Ctrl-linking non-adjacent stations: Do you feel it 'cheaty' or no?

[trainrover]

Not if I'm using all 5000 available vehicles.

I feel like I be cheating when restarting a period of time from having just used the introductory spell just to auto-timetable. My subway feeders skip stops most often in trios. This necessitates performing four return trips back and forth along the subway line, such that the fleet (group) must be folded into each other in an optimal sequence. Knowing the spacings or frequencies of services beforehand saves MUCH grief and bother at winging it blind at skipping trios, and so I transcribe the timings from screenshot(s) of the corresponding timetable of my pilot vehicle to thereafter ultimately calculate precisely when each vehicle ought to be dispatched. I suppose I could instead make four groups to ply the line, but those would become unwieldy...although the 821-day cycle of my latest subway feeder line does seem roguely flippant itself...