not explained what this means (is the max the available capacity, or what the combustion generator could use?)
  • the combustion generator no longer shows anything regarding water at all once the sewage is full, so you need to fix that before you see the water again (but you might need to get the generator working to get sewage working...)
  • some object just say that "Water is not currently needed", but do not show what they would need if they were active (so you need to queue up a recipe to find that out)
  • there is no documentation on whether the pipes have a flow restriction (someone in Discord said there is not, but you don't find that information in the game)
  • it's not clear whether you need to put pumps in parallel or in sequence to improve flow (putting them in parallel and then merging their outputs seems to work)
  • It's not clear whether elevation makes a difference for water flow
All things combined, it's very hard to find out what you need to do when an object is not working because of not enough water flow.
Only partly related, but these issues increase the frustration with setting this up:
  • the output of the waste filter says "water", but it's not compatible with "water" inputs. maybe split the names to "cleaned water" and "fresh water"?
  • the electrical water pump seems like an upgrade to the mechanical pump, but it's not clear if this is actually the case. In my test, they did not improve the situation. However, they made it much worse because combustion generators and electrical water pump had a cyclic dependency
  • on top of that, the combustion generator seems to swallow a full piece of charcoal every time it turns on and off again, which can be cyclic in case of a pump issue. So it burns through the whole stack you put in while you troubleshoot