Your ONI morals

[Cypher-7]

I was wondering what mechanics in the game you guys won't use because they seem like cheating?

I was recently reading a post and someone described using the p-trap style air locks as "cheating" because it wouldn't work in real life.

All arguments aside on that topic, it got me thinking about things in the game I won't use because they seem cheap or against the rules and seem to violate some sort of personal morals when playing a video game... as silly as it sounds.

Things I personally don't use are along the lines of what seem to me like exploits or bugs ie. drip cooling, borg cube, ph2o duplication ect. or things that seem like they will be fixed or changed once this game is complete, like power free mechanical doors that can be automated into compressors or gas destroyers.

I know some people draw a hard line even at debug mode. So what play styles do you avoid because the guild of it would keep you up at night? 

[Kabrute]

 pwater converting water is a mechanic
Water locks work in real life if pressure covariants are maintained so using it as gas separator is normal but the vacuum between ones, for me, are exploity even though each part is mechanic
even though door compressors are super exploity in a number of ways they are also glitchy and come with costs and so kinda balanced.  I'm on the fence with these, under power I would say purely mechanic, until then exploit
borg cube is an exploit of hard coded feature of optimization, no way around it unless they change that line of code to check cell by cell instead which would result in some rather heavy calculation increases

That being said, cheat carrots eat hydrogen now so borg cube needs power to function and thus is, in my opinion, fair trade replacement.

Debug mode is cheating pure and simple, you have to add extra files to the game up front, huge red flag, beyond that its god level powers mean it is cheating in every way shape form and fashion, that being said, for quick showings, proof of concept, or acklowldged that yes I had to cheat but I got it working right after that or kept cheating or w/e the case may be, I prefer honesty and transparency above all else.
 

Much of what works in real life has no impact on the game at all so comparing the two becomes mind numbing painful after a time, and hearing hardcoded mechanics called exploits justs gets frustrating.because you just know they haven't looked at the code and said dang, bug report time

[ImpactedTooth]

I won't use debug. I killed minecraft for myself by using the too many items mod and I don't want to do that to this game. I also won't purposefully terminate dupes. Except that one time.

[Cypher-7]

I should clarify about debug mode. I never would use it in a game I was playing from start till death. But I will make brand new maps and then mess around with it to try different builds or ideas. As an out side tool or map editor style I think it’s great, but to switch it on halfway through a colony because you need something is straight up cheating. IMO 

[Amara313]

I use debug mode to try out new ideas - just to see if they are at all feasible.  But I don't use for normal games.  And I won't purposefully make a dupe suffer or die.  

[Steelflame]

Borgs and gas deletion via doors are the big no nos for me.   Like if it happens by accident oh well, but I will never intentionally attempt to make either case.

 

Other than that, I try to avoid meta-gaming situations, such as abusing the fact that dupes can be infinite water gens if you just keep it to criers/vomiters and let them cry/vomit all they want.

 

Door compressors are considered cheaty to me, but mostly because it is abusing the fact that doors are indestructable.   They really should be patched to have durability and eventually break under enough stress, and not be effectively Neutronium.

[The Arcanian]

Debug Mode feels like Creative Mode in Minecraft, something you do on a different save to test something out. I have not come across a need to use it yet so I have not even looked into how to.

But on things that I do not do. One is that I don't use dupe stress responses. I have seen people suggest some of them as ways to farm liquids, but that is mean...
I also try to avoid anything related to bad mass density relations, AKA pressure, like vents in liquid to overpressurize or water locks between large pressure differentials (not that I have really used water locks at all yet).
Another thing I avoid is bad energy-mass relations, like the drip bug. Unfortunately, fixed temp outputs on machines are a nearly unavoidable evil to survive at this time, but I would sign a petition to have it fixed.

[NanoD]

My ONI morals. If I can break the game then it is a challenge for me. 

I will use any exploit if it will make my game play more fun.

[Nativel]

2 hours ago, Cypher-7 said:

I was wondering what mechanics in the game you guys won't use because they seem like cheating?

I was recently reading a post and someone described using the p-trap style air locks as "cheating" because it wouldn't work in real life.

