History GameBreaker / Simulation

* In many ''HarvestMoon'' games (especially the Mineral Town based ones), growing Pineapples in a greenhouse or other indoor growing space. Pineapples take a long time to grow, so grown normally, there's only time for one harvest before the season changes. But in a greenhouse, you have time to let the plants resprout, and they do so VERY quickly (every 3-4 days, depending on the game). Since they ship for upwards of 1000g per pineapple, a field full of them can earn you millions in just a couple of months. You can pull a similar trick with fast-growing reharvestables like yams.

* Although not quite as {{egregious}} as examples in the sequels, the woodworking table in the original ''TheSims'' qualifies. Using this object, a Sim crafts a lawn gnome which can be sold for a tidy profit. A Sim with a perfect mechanical skill that starts the day in a good mood can make about twenty gnomes in a standard eight-hour day. Each gnome sells for $100 each, resulting in a $2,000 daily profit, which is significantly more than the highest-paying career (which leads to a bit of FridgeLogic when you realize that a gnome craftsman can make more money than a business tycoon or an A-list movie star). The best part? As opposed to the normal career paths, you can set your own hours, work as little or as much as you want, don't have to worry about raising other skills, and don't have to worry about making and maintaining friendships. The only downside is that working on the table is taxing on your sim's fun and energy levels. However, since you'll be able to afford all the best mood-raising items and equipment, this downside is easily mitigated.

* ''TheSims 2'' is rife with these, especially in its expansions.

** Generally speaking, the Sims, and the Sims 2, suffers from PowerCreep: with each successive expansion pack, Sims gain more and more advantages with fewer drawbacks. By the final expansion pack of the original Sims (Makin' Magic), the player could do literally anything within the game engine, including auto-promotions and free friends, without any effort. The Sims 2 tried to counter-balance the bonuses with penalties, particularly penalties that require either large amounts of recovery time (due to lowered stats) or large investments of time themselves (FreeTime expansion pack, for example). In short, The Sims games eventually deliver ''themselves'' into GameBreaker status, and that's not even including the undocumented Game Breakers that people are able to find. By the time the PowerCreep gets out of control, Maxis/EA simply reboots with the next game (Sims 3, in this case).

* TheSims 3 is [[{{Buffyspeak}} Gamebreakingness]] incarnate.

** And with keeping in with the whole Power Creep thing, the expansion pack for The Sims 3 has caused what is quite probably the most gratuitous GameBreaker in all of [[IncrediblyLamePun Simkind.]] You can Transmute metals in the game by using a Display Case, and tinkering with this can, if done right, bring untold riches. The only downside is that you need to create a Supernovium first (which seems to involve extensive fusion of Platinum), but once you do have that, you're in for something special. If you arrange 1x Supernovium + 8x Gold on the XL display case, with the Supernovium in the top left corner of the case with a gold bar stacked on top of it, and the rest of the gold put in the other 7 slots, it creates two bars: Compendium and Platinum. Once you have the Compendium bar, arrange it exactly as before, with it in the top left with a Gold Bar on top, the other Gold Bars in the other areas, You get...Another bar of compendium. However, it's value will have increased exponentially. By repeating this process, you can generate a super-dense, super heavy bar that can be worth up to ''2.1 Billion'' before it loops around and bottoms out at 0.

* In ''Main/HardWar'' you fly weird little plane/speeder crossbreeds called moths in a city carved in Titan's craters. The game comes with five relatively balanced choices, but a subsequent patch included the Swallow. It was by far the fastest moth in the game, so much so that it kept being faster than any other moth even when loaded with the heaviest, largest cargo pod available. It also had a strong hull, strong shields and was extremely maneuvrable. No other moth in the game could stand to it in a one-on-one fight and hope to win.

* In ''Hardwar'' you fly weird little plane/speeder crossbreeds called moths in a city carved in Titan's craters. The game comes with five relatively balanced choices, but a subsequent patch included the Swallow. It was by far the fastest moth in the game, so much so that it kept being faster than any other moth even when loaded with the heaviest, largest cargo pod available. It also had a strong hull, strong shields and was extremely maneuvrable. No other moth in the game could stand to it in a one-on-one fight and hope to win.

** Danger rooms, essentially closets with retracting wooden spears installed, can train a dwarf from zero skill to legendary weapon user, armor user, dodger, shield user, and fighter within a couple minutes of real-life time given that they're fully armored. Legendary weapon skill only takes around ten seconds.

** SpinOff series ''RuneFactory'' ''tries'' to avert this, both by swapping greenhouses for monster-filled dungeons and (in later editions) introducing a soil health mechanic (regrowing on the same soil over and over will eventually cause lower quality crops that take far longer to harvest). But since the dungeons are level capped, the monsters will rapidly cease to be an impediment. And the soil depletion (at least in RuneFactory3) has it's own game-breaking cure. You're told that hoeing Withered Grass on a plot of land will raise that plot's back to normal. What you're not told is that wilted crops have the same effect. So you can just plant rows of out-of-season crops, wait a day, then use your hoe to till them en masse (your fully charged hoe can till half a field - a 9x9 plot - in one strike), rather than one at a time. Combine this with the Formulas A, B, and C (which increases the speed at which the crops grow by 25, 33 or 50%, respectively) and soil management becomes a minor inconvenience at worst.

