I enjoy refining missions. One of the people I play with is a driller who ain't got time for faffing around, and will just drill a hole straight to the pumpjack if necessary. Sometimes this can be more silly than just taking the pipeline along the environment.

Another friend, an engineer main, prides themselves on being able to able to make pipelines to the tricky pumpjacks without relying on a driller. I've seen them pull some truly beautiful feats of bullshit, pipelines perched on the edge of the smallest leaf. They're an artist.

I respect both of these approaches, because they both have their strengths, and also times when they're utterly stupid but the person using that strategy are so set in their ways that it doesn't even occur to them to try the different way. Like you say, it really highlights how many different approaches there are.