Universal Pipe

One pipe for everything: energy, fluids, gases and items flow through the same translucent tube — at the same time.

Overview#

The Universal Pipe is the backbone of Nerospace logistics. Placed pipes auto-connect to each other and to any machine, tank or inventory, forming a network that behaves as one shared system. All four resource layers ride the same connection graph simultaneously:

Obtaining#

Craft (shaped, yields 8): a nerosteel sheath around a glass core —

N N N
N G N
N N N

N = Nerosteel Ingot · G = Glass

How it works#

• Connections: the tube grows an arm toward anything it can talk to (pipes, machines, tanks,

  chests). Every face has an independent I/O mode per layer: Auto → In → Out → Off (set with the Configurator). This includes the Battery, Fluid Tank, Gas Tank, Item Store, and the void-sink Trash Can — all now provided by Neroland Core; the pipe bridges Core's nerolandcore:fluid (and energy/item) capabilities onto its own lookups, so it connects to them exactly as before (point an OUT face at the Trash Can to dump a stream).

• Energy/fluid/gas: the network pulls from providers, pushes to receivers and balances its own

  buffers — coloured pulse streams show what's flowing where.

• Items: pulling faces extract from inventories; packets physically travel through the tube,

  re-route at junctions, and never spill — if every destination is full they park and wait. Breaking a pipe drops the items inside it.

• Filters & upgrades: see Pipe Filters and Upgrades.

• Readout: right-click a pipe with an empty hand for its current contents; sneak-right-click with

  an empty hand pops installed upgrades out.

Other mods' pipes and machines#

The pipe is not limited to Nerospace blocks. On every loader it now both offers and reads the platform's standard fluid and item handlers — the ones the wider tech-mod ecosystem uses — so a Nerospace line and another mod's logistics meet in the middle:

• Fluid: an Out face pushes into another mod's tank or fluid machine, an In face pulls from

  one, and another mod's fluid pipe can drain or fill a Nerospace Fluid Tank, Fuel Tank, Fuel Refinery, Quarry Controller, Launch Controller or Universal Pipe on its own — no Nerospace pipe needed anywhere in the line.

• Items: the same, both directions, for another mod's machines, crates and item pipes.

• Energy already crossed the mod boundary through Neroland Core's shared network.

• Gas crosses between Neroland mods through Neroland Core's shared gas capability

  (nerolandcore:gas). The gas layer carries any Neroland gas, not just oxygen: it pulls hydrogen and oxygen out of NeroTech machines such as the Electrolyzer, feeds a Chemical Processor, and fills a Core Gas Tank with whatever gas the line carries. NeroTech machines can also push straight into a pipe. Both mods use one oxygen, nerospace:oxygen; oxygen that NeroTech stored under its old id, nerotech:oxygen, is read as the same gas. There is still no cross-mod standard for gas outside the Neroland mods, so another mod's own gas system will not connect.

Face modes and filters treat a foreign neighbour exactly like a Nerospace one: set a face to Off with the Configurator and another mod's pipe sees a shut face there too, and a filtered face only passes what it is set to pass.

One honest caveat: this is Nerospace's half of the deal — it speaks the standard APIs. Whether a particular other mod connects depends on that mod using them as well.

Tips#

One line can power a machine, feed it items and carry its outputs away at once — use face modes when a single line serves both a source and a sink (set the source-side face to In so nothing flows back).

Details#

• ID: nerospace:universal_pipe · Tool: pickaxe, iron tier · Drops: itself

• Config: energyPipeCapacity/Throughput, fluidPipe…, gasPipe…, itemPipeTicksPerBlock,

  itemPipeExtractAmount, itemPipeExtractPeriod