All arguments aside on that topic, it got me thinking about things in the game I won't use because they seem cheap or against the rules and seem to violate some sort of personal morals when playing a video game... as silly as it sounds.

Things I personally don't use are along the lines of what seem to me like exploits or bugs ie. drip cooling, borg cube, ph2o duplication ect. or things that seem like they will be fixed or changed once this game is complete, like power free mechanical doors that can be automated into compressors or gas destroyers.

I know some people draw a hard line even at debug mode. So what play styles do you avoid because the guild of it would keep you up at night? 

All simple, all automatics shouldn't work on unpowered buildings, and automatics should leach power from building that alredy have power, like 1-5 watts, for each automatic sensor/gate untill they realise it we have this exploit. And actually air locks shouldn even work open/close when it unpowered, if there is no power on it. so no pass by, don't care about if some one stuck on the other side w/o oxygen, cose for now you don't need to power it up, and it work any way. And at the same time manual airlocks became usless door in the game, we have it but no one use it.

[Arash70]

Well here's my morals:

1-never use debug mode (I believe what you do in debug mode is not necessarily doable in a normal game)

2-reset the game once a dupe is dead

3-reset the game once you realize all the dupes are going to die

I mean honestly, debug moding the game takes all the fun off of it, it's a game not a simulation tool.

[lunazone]

I feel like people can have fun in debug mode

[Exa]

4 hours ago, ImpactedTooth said:

Except that one time.

*Taking off my glasses* Maybe you want to speak about that

[Saturnus]

I have three rules I when I play.

1) I don't use debug in survival games. No, not even alt-Q'ing that pesky hatch to another location. If it causes problems or is just too much bother to move then I just kill it.

2) I do not use wheezeworts. I think they are cheating. Plants that remove heat through no apparent mechanics and requires nothing to grow is just too much cheating in my mind.

3) I do not use modified equipment or sensors in my survival games. I can play around with it in debug mode to see if there is a way to do it in survival mode.

That is it. Anything that is in the game as is (except wheezeworts) is fair unless it is an extremely obvious bug, like the gold factory.

I will say this though. People who think they are not using the heat bug or drip cooling in some way, think again, you are, you just don't know it. It would be extremely difficult to completely eliminate the heat bug/drip cooling effect in a survival game. In debug mode you can avoid it but I'm pretty confident you can't in a survival game.

[clickrush]

Debug mode

I keep seperate save files for debug worlds and non-debug worlds. However I will totally fire up debug mode, when I'am trying to figure something out that I don't understand in a normal world, while I'am too lazy to completely reproduce the situation in a debug world.

Exploits

I play with every known exploit at least once. Some exploits, like the now fixed heating natural gas refinery actually make the game much more interesting, because it is more complex to build and optimize, than most other stuff you can build in the game. In other cases I always try them out, just to see how they work and wether they make the game better or worse. Exploits often tell me something about the game mechanics.

Other

I almost never keep a base for very long. Usually my playthroughs go up to <200ish days and then stop. Most of the time I set my own challenge/restriction per playthrough. For example: this time I will accept X duplicants, this time I want to produce Y only in a certain way, this time I want to get a fully sustainable base in Z days etc. In most cases I stop either when I solved all the sustainability problems and reached all the tech there is or when I just don't like my base layout anymore.

[Lutzkhie]

1 hour ago, Saturnus said:

then I just kill it.

like a boss

[Seeker89]

I'm the worse... 

I cheat all the time. need a few more  wheezeworts done. Research done, who wants to bother with that anyways.... though if I'm trying to figure something out and see if something will work, I'll save the game, cheat it then then reload the save. 

[Ketmol]

De-bug and loading an old save are off limits for me.

I save and load to continue the game when I take break from playing. But I don't load a save just because I f****d up. I deal with the consequences.

Apart from that I do create artificial obstacles like trying to reach self sustainable or not use one thing or another but that varies from play-through to play-through. That is pretty much because the game pre occupational upgrade was a bit to easy. 

I know for a fact stress is a more relevant factor now so I guess I will see as I play what restrictions I will put on myself this play-through. However I always think it is neat to try to end with something sustainable  as an end game goal.

