Funnels not collecting

Necrucifer · 2013-09-09T23:16:08.000Z

I know you have to drop a container like a jug or plastic bottle etc on them after setting it up to collect water when it rains but for some reason it thunder stormed when I was reading a book then while sleeping and they are only like 15 squares away but did not fill any of the jugs even a little bit (They were both empty and I only have one jug per funnel). 

Do I have to be able to see them directly? curtains are closed on the evac shelter. Or do I have to be within a certain amount of spaces? I've had it work before just fine but sometimes it does not seem to want to work so figured there is something I am doing wrong.

Weyrling · 2013-09-10T00:15:19.000Z

You do not have to see them, and they don’t have to be particularly close by.
Are you sure they are on an outside square with empty jugs? Also, which version are you using?

KA101 · 2013-09-10T02:16:37.000Z

Uh, there’s probably something to the “amount of space” thing–most stuff in Cata just…Doesn’t Exist if the player’s not around to observe. Chief culprit is fire: light something, go 4-5 map squares away, and it’ll be burning, right where it left off, months later.

Zireael · 2013-09-10T06:44:23.000Z

KA101:

Uh, there’s probably something to the “amount of space” thing–most stuff in Cata just…Doesn’t Exist if the player’s not around to observe. Chief culprit is fire: light something, go 4-5 map squares away, and it’ll be burning, right where it left off, months later.

Yeaah, sad.

Necrucifer · 2013-09-10T09:53:10.000Z

[quote=“Weyrling, post:2, topic:2981”]You do not have to see them, and they don’t have to be particularly close by.
Are you sure they are on an outside square with empty jugs? Also, which version are you using?[/quote]

Yeah, I checked them to make sure they had jugs in them. Latest experimental build but I never knew what funnels were for till a couple weeks ago so I never really had to use them till now lol.

KA101:

Uh, there’s probably something to the “amount of space” thing–most stuff in Cata just…Doesn’t Exist if the player’s not around to observe. Chief culprit is fire: light something, go 4-5 map squares away, and it’ll be burning, right where it left off, months later.

Ah yeah, not sure why I did not think about that. I usually set a tree or bush on fire near spider webs while I’m exploring and come back way later and it’s still burning so guess that slipped my mind. One ended up collecting one portion of water when it rained for a short bit, just did not appear till I left and came back I think so well least I know now.

Found a keg anyway and just filled it by a nearby lake and started boiling it lol so guess I’ll be fine for a good long time as long as nothing goes wrong haha.

kevin.granade · 2013-09-10T14:22:35.000Z

The edge of the “reality bubble” is about 60 squares away from you, e.g. as far away as you can see on a clear day (what a coincidence…)
If you’re on the ground floor and the funnels are just outside the building, they should be in range.
If you were in the basement that would explain it. Otherwise it may well be a bug.

Necrucifer · 2013-09-11T11:50:50.000Z

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:6, topic:2981”]The edge of the “reality bubble” is about 60 squares away from you, e.g. as far away as you can see on a clear day (what a coincidence…)
If you’re on the ground floor and the funnels are just outside the building, they should be in range.
If you were in the basement that would explain it. Otherwise it may well be a bug.[/quote]

Yeah, I was on ground level but they did eventually fill up pretty quickly to where I had to put new jugs there a couple times. At first I thought it might have been a bug but did not want to report it till I was sure it was not working. It works though so all good, also it helps since you all told me I have to be in range though. Thanks

Murphy · 2013-10-01T03:52:05.000Z

I’m also experiencing this problem. I installed a funnel and dropped a gallon jug on it, then spent days and days nearby, working on building a wood shack. The jug never got any water in it. Maybe there’s a special way the jug must be put in for it to start collecting water?

Actually not that much interested in water but I want to collect acid for my batteries…

Miloch · 2013-10-01T06:32:30.000Z

I had a whole slew of these going. Sometimes half of them would fill and half wouldn’t. Seems mildly buggy. shrugs

ragamer · 2013-10-01T09:20:24.000Z

I have made some detailed tests about funnels with 0.8 (romero) version. The setup was the following:

5xMakeshift Funnels using a single 3L Glass Jars on each as container.
They were spread (with a minimum of 1 free tyle in between) into 3 types of tiles: Dirt, Sidewalk & Grass. ALL tiles were outside (Using a towel to keep myself dry I stood on each funnel possition under the rain to check I got “wet” back).
I waited using a specific mechanism for a storm to start and checked how the jars were filled. On a given "fill"period I never mixed “time pass” mechanisms (With the exception, ofc, of the unnavoidable turns spent checking the contents of the jars themselves under the rain).
I stood in LoS and in less than 10 squares from any of the funnels the whole “fill” period.

