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No

36 (54.5%)

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Total Members Voted: 66

[fluffhead]

in a single player game, cheating only cheats yourself of the experience.  since you are only changing the game/cheating/whatever to you yourself, the only person you have to answer to is yourself.  so if it doesn't bother you, do.  The fact you came here and posted this though, tells me that you maybe have a feeling you shouldn't be doing it.  Again, if you don't mind doing this to get a better deal, then no biggy.  Fuck everyone else, they can run their own fortresses.

[melphel]

cheat
transitive verb
1. to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud
2. to influence or lead by deceit, trick, or artifice
3. to elude or thwart by or as if by outwitting <cheat death>
intransitive verb
1. to practice fraud or trickery; to violate rules dishonestly <cheat at cards> <cheating on a test>

Dwarf Fortress is a game focused on freeform creative play, there are no rules (arguably, no intended mechanics) but those which the player imposes on him/herself, and the only thing to be devalued is the player's personal experience of playing the game.  You cannot defraud or deceive anyone in this sense, maybe with the exception of bragging to someone of your game accomplishments under false pretense (in which case I would count that as plain old lying, rather than cheating at the game).  You can cheat at this game no more than you could cheat at Legos.

In a broader sense, the intended rules and mechanics as given by the creator/designer are not necessarily the rules and mechanics one must abide by.  The rules of monopoly include no clause of putting money under the free parking space, yet many players do this, but this is not cheating in that the players are still following their own rules and are not deceiving one another.

You can break your own rules, that would be cheating.   Since this is a single player game, it ethically involves no one but yourself.

[Rose]

there are no rules

um... yeah there are.

let's take a game from a similar genre: sim city.

it's a single player game, but you can cheat and give yourself infinite money. Is there anything wrong with this? not really. is it cheating? yes, certainly.

[King DZA]

OK people, we've had like two pages of people saying the same thing, just give the guy a definite answer.

Yes, it's cheating. You manipulated time in order to gain an advantage at the game, going back in time to fix something that goes wrong is not an intended feature. Lots of people have done it(me included), but it's cheating.
Of course, whether or not you should give a damn is entirely up to you.

Oh, and you can totally cheat at Legos. I remember having my mom build my bionicles for me because I really wanted to play with them, but they seemed way too complicated to put together.

[Necro910]

Oh, and you can totally cheat at Legos. I remember having my mom build my bionicles for me because I really wanted to play with them, but they seemed way too complicated to put together.

I used put bricks together in a certain way diagonally, so that when it gets knocked over, it'll explode 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

EDIT: I also made atlatls. Warmonger toddler ftw 

[tmrt]

Apart from this discussion, OP needs to learn how to use dwarf therapist/burrows to make his broker do the stuff he want him to do.

Except that under a lot of definitions Dwarf Therapist would be considered cheating....

Since Dwarf Therapist does not allow user to gain an unfair or unintended advantage it would be fairly stupid to label it a cheat, for its only purpose is to streamline the game's interface and make a player spend more time actually playing the game instead of scrolling through the unit list.

[melphel]

I never said you couldn't cheat at legos.  I said that cheating at DF is analogous to cheating at legos.

Cheating to give yourself infinite money in simcity is corrupting the intended rules of the game.  That isn't to say that a player couldn't have devised his own rules in which using infinite money to achieve his goal was irrelevant.  DF is less structured though, you can't say that players have to create wealth to build a successful fort and defeat enemies.  Toady might have intended it that way, but by no means do all players have to do it that way.

[King DZA]

I never said you couldn't cheat at legos.  I said that cheating at DF is analogous to cheating at legos.

I was just clarifying that it is, in fact, very much possible to cheat at Legos.

[Tevish Szat]

There is, in my mind, a difference between cheating and cheating meaningfully.  Is cheating possible in dwarf fortress?  I think it must be, as anything that subverts the RAI (Rules as Intended) can be considered a form of cheating.  Is it possible to cheat MEANINGFULLY?  This I doubt.  There is no way to win dwarf fortress, the fun is only in experiencing what happens as the game continues, and barring community forts, of course, the only thing you can do is alter your own experience for better or for worse.  It is "cheating" to do so in means external to the game, such as save-scumming (what's described in the OP) or in my opinion use of dfhack in most cases, but it is not meaningful to call it cheating any more than it's meaningful to claim cheating for genning a world with "Demon types: 0" or 1 civ forcing playables, parameters that are valid and provided as options by the game itself and in my opinion more of a "cheap" way to make the game easier than tactical use of control-alt-delete, which is technically cheating when "Demon types 0, civs 1, require playable" is technically not.

So the only question you should ask yourself: What leads to the most fun?

[proxn_punkd]

Yes, it's cheating. Do we care? Probably not.

I modded aquifers out of my games, I take on firebreathing FBs only with DF Liquids handy so I can spam water on them, I added half a dozen new plants for dorfs to grow and get fat on, I exploit danger rooms and quantum dumps and cages, and I treasure and cherish every one of my dwarves, elves, and kittens. You savescummed to get your broker to do his damn job? Nice work.

This isn't a competition, it's Dwarf Fortress. It shouldn't matter how you play or lose, as long as you have fun in the end.

[Ifeno]

i personally think it's only cheating if the outcome is major.  Using it to fix inconveniences and other petty things is fine...

[Makbeth]

With respect to Toady, who says as much anyway, this is an alpha with broke-ass AI, broke-ass mechanics, and a broke-ass UI.  It's so broken that we have external programs for reading/writing the game's memory on-the-fly just to, among other things, make job management something other than a nightmare for a mature fort.  A significant number of the DFhack tools are there to provide workarounds for bugs that have existed for years.

With a game in such a state, very little counts as cheating.  For example, DFautodump is one of the DFhack utilities I use most often, because the hauling system is completely broken.  I've unloaded expedition supply vehicles in real life before, and whether you have 10 or 30 people, the process takes about an hour, tops, even if you have to carry said supplies nearly a mile.  In DF, unloading the wagon for 7 dwarves can take the better part of a month.  Screw that.  If a bunch of stuff needs to be moved somewhere in a timely fashion, it's getting autodumped.  It's the only sane way to deal with item hauling in most cases.

[Aachen]

If you are playing the game to get repute from [some group], and it is tacitly or overtly expected that one does not save scum, then to do so would be cheating. If you are playing for your own pleasure or otherwise don't bloody lie about "OMG I am sooooooo AWRSuM at dis gam, I NVR mess it AWP" I can't see how anyone will fairly fault you.

What I mean is, don't savescum then come around saying you Ascended unspoilered with a pacifist CoC. If you dig.

[Rose]

I think there's two unrelated arguments going on here.

one group is saying that X is cheating.

the other is saying that X is okay.

these two statements don't conflict.

[AzuredreamsXT]

Thanks to all who voted, though i didn't intend for the philosophical discourse to reach this level.

In games i take seriously, i can't cheat, i just can't. If i do, i derive zero pleasure from ANYTHING i achieve, it feels tainted. Usually i am very sure of what is cheating and what isn't, this is one of the instances where i wasn't. The broker had zero labors enabled, and was only in the noble position of broker, so i figured his wandering off and fucking around instead of heeding the trader requested at the easily accessible depot order was some sort of a.i glitch. I wished to confirm this with the community and get their thoughts, since i was indecisive myself. The forum vets here have been great helping me along, so i figured i'd have them render the verdict. If the total votes of "yes" were higher than either of the other two options, i would have abandoned the fort.

But yea, cheers guys and thanks again