[FIXBUGFIXBUGFIX]

If I found some exploits or strange behavior, I would report them in bug tracker at first time. If devs then registered them as known issue, I would not use them in my normal game intentionally. But it doesn't mean I won't share these exploits with others, especially some old known issues which have survived from several big upgrades.

[The Arcanian]

10 hours ago, Saturnus said:

I will say this though. People who think they are not using the heat bug or drip cooling in some way, think again, you are, you just don't know it. It would be extremely difficult to completely eliminate the heat bug/drip cooling effect in a survival game. In debug mode you can avoid it but I'm pretty confident you can't in a survival game.

1

I think a distinction should be made between using an exploit and abusing it.

One can make a system that would work without the exploit, but the presence of the exploit changes the system's effectiveness, or one can make a system that would not work without the exploit. One is where the exploit just happens to be there, and the other is where it is intently used.

I think not abusing exploits is more in line with most people's intent when they say they do not use them.

[Mariilyn]

I'm indifferent to the moderate use of debug mode or exploits in a normal single player game (unless when starting a base with the specific intention to do a challenge), especially if some part of the game are unfinished.

For example, I did copied myseft a puft or a shinebug that had mysteriously disappeared (still moved them around the tedious way), twice or thrice in 250+ hours of gameplay.  Im not bothered by this since we dont have legitimate ways to make them reproduce yet and wanted to avoid a puff-less map.

I'm also considering using debug for landscaping purposes (i wish we could place back natural tiles!) but dont want to begin to use it systematically.

Otherwise I build and try everything in survival mode and dont usually intentionally use exploits, but I won't harm or deprive the duplicants in order to farm them.

[Kabrute]

In debug mode, If you pause, build, then deconstruct then unpause it will spawn a natural tile of the material you requested, for aesthetic purposes, has been reported in bug report

[Parusoid]

I dont use bugs (like drip cooling):  first beacuse they will be fixed rendering setups based on them useless, second their setups are complicated, third it feels like abusing the mistake made by devs.

But i dont mind teleporting shine bugs into my bristle farm, or pufts into slime farm - the explanation behind that is I would eventually lure them to the desired location after using lure or complicated wall maze, but why make effort when i can just teleport them in and save a lot of time.

And dead dupe means my failure. I never let any dupe die, and when it does i load a previous save.

[Xarian]

I draw the line at physics exploits, like heat/gas deletion. I will continue to use wheezeworts until Klei puts in another method of infinite cooling - just as geysers produce infinite heat.

[TheScaryOne]

I try to avoid abusing exploits, but I'm probably going to debug out my second natural gas geyser on this map and debug in a chlorine geyser in it's place.

[g5457s]

In my legit colonies, I always play on Fatalistic/Miserable, because when I first bought the game, I was insane enough to go for it on my first colony, which eventually survived to cycle 2000. Debug mode is not allowed at all times. Borg Cube and other exploits are not allowed and I try my best to avoid unintentional exploits. I avoid using the gas cooler thing and aquatuner thing. I don't like them because they use too much power and I'm lazy to build them. Instead, I rely on use of materials to shift the temperature around. Most of the time I relocate my colony away from the center once it gets too hot, and it is always successful so far. When a dupe dies, I reload an older save because I don't like seeing them die. My current victory/winning condition is to have all 35 unique dupes in the colony, then AFK and leave the colony for 3 hours at speed 3. If the colony's still in tip-top shape, I win.

When I use debug mode though, for the most part I don't use it to test stuff and builds. That happens in my legit colonies. I use it mainly to create challenge maps, push the game to its limits and build torture chambers. I push the game to the limits usually by destroying an entire asteroid then calling in 1,000+ dupes and killing them, then watch the game's RAM use skyrocket to 12GB or greater, then wait for it to crash, because for some weird reason, ONI crashing makes me laugh XD. For torture chambers, there must be dupes of a certain stress type that populate it. My favorite is a torture chamber full of ugly criers, because I love ugly criers and the most interesting things happen there compared to a vomiter, destructive or binge eater (nope nope) torture chamber.

XD