FS25_SlurryPipeSystem

Realistic physical slurry pipe system for Farming Simulator 2025.

Replaces vanilla "drive into a trigger and fill" mechanics with a tactile system where you physically connect tanker fill arms or pipe chains, run a PTO-driven pump, build pressure, control flow direction, and watch slurry move through real plumbing — with a slurry that actually thickens, crusts and blocks if you neglect it.

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What it does

Plumbing & transfer

• Fill arms swung out of the tanker by joystick into open slurry pits or rubber boot ports on buildings and other vehicles.
• Pipe chains — multi-segment pipes laid by walking from one coupler toward another, locked into place when both ends overlap valid couplings.
• Direct bez pipes — a single connecting pipe between two nearby couplers, for quick pump transfers between a tanker and a building.
• Conduit pump (PTO Slurry Pump) — a passive pump trailer that lets two pipe chains transfer through it.
• Animated couplers and valves — clamp handles close on connect, valve wheels rotate on open.
• Lid-linked deployable couplers — a store coupler can drive the placeable's own vanilla animated lid: deploy opens it, connect requires it fully open, and the lid locks while a pipe is live.
• Pipes rest on real surfaces — laid pipes and connection pipes settle onto concrete pads, building floors, bridge decks and roads, not just the terrain.
• Coloured pipes — pick from a palette per pipe segment, stored per save.
• Multi-fill-type support — works with LIQUIDMANURE and DIGESTATE; transfers automatically pick whichever fill type is actually present, and mixed deposits merge into the type already held.
• Gravity head equalisation — opt-in per coupler: levels equalise between connected vessels by gravity, gated on the pipe's high point, so slurry only runs downhill when it genuinely can.

Pumps & pressure

• Pump types — vacuum (stored ±bar pressure model with a gauge), HVP high-volume pump, conduit pump station, and openTop passive vessels (e.g. nurse tanks).
• Pressure model — vacuum tankers build, hold, taper and purge a stored charge that drives fill and discharge; spread behaviour scales with pressure rather than a simple on/off.
• PTO shear bolt (opt-in) — wears and snaps under load while turning with the PTO engaged; walk-up hold-to-repair.
• Manual or hydraulic changeover — the vacuum/pressure direction is set at a walk-up node on the tanker, from the cab, or either one depending on the store configuration the player bought (cabDirectionConfigIndex). An optional changeover-lever animation (directionAnimation) shows the handle move, synced in multiplayer.
• Valve & coupler animations from the vehicle's own <animations> — rear spreader valves (spreaderValveAnimation) open and close with the SPS spreader valve, and coupler clamp/valve animations can be referenced by name (connectorAnimationName / valveAnimationName) instead of re-authored — poses restore from savegames and sync to every player automatically.

Slurry that behaves like slurry

• Thickness / dry matter — slurry thickens as dry matter concentrates; thickness affects flow and spread.
• Crust & blockages — an unmixed store crusts over on a fixed physical timescale (720 game hours, roughly 30 in-game days, whatever your season length); crusted, lumpy slurry blocks spreader outlets and the macerator. Mixing clears the risk in about 2 game hours; adding water dilutes thick slurry.
• Agitation — a manager-driven agitator works on any registered vehicle with an agitator tip node, no specialization required.
• Slurry separation — the Börger screw-press separator placeable strips dry matter out of piped slurry: solids drop onto its manure bunker, the thinner liquid fraction returns through the pipe. Walk-up start/stop and a five-step screw tightness control; recirculate for progressively thinner slurry.
• Water intake — fill arms can draw water straight from map lakes and ponds wherever the map provides SPS water planes.
• Front-mount fill arms — a capacity-0 pass-through pump unit on the tractor's front linkage, hose-linked to a rear receiver tanker on any tractor via injected Giants connection hoses (the Xerion keeps its own factory hose circuit). Filling cascades: coupler-connected targets first, overflow to the rear tanker, switching automatically as levels change — full mirror when unloading.
• Buying station support — a compatible buying-station placeable (FS25_BuyableManureAndOther) acts as a paid, infinite pipe-only source, with a walk-up switch to choose which sold liquid the coupler dispenses (Shift + activate cycles in reverse). A sprayer variant sells liquid fertiliser / herbicide straight into the sprayer pipe system — a part-full sprayer auto-switches the station to its held liquid on connect and locks the switch while connected, and script mods can add whole liquid categories via <extraFillTypeCategory>.

Spreading

• Dribble bars & band spreaders — per-outlet blockage modelling with a macerator that shields the outlets up to its capacity, per-vehicle tuning, and a spreader HUD (which can optionally hide together with the help menu on F1 — settings page, per player).
• Fertiliser / herbicide sprayers — load liquid fertiliser or herbicide through the same coupler-and-pipe system via a dedicated sprayer integration, operated from a single walk-up pump control. No pressure model on sprayers — flow is a flat rate.
• Front tank combos ("FlowControl") — any front tank pairs automatically with any rear sprayer on the same tractor sharing a fill type. One pipe connection to either tank fills or drains both, and an automatic balancer (modelled on the real Amazone FT-P) holds the rear at 30% from the front tank while spraying, so the front empties first and front axle load is preserved. No config pairing, no keybind — attach and go.

