Is using other people’s blueprints cheating?

[Redpossum]

I bought the game, I paid for it, I am entitled to play it any way I like.
And the devs not only gave us BPs, they gave us the ability to export and import them. So any suggestion that using BPs is somehow cheating, I reject emphatically.

What happened to me is this-
I did it all on my own until I reached a plateau. I had advanced oil, a tank, railroads than ran well, and a secure base that could hold off the biters, but I was spending 100% of my time running around "putting out fires". And that stopped being fun. I was no longer progressing.

So I spent a few days watching the videos of Nilaus and Katherine of Sky, and I learned what I was doing wrong. For starts, I was working on much too small a scale, in much too small an area. So I geared up and went out to wafflestomp all the nearby biter bases, then I expanded the walls of my base by about 50%, and built new defenses. Then I tore down most of my existing base and rebuilt with some use of BP's from KoS, partly because it's been much faster than rebuilding by hand, and partly because her designs are bully for efficient. I did not use any BP containing anything which I didn't understand.

I'm still in the middle of that process, but it's fun again, and that's the bottom line for me.

[jodokus31]

Why cheating in a sandbox game? You have to make sure, you don't cheat yourself. And if you get triggered by the question, you might be in danger

In multiplayer, it's probably a bit boring, if everybody spams blueprints?

[VinaLx]

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, which I respect.
But I strongly disagree on the opinions that blueprinting "breaks the spirit of the game". Factorio is a game about engineering, and "blueprinting" (using the existing solution to a specific subproblem to solve a bigger problem) is a common practice in real life, such as in programming (using libraries implemented by others to write your own programs) or in academia (using others' proof to prove your own result). Are they "cheating" in any sense, if you completely copy others' work as the your own accomplishment (plagiarism), yes, but for most of the cases, no.
So I would argue that not only blueprinting does not break the spirit of the game, it is (at least one of) the spirit of the game, if you consider it a game about engineering. I understand and respect people who does not enjoy this particular aspect of the game (like I respect people who implement everything from scratch in programming), but not admitting it's an important part of the game is simply wrong.

[Redpossum]

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, which I respect.
But I strongly disagree on the opinions that blueprinting "breaks the spirit of the game". Factorio is a game about engineering, and "blueprinting" (using the existing solution to a specific subproblem to solve a bigger problem) is a common practice in real life, such as in programming (using libraries implemented by others to write your own programs) or in academia (using others' proof to prove your own result). Are they "cheating" in any sense, if you completely copy others' work as the your own accomplishment (plagiarism), yes, but for most of the cases, no.
So I would argue that not only blueprinting does not break the spirit of the game, it is (at least one of) the spirit of the game, if you consider it a game about engineering. I understand and respect people who does not enjoy this particular aspect of the game (like I respect people who implement everything from scratch in programming), but not admitting it's an important part of the game is simply wrong.

Very well said, thank you!

[ptx0]

Bit of a necropost but I haven't seen this very well discussed before

then i guess you haven't searched.

i wish this topic would just die already.