My current approach to fluid management is probably overkill, but I had a lot of rough experiences when starting out that completely killed a playthrough or two in the oil stage, so I’m kind of scarred.

Valves are deceptive with their throughput limitation and are the reason for one of my playthrough cancellations. In my experience, fluid buildings in satisfactory will very rarely get fluid at a constant rate, the rate will surge and drop as fluid “sloshes” around in the pipes. As such, limiting a factory to only get the fluid/min required will usually result in a starved machine (instead of filling up instantly during the surges, it only gets the limited amount- then the rate drops below the amount during the the low flow points). This makes it not the most intuitive experience to use valves where one might think they’re most useful (right before a machine).

I instead use valves to ensure fluid doesn’t flow backwards in my pipes (I also feed from underground, with a single MK2 pump at the beginning of the pipe and valves on all the outputs), and temporarily if I’ve got a huge line of refineries that I want to get running at max efficiency before the pipes have finished filling up.

My refineries are set up in rows of 6 (two 3-refinery blueprints that sit next to each other), each with a small buffer in the middle that is directly connected to the underground pipe. The buffer is really only used during initial startup to ensure there is enough oil for the full system, but it’s peace of mind that if I ever somehow wind up with a total power grid failure it isn’t gonna take half an hour for everything to fill back up.