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How to add support to your own content

The supported way to add SPS to your own mod is the embedded path below. You do not edit the SPS mod. Adding files inside the SPS folder is an internal mechanism used only for the fleet SPS ships itself; doing it to add your own content will cause multiplayer issues.

Embedded — for modders (recommended, MP-safe, self-contained)

Add a single block to your own vehicle, placeable or map. No SPS-side files, no manifest entry. Players with SPS installed get integration automatically; players without SPS see your mod work normally. Self-contained, with no conflicts against other mods of the same vehicle.

See the setup guides listed in the documentation map below.

Video guides

Watch the whole process end to end before (or instead of) reading:

• Setting up a vacuum tanker — fill arm, couplers, pressure model, nodeTree: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JKplzkCDS4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd8IPuBHPrs
• Setting up a placeable store — fill plane, couplers, surface detection: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4EO5RhY6Fk

Custom vehicle types

Your vehicle does not have to use a vanilla type name. A custom type declared in your modDesc works as long as it descends from one of the vanilla tanker or sprayer types:

<vehicleTypes>
    <type name="myTanker" parent="manureBarrel" className="Vehicle"
          filename="$dataS/scripts/vehicles/Vehicle.lua">
        <specialization name="waterTrailer"/>
    </type>
</vehicleTypes>

SPS walks the parent chain, so any descendant of manureBarrel, manureTrailer, selfPropelledManureBarrel, sprayer or selfPropelledSprayer — at any depth — receives the full SPS behaviour. (Added in 1.0.1.4; earlier versions required the exact vanilla type names.)

Even a type that descends from none of these still works (1.0.1.5+): a vehicle carrying an embedded <slurryPipeSystem> block receives the tanker behaviour per-vehicle when it registers, whatever its type — the block in your XML is the authority. Descending from the matching vanilla family is still recommended (it is what the type means in vanilla, and other slurry-aware mods may key on it too).

Bundled / manifest (SPS-internal — not for third-party modders)

How SPS ships support for its own stock fleet: files inside the SPS folder plus a spsConfigManifest.xml entry, matched by config path. This requires modifying the SPS mod and is not a supported way to add your own content — use the embedded path instead.

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File layout

FS25_SlurryPipeSystem/
├── modDesc.xml
├── SPS_README_01_Tanker_and_Spreader.md        ← tanker / dribble-bar setup (embedded)
├── SPS_README_02_Fert_Sprayer.md               ← sprayer setup (embedded)
├── SPS_README_03_Placeables.md                 ← store / pit / source-tank setup (embedded)
├── SPS_README_04_Map_Water.md                  ← map water sources (embedded, map i3d)
├── SlurryPipeSystem_SlurryGuide.md             ← player guide: thickness, crust, mixing, blockages
├── RELEASE_NOTES_V1.0.1.6.md                   ← changes in this release
├── RELEASE_NOTES_V*.md                         ← previous releases
│
├── configs/
│   ├── spsConfigManifest.xml                   ← bundled (SPS-internal) fleet list
│   ├── couplerAnimations.xml                   ← coupler animation library (shared)
│   ├── spsColors.xml                           ← pipe colour palette
│   ├── data/                                   ← stock fleet bundled configs
│   │   ├── vehicles/<vendor>/<model>/{fillPoints.xml, nodeTree.i3d}
│   │   └── placeables/<vendor>/<model>/{fillPoints.xml, nodeTree.i3d}
│   └── mods/                                   ← third-party fleet bundled configs (internal)
│       └── <FS25_ModFolderName>/...
│
├── water/                                      ← optional external water nodes (SPS-internal)
│   ├── spsWaterManifest.xml
│   └── <mapFolder>/SPS_waterNodes.i3d
│
├── i3d/                                        ← SPS visual assets
│   ├── pipes/slurryPipe.i3d                    ← slurry pipe mesh and rig
│   ├── pipes/sprayerPipe.i3d                   ← sprayer pipe mesh
│   ├── nodes/spsPivot.i3d                      ← chain pivot helper
│   └── dockingStation/dockingStation.i3d       ← docking station building
│
└── scripts/                                    ← Lua source
    ├── init.lua                                ← entry point (loaded last)
    ├── debug/
    │   └── SPSDebugConfig.lua / SlurryDebug.lua ← channel-gated debug registry + markers
    ├── manager/
    │   ├── SlurryPipeManager.lua               ← singleton manager (core)
    │   └── SPSM_Chains / SPSM_Couplers / SPSM_Flow / SPSM_Pressure /
    │       SPSM_Consistency / SPSM_Stores / SPSM_Spreader / SPSM_Sprayers /
    │       SPSM_FrontMount / SPSM_IBC .lua
    │                                           ← domain modules of the manager
    ├── events/
    │   └── SPSEvents.lua                       ← network events
    ├── chains/
    │   └── SPSPipeChain.lua / SPSChainActivatable.lua
    ├── couplers/
    │   ├── SPSPipeVisual.lua / SPSPipeActivatable.lua / SPSCouplerAnimator.lua
    │   └── SPSPumpControlActivatable.lua / SPSOutsideControlActivatable.lua
    ├── blockage/
    │   └── SPSBlockageActivatable.lua / SPSBlockageEvent.lua
    ├── shearBolt/
    │   └── SPSShearBolt.lua / SPSShearBoltActivatable.lua / SPSShearBoltEvent.lua
    ├── agitators/
    │   ├── SlurryAgitatorEvent.lua
    │   └── SPSFixedAgitator / SPSFixedAgitatorShaft / SPSFixedAgitatorActivatable /
    │       SPSFixedAgitatorEvent .lua          ← fixed PTO agitator placeable system
    ├── separator/
    │   └── SPSSeparator.lua / SPSSeparatorActivatable.lua / SPSSeparatorEvent.lua
    ├── buyStation/
    │   └── SPSBuyStationActivatable.lua / SPSBuyStationEvent.lua
    ├── hud/
    │   └── SPSSpreaderHUD.lua                  ← (+ SPSConduitHUDExtension.lua, source()'d)
    ├── herbFertSprayer/                        ← fertiliser / herbicide sprayer support
    │   ├── SPSSprayerPumpControl.lua / SPSSprayerEvents.lua
    │   └── SPSSprayerPipeVisual.lua / SPSSprayerPipeActivatable.lua
    ├── water/
    │   └── SPSWaterPlaneManager.lua            ← map water detection
    ├── util/
    │   └── SlurryNodeUtil.lua / SlurryTractorCapability.lua / SPSCrustVegetation.lua
    ├── settings/
    │   └── SPSSettingsMenuExtension.lua        ← in-game settings page (source()'d late)
    └── overrides/
        ├── ManureBarrelOverride.lua / PlaceableOverride.lua
        └── SPSSlurryTankExtensions.lua / SPSChainBondPersistence.lua

