Steam Pipe

alaindustrial:steam_pipe

Fluid TransportImplementedfluid-transportpipelogisticsnuclearreactorsteam

Summary

The Steam Pipe carries steam and nothing else. Steam leaves a Reactor Column only through its top face, and the steam pipe carries it from there to a Steam Nozzle, which vents it into the air.

How the reactor's exhaust is laid out:

top of the column → inside — Reinforced Steam Pipe → Reactor Inlet → outside — Steam Pipe → Steam Nozzle

The main rule: steam pipes and fluid pipes are two separate networks. They do not connect, even when they sit right next to each other, so you can run a water line and a steam line side by side and they will never mix. A Fluid Pipe does not accept steam, and a steam pipe accepts nothing but steam.

In every other respect it is the pipe you already know: the same 50 mB per tick, the same side modes under the wrench, the same fluid showing inside.

Fluid

Property	Value
What it carries	steam only (tag `c:steam` — steam from other mods too)
Volume per segment	50 mB
Throughput	50 mB per tick (1 bucket per second)
Connects to	steam pipes, the top of a column, a steam nozzle, a reactor inlet, tanks and machines
Does not connect to	fluid pipes, the sides of a column
Energy use	none

One steam line carries 50 mB/t, and the top of a column stack is a single cell that a single pipe reaches. So one stack gives off no more than 50 mB of steam per tick: for a large core, build several stacks and run a separate line from each.

Sides and the wrench

The modes are the same as on the Fluid Pipe: NEUTRAL, EXTRACT, INSERT, DISABLED. You do not have to set up the column and the nozzle with the wrench — they only work one way, and the pipe works out by itself where to draw from and where to pour to. On a Reactor Inlet, set the direction with the wrench: it passes fluid both ways.

A steam pipe next to a fluid pipe is not a joint, just a neighbouring block: the wrench on that face cycles the modes like on any other face, but no connection appears.

What the reactor melts

Just like the ordinary fluid pipe, the steam pipe melts inside a working reactor room — one at a time, every ~8 seconds, after a warning of flame, smoke and hissing. Inside the room, lay a Reinforced Steam Pipe; outside, the ordinary one is enough.

Block properties

Same geometry as the fluid pipe: a 4×4×4 core and an arm to each connected side. You can tell it apart at a glance: a warm steel body instead of cold grey, slightly smoky glass and brass bands on the collars. The steam inside shows as a light colour.

Placed and mined with a pickaxe; hardness 0.2, blast resistance 0.5, copper sound.

Flowing fluid washes the pipe away, just like a vanilla torch or redstone: if water spreads into the pipe's cell, the pipe drops as an item, and lava destroys it without a drop. Do not run a pipe where water can spread — next to a pump's pool, for instance; wall the water off. This is about water and lava loose in the world: whatever flows inside the pipe does it no harm.

Recipe


fluid pipe	invar plate	fluid pipe
invar plate	ceramic plate	invar plate
fluid pipe	invar plate	fluid pipe

Yields 4 pipes. Invar and ceramic stand up to heat — steam is hotter than water. The recipe unlocks once you hold a fluid pipe, an invar plate and a ceramic plate.

Old worlds

Steam used to travel through fluid pipes. So that reactors you have already built are not left without an exhaust, the first time a world loads after the update, the fluid pipes of steam lines turn into steam pipes by themselves, of the same grade (ordinary → Steam Pipe, reinforced → Reinforced Steam Pipe), keeping their side modes and their contents:

a pipe that holds steam becomes a steam pipe;
an empty pipe on top of a column or next to a steam nozzle becomes a steam pipe, and so do the empty pipes of the same line after it, one by one down the chain;
a pipe with water or another fluid, or a pipe next to the side of a column, stays a fluid pipe;
a pipe that touches both the top of one column and the side of another stays a fluid pipe — move its steam side by hand (the server writes its coordinates to the log).

The conversion is one-way: a world opened after it in an older version of the mod will not recognise the steam pipes.