** SpinOff series ''RuneFactory'' ''tries'' to avert this, both by swapping greenhouses for monster-filled dungeons and (in later editions) introducing a soil health mechanic (regrowing on the same soil over and over will eventually cause lower quality crops that take far longer to harvest). But since the dungeons are level capped, the monsters will rapidly cease to be an impediment. And the soil depletion (at least in RuneFactory3) has it's own game-breaking cure. You're told that hoeing Withered Grass on a plot of land will raise that plot's back to normal. What you're not told is that wilted crops have the same effect. So you can just plain rows of out-of-season crops, wait a day, then use your hoe to till them en masse (your fully charged hoe can till half a field - a 9x9 plot - in one strike), rather than one at a time. Combine this with the Formulas A, B, and C (which increases the speed at which the crops grow by 25, 33 or 50%, respectively) and soil management becomes a minor inconvenience at worst.

** ''Appartment Life'' adds magic into the game by allowing sims to become witches/warlocks. Not only are some of their abilities/spells ridiculously overpowered (instant teleportation (though this was already available in Bon Voyage), timestop), but once they reach maximum skill and alignment they gain the ability to craft a throne for themselves. This special chair replenishes all their needs very much like the Energizer aspiration reward item, but unlike that can be used an unlimited number of times with no chance of failure (as long as the witch/warlock doesn't switch to the opposite alignment), completely negating the need for any other items or activities.

**** Perhaps most game breaking of all, you can also [[MindManipulation "ensorcel"]] any Sim on the lot, giving you control over him or her for 4 game hours. This can of course be extended by doing so repeatedly. Once a Sim is ensorcelled, you can access their inventory to take and sell their stuff. Since many visiting Sims [[Hammerspace keep their car in their inventory]], this can be especially game breaking.

* The Bala Gi patch for ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X3: Reunion]]'' introduced the M3+ and M7 class ships, respectively a fighter and capital ship that vastly outmaneuver and outgun all other ships of their type--and the M7 frigate even outflies many fighters. Arguably a necessary evil, as the normal ships are all holdouts from the original 1999 game and generally suck.
** That's not as bad as the [=M7M=] frigates from the next game, ''X3: Terran Conflict''. These are capital ships that use missiles as their primary weapon and have the special ability to launch missile barrages. The highest range of regular weapons is about 6.6km, the max range of the [=M7M=] missiles is over 40km. And there is nearly no missile defense in unmodified game...
** ''Terran Conflict's'' most blatant game breaker is the ATF Skirnir, a [[MacrossMissileMassacre missile frigate]] that, due to a typo in the data for the Shadow missile, could dish out eight launchers' worth of [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale 650 MJ]] per warhead [[RecursiveAmmo on an eight-warhead missile]]. The toughest ship in the vanilla game has [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale 12 GJ]] of shielding. Do the math.
** The typo was thankfully fixed in ''X3: Albion Prelude'', but lesser game breakers abound. [[YMMV/{{X}} YMMV.X]] has the full list.

** And if you need cash, then you could do what pretty much everyone in the know did: Save up enough to buy the Downtown 05 hangar and install a distillery, then spend the rest of your days buying cheap water and chemicals from nearby hangars, producing scads of Alcohol cheaply, and put it all up for sale. There's only one other source of alcohol in the game, they sell it [[ShoutOut reassuringly expensively]], and are nowhere near as central as Downtown 05. You can undercut their prices by insane amounts, just so long as you keep your prices above the base cost of materials (And since ''1 Chemicals + 1 Water'' = '''8 Alcohol''' this isn't hard to do), you can recoup the cost of the hangar and the distillery within a day or so. Eventually every single moth in the game will instantly flock to you hangar and cause an immense {{Dronejam}} that created a tailback across half the crater.

* ''{{The Sims}} 2'' is rife with these, especially in its expansions.

* ''DwarfFortress'' is absolutely full of these, thanks to massive CombinatorialExplosion and the fact that the game is still in alpha. Some examples:

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* The Bala Gi patch for ''X3: Reunion'' introduced the M3+ and M7 class ships, respectively a fighter and capital ship that vastly outmaneuver and outgun all other ships of their type--and the M7 frigate even outflies many fighters. Arguably a necessary evil, as the normal ships are all holdouts from the original 1999 game and generally suck.
** That's not as bad as the [=M7M=] frigates from the next game, ''X3: Terran Conflict''. These are capital ships that use missiles as their primary weapon and have the special ability to launch missile barrages. The highest range of regular weapons is about 6.6km, the max range of the [=M7M=] missiles is over 40km. And there is nearly no missile defense in unmodified game...