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Documentation map

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Key concepts

Embedded blocks are detected first

<slurryPipeSystem> / <sprayerPipeSystem> inside a vehicle or placeable XML are detected before any manifest lookup. The manifest is only consulted when no embedded block is present. A third-party retexture of a vehicle can ship its own embedded block and get SPS integration without affecting other instances of the same base vehicle, and without touching SPS.

Coupler animations come from the shared library — or your own

Coupler clamp and valve animations are defined in the SPS-bundled configs/couplerAnimations.xml. A coupling references an animation by integer id (connectorAnimation / valveAnimation), and SPS resolves that animation's named part nodes under the coupling's mount node and drives them. To use a shipped animation you name your clamp/valve sub-objects to match the part names that id expects (the file lists them).

You can also define your own animations without touching SPS: put a <couplerAnimations> block inside your embedded <slurryPipeSystem> / <sprayerPipeSystem>, using the same format as the shipped file. Config-local ids are checked before the shared library, so a local id overrides a shipped one of the same number. See the placeable guide §7 for the block format.

Path-based manifest matching (internal)

For the bundled fleet, each manifest entry has a path that must match the tail of the runtime configFileName Giants reports (stock = data/vehicles/..., mods = mods/<FS25_ModFolderName>/...). Case-insensitive but otherwise exact — no fuzzy matching. The bundled fillPoints.xml location is auto-derived from the path (drop the filename, prepend configs/, append fillPoints.xml), overridable with a configFolder attribute.

Multi-fill-type pipes

Coupling-to-coupling transfers and discharge effects use whatever fill type is present in the source. A nurse tanker carrying digestate piped to a digestate-accepting store works exactly like the liquidmanure equivalent.

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Compatibility

• Manual Attach — load-order-safe; SPS detects FS25_manualAttach and routes pipe-related connection-hose checks through its API when present.
• Soil & Fertilizer (TheCodingDad, FS25_SoilFertilizer) — all twelve S&F custom liquid IBC tanks are recognised: SPS spawns the matching branded IBC for a connected sprayer's fill type, with correct labelling and pipe connections. No S&F files are touched.
• Buyable Manure And Other (BartsoNv3, FS25_BuyableManureAndOther) — the liquid manure buying station registers as a paid, infinite SPS pipe source, with a walk-up switch between its sold liquids. Purchases charge through the station's own pricing.
• Base-game silo extensions — the vanilla Liquid Manure Tank Extensions (small and large) link to their base tank normally; SPS's anti-pooling filter recognises them as capacity extensions. Standalone tanks still keep separate fill levels.
• Missions & contracts — mission/contract vehicles are never captured by SPS, so leased contract sprayers and tankers fill through vanilla triggers and contracts complete normally, on dedicated servers included.
• Real autosave — SPS save data is preserved across autosaves.
• Multiplayer — server-authoritative state; valve toggles, connections, pressure, pump and shear-bolt state all sync via dedicated events.

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Credits

Oscar Mods — design, code, art.

Contributions, bug reports, and modder-side embedded integrations welcome.