Is using other people’s blueprints cheating?

[blazespinnaker]

Using other people's blueprints is a bit like googling the wordle of the day.

A great thing about the mods is that it's an opportunity to do an unspoiled version of Factorio. If you peaked at blueprints for the vanilla version, don't worry, there are still the mods which generate whole new puzzles of building factories.

[shopt]

It's nuanced.

tl;dr cheating doesn't really make sense in Factorio, almost everyone wins even their first game. I would replace "cheating" with "interesting". You can use blueprints to ruin fun, but they don't inherently do so.

Single player: Do what you want. Install a mod with an "I win" button. Load someone's savegame and press launch rocket. Download a "base in a book" and play "color by number". Turn factorio into a blueprint-stamping "idle game". Whatever is fun for you. I find these all boring, but you do you. Or you can go to the other extreme and never look at anyone else's bases/screenshots/blueprints ever. I've settled on importing balancer blueprints (not a puzzle I care to spend time on), and a spidertron "stepping stone" blueprint (would have been simple but tedious to create). I will look at other bases for ideas, but not import blueprints. Others may find fun in designing production but want to abstract away their rail network and power by using others' blueprints for those. Or vice versa, they really want to be playing OpenTTD but in Factorio.

Multiplayer: Well ultimately it comes down to what the players on that server are happy with. I find the fun here to be in collaboration, and if someone drops a base in a book, or regurgitates an existing base, it kills the fun for me. I think the main exception for me is a mall blueprint. Setting up a comprehensive mall from scratch can take a while and leave lots of bored players waiting around hand crafting stuff. Or you could set up a "bootstrap" belts/inserters/assembler/power-pole mini-mall while the real mall gets designed.

Reusing your own blueprints in new games: Yes if you do everything the same as your last game, then why did you start a new game? However that doesn't mean you want everything different either. If you only want to change how you do rails, then no reason to throw out your perfectly fine science blueprints and reinvent them to come up with pretty much the same thing again.

[mmmPI]

One problem is multiplaying but isn't there servers with different rule sets? Is it possible to ban imported blueprints if server's owner wants to restrict it?

I'm far from knowing everything that is possible but when you host your own game it's easy to tell people not to use their own blueprint, or kick them if they do

And there are many modded games, or scenario that are publicly available in which the feeling is similar to what existed before blueprints in some way, where people are trying to figure out how to organise things, that's how i would personnaly describe the process of making blueprints, they can do it "live" instead of on their own and sharing their results afterwards. ( that hasn't disappeared but it's no longer the norm ). Learning how to cooperate is part of the multiplayer gameplay i think.

The collaborative dimension added in multiplayer server or in this forum where people share their blueprint is part of the big positive that the blueprint system added to the game imo. It's particularly visible on the UPS optimisation where it's not as much as personnal preference but rather measured perfomance that drive the design philosophy. The "competition/emulation" it creates yield collective intelligence.

The process of making the blueprint is fun It's not something that existed before, even though some players were already trying to refine a particular build and improve on it and were taking screenshot, it was made easier.

I still feel awkward when i join a server and the first thing i'm asked is if i have a blueprint for blue science, i have like 20 of them from different period and players and purposes yet when the question is asked i would either propose my help to figure out how to make blue science without using blueprint, proposing to debug the exisiting facilities or encourage the starting of one or leave the server, after all it's all parralel universe where everyone is free .

[ozgevid]

It mostly depends on how you enjoy the game. Some considers factorio a puzzle game where you work on individual little problems so they detest blueprinting

[FuryoftheStars]

Well, it kind of is a puzzle game. And I really love working on some of the puzzles myself. However, there are some that are way too complex for me and I’d rather enjoy the other parts of the game than spending weeks, months even, pulling my hair out on the same problem (ex: large scale balancers, complex combinator setups). Then there are times where I’ve already solved the puzzle, but then I see someone else’s solution that I think is better.

[eBagger]

Yeah screw that play through it a few times figuring shit out on your accord. I'm not to bright, I take forever and fumble through crap, but I'd feel like garbage if I was just laying out pre-made designs made by people who have 1,000's of hours invested in the game for me to just craft and place down. Seems like slightly more complicated point-and-click coloring.

[Danjen]

I often play marathon games with Angelbob's and Factorissimo, so it can take dozens of hours before I get green science automated. Because of that, I spend a lot of time with low-end stuff that I can't use luxury things on, like long-distance tunnels or medium power poles, etc., so I have to really think about how things are laid out and how they'll scale up

[ptx0]

i don't use others blueprints other than nuclear power because i find that to be more annoying than fun, however. all the anti-blueprints folks in here definitely make me want to make a whole base out of only others' blueprints. just because.

why focus on others' experience so much?

[Koub]

why focus on others' experience so much?

I'd even say : why consider others' opinions about one's own playstyle?
I think using others' blueprints is cheating. Why would you care about my opinion when you play ? You don't play to please me, but to enjoy yourself (hopefully).

I'm asked my opinion, happy to give it. Anybody feel free not to give a fuck about my opinion.

[ptx0]

why focus on others' experience so much?

I'd even say : why consider others' opinions about one's own playstyle?
I think using others' blueprints is cheating. Why would you care about my opinion when you play ? You don't play to please me, but to enjoy yourself (hopefully).

I'm asked my opinion, happy to give it. Anybody feel free not to give a fuck about my opinion.

why ask any questions at all then? I wasn't asking you, I was asking the person who insists on finding out whether other people agree with them. this topic wasn't put up to change minds, it is a jab at people who play the game "wrong".

[mmmPI]

why ask any questions at all then? I wasn't asking you, I was asking the person who insists on finding out whether other people agree with them. this topic wasn't put up to change minds, it is a jab at people who play the game "wrong".

But is "wrong" if you enjoy it ? no matter what ridiculously counterproductive or self-inflicting tedious or spoiler you got yourself into

I wouldn't personnaly recommend using other people's blueprint before you try to make your own, but i've read some people like to reverse engineer some other people's blueprint before making their own. At this point it's a matter of personnal choice. If you consider it's tedious to learn it the hard way, or if you consider you spoiler yourself and won't learn as much i see no wrong.

is it cheating ? no-one unfairly loses anything. and what do you really gain is up to one individual to set how much it is valued i think. It's hard to tell if the information you get from others will spoil you the game before you actually have those information, play the game with those and only then potentially realize that it was too much you took from the others and it's not fun for you to just copy blueprints that are so good you can't make better ( and in the years of factorio existing, there are incredibly optimized blueprint).

I think that it's a risk that is worth noting, but i used for long time other people's nuclear blueprint before spending even more time designing my own to fit my particular need later on, i appreciated both, it's not that much of a risk also if you play with mods later that require rarer sets of blueprint depending on which mods are used.