* ''[[VideoGame/{{X}} X3: Terran Conflict]]'s'' most blatant game breaker is the ATF Skirnir, a [[MacrossMissileMassacre missile frigate]] that, due to a typo in the data for the Shadow missile, could dish out eight launchers' worth of [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale 650 MJ]] per warhead [[RecursiveAmmo on an eight-warhead missile]]. The toughest ship in the vanilla game has [[SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale 12 GJ]] of shielding. Do the math.

** The troper writing this sees your [[DoomyDoomsOfDoom battleship of doom]] and raises you a frigate from hell. It can hold 10 system slots (ammo assembler plus 9 more systems of your choice), has enough room to house ASROC, Anti-Air and High Explosive Missiles, as well as pulse lasers, AGS cannons, and a [[WaveMotionGun magnetic pulse gun]]. It has as much firepower as a battleship but comes with higher speed and maneuverability, making catching up to defense targets no problem. True, the Magnetic Pulse Gun isn't as strong as the massive wave gun, but hey, when you can spam those shots to full effect, it doesn't really matter in the long run.

* You can do this in ''SimCity 4'': build one single tile of road, pass the Legalized Gambling ordinance, leave the game running overnight, and you'll end with a large amount of cash in your coffers (Aproximately 250.000$ an hour).

** Less breaking, but still valuable was the railroad trick in the original SimCity. Railroads only cost twice as much per tile as asphalt roads. But they gave the same bonuses, completely eliminated traffic and a massive chunk of your pollution problems.
*** Completely financially gamebreaking in the original SimCity on the SNES: (Easiest at the beginning of a game) Spend all of your money on fire stations, police stations, and roads/rails (anything upon which taxes must be paid), until you are broke, and make sure "Auto Tax" option is deactivated in settings. When the screen pops up, hold L or R, close the screen. While still holding L/R, manually open the tax screen, drop tax rate to 0%, ramp up tax support to 100% for all services, close the screen, and finally release L/R. Presto! Full cash meter. Bulldoze your police state and start fresh with unlimited funds. Operates, near as could be determined so far, due to a glitch: when L/R are held, the game can still be operated, but ''time'' does not pass. When the screen is brought up by default, you cannot raise support costs to higher than tax income (sensibly). "Pausing" the game in this screen, then bringing up the screen manually, allows you to create a debt - which the game can't handle, and converts to $999,999.

* Although not quite as {{egregious}} as examples in the sequels, the woodworking table in the original ''TheSims'' qualifies. Using this object, a Sim crafts a lawn gnome which can be sold for a tidy profit. A Sim with a perfect mechanical skill that starts the day in a good mood can make about twenty gnomes in a standard eight-hour day. Each gnome sells for $100 each, resulting in a $2,000 daily profit, which is significantly more than the highest-paying career (which leads to a bit of FridgeLogic when you realize that a gnome craftsman can make more money than a business tycoon or an A-list movie star). The best part? As opposed to the normal career paths, you can set your own hours, work as little or as much as you want, don't have to worry about raising other skills, and don't have to worry about making and maintaining friendships. The only downside is that working on the table is taxing on your sim's fun and energy levels. However, since you'll be able to afford all the best mood-raising items and equipment, this downside is easily mitigated.

** There's also the pink flamingo lawn ornaments which cost under 20 simoleans and can be kicked repeatedly to rapidly fill up a Sim's Fun motive.

** The Moodlet Manager, a Lifetime Reward, removes any bad moodlets on you, and for all intents in purposes, it makes it an all-you-can-eat, bed, toilet, telephone, bath and games device all in one. When any one of your bars hits the point it gives you a bad moodlet, the Moodlet Manager will heal it, and give you the polar opposite to it (Smelly becomes Squeaky Clean, Strained becomes Having a Blast and so on) instantly. The only downside is that it can sometimes backfire and shunt your energy level down to 0. However, just re-using it instantly cures this. Taken to the extremes, a sim can stay awake for months and doesn't need to eat more than once a week, and even then that's only if you want the Ambrosia buff.

** Not to mention your damage with a mining pick is greatly increased by the mining stat itself. Powerful pickaxe + 10 skill points in mining = a dwarf that can reduce almost anything that bothers him when mining to red mist with it. Just pray to god he never goes insane.
*** Prior to the combat overhaul release, wrestling directly influenced the damage a dwarf would do with unconventional weapons (like shields or thongs), the odds of them breaking wrestling locks, how well they dodged, and would make sparring almost completely safe. Giving 4 or so migrants from your second wave of immigrants nothing but wooden shields and assigning them to train constantly would allow you to have 4 virtually immortal dwarfs by the end of your second year, well before even ambushes would normally start. These dwarfs would use their shields as maces (which they would use to great effect thanks to their legendary wrestling skills), would be immune to wrestling locks by larger creatures, would be able to block or dodge virtually every attack, and (thanks to being naked besides a shield) would be several times faster than anything they fought. By the 6th year mark, a single dwarf trained in this manner would be more than capable of fighting off anything, of any quantity, besides one very specific type of enemy.

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