IDIOT needs help...yellow fuel pipeline...am i supposed to turn something on???

[sam1133]

advanced into techtree far enough to get a yellow extendible fuel pipeline...i understand that the fuel flows in dirrection of arrows, but it never transfers any fuel at all...tried clicking parts of it, but cant...it doesnt seem to do any thing...please help this baffoon...thanks.

sam

Edited July 28, 2014 by sam1133

[KvickFlygarn87]

It controls fuel flow, not fuel transfer. You don't need any fuel lines for fuel transfer, just altclick the 2 parts

[sam1133]

oh thanks sir...what i want to do is have some external tanks transfer their fuel into a middle tank as it empties, so all tanks stay equal level...will altclick do that please.

[DBT85]

It will automatically feed fuel from the starting tank to the receiving tank provided the receiving tank has an engine on it burning the fuel.

You can use it to drop dead tanks while still having a full main tank for the remainder of the burn.

What you want to do can't be done with the fuel lines or alt click. Well it can, but doing it manually with alt click would be a nightmare trying to balance it.

Why do you want equal fuel in all tanks? You should only want equal fuel in any external tanks to maintain balance. The centre tank can remain full.

The idea being that once your external tanks are empty you drop them to save weight.

Edited July 28, 2014 by DBT85

[sam1133]

wow..brilliant...thank you ever so.

[Scarecrow88]

Essentially, linking external tanks to a middle tank with a fuel line means that the external tanks replace the fuel as it is used from the middle tank. Once the external tanks are empty they can be jettisoned as no longer required.

[Peder]

small advice about the fuel lines... If you zoom in on the fuel line you can see there are small arrows..

[Jean Deaux]

small advice about the fuel lines... If you zoom in on the fuel line you can see there are small arrows..

...i understand that the fuel flows in dirrection of arrows

I do believe he covered that in his original post.

[Sirrobert]

Little more advanced advise:

Those fuel lines are the core parts behind asperagus staging, which is the most efficient form of rocket staging there is. If you need to lift something really big, asperagus is the way to do it.

Basic explenation here

Note however that it needs alot of decouplers, which are expencive. So if you have to limit how much Funds you spend, it's not the most optimal

[Wanderfound]

If, however, for some reason you do need to continuously balance some tanks, there (of course) is a mod that will do that: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/25823-0-23-0-23-5-TAC-Fuel-Balancer-v2-3-22Dec