This is what I observed based on the mechanism used to wait:

Turn skiping. By keep pressing “.”. The longer full storm I managed to test was one that lasted close to 24h (Swaping between Drizzle, Rain, Thunder and Lightning)… In ALL cases, NONE of the jars accumulated a single drop of water.
Reading, Crafting (Arrows), Dissassembling (Flashlights), Waiting 1h & Sleeping. The jars were filled completely in around 5h even if the storm dissapeared in the middle of the wait. The fill up process was gradual and some water was collected on each “granular time period” on some of the jars.

I observed additional features:

Filling rate isn’t constant. I observed a max difference of 3 portions between 2 Jars that, in theory, were empty and affected by the same weather during the same period.
The type of underlaying tile type didn’t seem to have an effect on accumulated water.
By chance I got a Glass Jar with 1 unit of weak acid. I tested what happened if I exposed it to regular water and the result was a Glass Jar with 5 portions of weak acid.
I didn’t have the chance to apply the detailed test on Acid Rain… But on regular gameplay I have managed to get weak acid on my Glass Jars (Gallon Jugs got damaged/destroyed under Acid Rain. I never tested metallic containers). Funnels, even made from plastic components, were unnaffected by acid.
3L Glass Jars behave as 1.25L holding only 5 units of water… According to the detailed description should hold 12 units.

Zireael · 2013-10-01T10:22:40.000Z

The units thing I believe is fixed in the experimentals.

An0n3 · 2013-10-01T14:02:58.000Z

I’ve been experiencing similar problems trying to collect anything. I have five funnels setup outside my safehouse and they rarely if every increment any units no matter what I do. I’ll sleep, craft, read, etc. in my safehouse while they’re right outside in the yard and they never seem to collect anything.

…so I resorted to purifying poolwater to fill my RV. Oh well.

ragamer · 2013-10-01T19:28:12.000Z

Just did a new batch of detailed tests… This time focusing on the “strange” combos and relaxing my initial strict conditions by blocking LoS, gradually separate from the set of 5 funnels and altering a few more parameters. Found some interesting “features”.

LoS is not affecting funnel performance.
Distance does… In a very weird way. If you separate enough (More than the reality bubble) effectively the funnels are not updated until you redeploy them. Simply getting close again is not enough to reactivate them. I carefully checked this by ONLY redeploying 3 of the 5 funnels after wandering very far away and waiting for a storm to happen… ONLY the ones I redeployed were refilling their containers. Redeploying the container do not fix this, in fact you don’t need to touch the containers at all to “fix” the funnels by redeploying them.

Hope this helps and I will try to see if there is an easy way to compact this into a bug report.

i2amroy · 2013-10-01T19:40:49.000Z

IIRC there is a bug right now where the very first funnel in the list receives all of the rainfall that the funnels collect (as opposed to each one receiving its share). Taking down and setting up a funnel then changes this, since it reorders the funnels and therefore selects a different one to receive the water.

An0n3 · 2013-10-01T19:51:22.000Z

Aha, so to summarize…

If you want to collect rainjuices, currently you have to deploy funnel(s) and then advance the clock while staying in the same area. Waiting does not work. Leaving the area breaks the funnels until redeployed.

ragamer · 2013-10-01T19:53:07.000Z

IIRC there is a bug right now where the very first funnel in the list receives all of the rainfall that the funnels collect (as opposed to each one receiving its share). Taking down and setting up a funnel then changes this, since it reorders the funnels and therefore selects a different one to receive the water.

What I observed is that the more active funnels you have the slower each one fills… but somehow the chosen one changes WITHOUT actually having to redeploy them (redeploy fixes the activation problem once you return from wandering away, ofc). The maximum difference in “portions” I have observed is 2 (Notice that I use the same containers… Which may differ in your case if the multicontainer selector has a preference for the bigger ones).

In fact, at the end of the test, the 3 redeployed funnels managed to fill my 3L Glass Jars and the remaining 2 didn’t catch a single drop.

Rivet · 2013-10-01T19:56:28.000Z

I’ve had success just sticking the funnel/jerrycan setup outside my back door. It fills up just fine while I go about my usual at-home tasks of crafting and normal sleep schedule.

That being said, the system does have some obvious kinks in it that should be ironed out.

Labtop_215 · 2013-10-04T00:22:29.000Z

I think that redeploying funnels is also necessary when you load the game back up again, but that is just my observation.

wad67 · 2013-10-04T15:35:54.000Z

I submitted this on git about a week ago, I think funnels are just buggy altogether.

Some fill containers ridiculously fast, I had a plastic jerrycan fill up completely in just under an hour, while three other funnels did not work at all.

esran · 2013-10-05T21:44:10.000Z

I suggest somebody makes funnels collect liquid independant of any containers. And then allow the player to collect that liquid in containers manually, like how it used to be.