Chemical Plant not working and not accepting water.

[BrickVoidFCT]

In the attached screenshot, the Chemical Plant I'm next to isn't producing sulfur and isn't accepting water although it shows that it has a valid water connection, and only has 6 water. I'm not sure what is going on here, can anyone offer helpful suggestions or comments?

The section of the base I'm currently in has quite obviously grown organically, just look at the collection of underground connections here, maybe I incorrectly placed one? I find that there is a lack of information that tells you what is stopping a production facility from operating properly, particularly if it's one of these complicated buildings.

I was originally trying to get sulfur production up and running for batteries that are needed for Science Pack 3, but I eventually had to make a separate oil pumping field, that is making the rather long sulfur line you see in the picture, that wasn't connected to the rest of the system, it's down below out of the current picture, and this base is quite large. I don't think that it should be stopping production because of a lack of space to put things anywhere, as it has a chest to fill up, and that chest is not being filled up at all, even though the fast inserter is holding the last piece of sulfur the Chemical Plant manufactured. There are several Pumpjacks also not on screen that are pumping oil in, they seem to drain out very fast on pumping oil. Is this normal? I thought any Oil pumped on should last at least a decent timespan before becoming slow and useless but this does not seem to be the case here.

Also, is there a better way to manage oil production setups? This takes forever to produce one battery, and at this rate producing the Science Pack 3's are going to take forever. How do I make the battery production more efficient? I'm thinking I might restart this because there is a lot of base getting in the way there, some of the early facilities are devoted to producing utility items, and I will need to produce some turrets to go and clean out alien nests soon.

Cheers ...

BrickVoid

[Boogieman14]

Can you post a more close-up screenshot of the problem machine? That way it might be easier to tell what's wrong. Also, check the details of the machine. If there's anything in the output, it won't produce until the output's emptied.

[BrickVoidFCT]

Can you post a more close-up screenshot of the problem machine? That way it might be easier to tell what's wrong. Also, check the details of the machine. If there's anything in the output, it won't produce until the output's emptied.

I was about to post a screenshot for you, then I noticed a problem: The petroleum gas input on the pipe wasn't taking any petroleum gas because the Chemical plant next to the one I'm looking at, also connected to the same pipe, was taking all of the petroleum gas to make plastics. I think I need to remove this Chemical plant and put it elsewhere, because unless the pipe system in Factorio evolves to another level, I need to put this Chemical Plant somewhere it can actually receive petroleum.

Cheers ...

BrickVoid

[Boogieman14]

Normally it shouldn't be a problem to run multiple factories on the same pipe. Check my current game for reference:

refining,cracking,solid fuel

All those chem plants on the left get fed by one input pipe

plastic,batteries

Maybe you just need to add a buffer tank for sulfuric acid, that might help.

[DaveMcW]

Your problem is half the output of the refinery is being pumped in to storage tanks instead of used. It might even be clogging the refinery!

Build some cracking plants to turn the heavy and light oil into petroleum gas.

[bobucles]

Your heavy oil and light oil pipes are full, so I'm going to assume the storage is full. Oil storage fills up very quickly when it's not being used, and when it tops off your refinery production will stall. Start turning that heavy oil into lube, crack the light oil, or turn light oil into solid fuel.