Possible to make your sub tamper-proof?

[Cress]

I am still pretty new to the game. I had a troll come on board and mess with a bunch of wires. I was fortunate that someone with more experience was on board and able to more or less fix it, and I now know I need to check logs before heading out and all that.

It just left me wondering why this is even a thing? There are legitimate reasons to rewire things, and a lot of my crewmembers have made a lot of cool improvements to my sub by doing so, but they all asked beforehand and even explained what they were doing and why.

Why just allow some monkey to come on board, grab the most common tool on the ship (or even spawn in with it), and be able to cause, for some, irreparable damage to your ship within seconds? There should be far more restrictions on this type on behaviour, as in completely disabled unless explicitly allowed.

Since I concede that this is just the state of things for now, and possibly ever, then I am wondering if there are any good ways to tamper-proof your ship? How would you deal with this sort of thing on a custom ship? Do you just reload if you notice there has been tampering, or do you try to fix a dozen or so wires that are now missing?

[Buggy Boy]

You could lock individual wires and devices in the sub editor, I think generally this could be a sensible precaution for essential items such as engine, o2 gen, nav console and pumps. Leave other equipment open such as hatches so that engineers can wire up interesting things to them, although I'd probably lock off the docking port and hatch as they generally never need to be rewired. Guns and periscopes too. If you decide to do this I would recommend saving an unlocked version of your sub as it can take a lot of effort to lock / unlock things.

Whatever's left should be non-critical, you can pilot the sub without it, and even a moderately skilled engineer should be able to put things back to some sort of working order without you having to reload.

Some would argue that you shouldn't do this, trolls are your own responsibility etc, but I know from experience that it can ruin your campaign session, lose you good players, and leave you feeling angry at the game.

Alternatively, there are two anti-griefing wire settings in the server settings when you host, total lock and basic lock, the latter meaning that wiring can be added but not removed or changed from what was originally there. A downside of locking stuff in the sub editor is that those things will always be locked, the only way to unlock them is in the sub editor and then you need to buy the updated sub again.

I'm a fan of adding my own reactor controller to my custom subs, it's there and I know it works, there's no need for anyone to add another, so I would feel safe in locking that down. As an engineer player though, it can be very satisfying to find an unmodified reactor and work some component magic on it, so keep that in mind too for your players.

[Cress]

Originally posted by Buggy Boy:

Snip

Thanks for the suggestions, and when I get into custom subs I may do as you say- leave critical components locked and everything else is fair game.

On the other hand, it's pretty sad to lock certain things down because it will take something away from legitimate players. I don't want any restrictions on these types of people, I want them to have full reign of the ship and be able to treat it as their own. I am just the guy piloting the ship, we are all in this together. At that point, the trolls win :(

A good solution would be to have an "undo wiring" button that doesn't reset the entire mission. You still run the risk of them getting their hands on explosives or whatever and killing your crew, but this is far more preventable than someone getting a screwdriver and approaching literally anything.

[Bucholz]

Never lock anything in the editor, even the docking port. Server locks only.
You want something rewired - you:
1. Shut down the server.
2. Copy your save file before rewiring. Even trusted engineers sometimes screw things up unintentionally. They will thank you later :)
3. Enable wiring and restart with only trusted people onboard. Engineers do their magic, the rest of the crew (if any) should be busy tidying the ship.
4. Check if everything is working as intended. Keep your save from step 2 for awhile even if everything seems perfect.
5. Disable wiring, restart and go kill stuff.

As a general rule i don't like to rewire mid-mission, because some important machinery have to be powered down or control lines cut temporarily. So enabling wiring on the server is mostly only useful for trolls.

[Greenie /Taxibutler]

I feel like half the fun is wiring stuff mid-campaign (or mid-mission if you're doing that), and an experienced wire-master engineer guy can fix a lot of the problems in ships pretty fast. One thing to consider is that a lot of trolls/griefers don't take the time to do all that much damage with wires other than just taking them off, which is stupid easy to fix for junction boxes and the like. The only real issue is if they somehow disconnect the relays in the hull for some ships, but that is hard at best. If you get paranoid, just turn off wiring in general, it removes a lot of extra functionality, but will keep you mostly intact.

One thing that hasn't been said is that if wires get changed mid-mission, you can just go back to lobby or suicide into the abyss and restart from the beginning, especially if they joined mid-mission.

If there was one thing I could agree needs to be locked, it would probably be the junction box connection wires, and the reactor wires. If you REALLY want something to just not change, even mid-campaign, just stuff it in the hull. Without bots/at station, you can just plasma cut open part of the hull and connect some relays throughout the ship for whatever you're trying to do, and they have to be disconnected at both ends to remove the wire.

Only other thing I want to say is the possibility for a mod to make wiring stuff harder, maybe you need a higher engineering (electrical) skill to do it, so most jobs that aren't engineer can't just unwire all the fun stuff.

[kratos]

I think its been said but most trolls don't wait very long. Play with up to about 7 people max for your first game. Then keep wiring locked until they haven't done anything stupid for awhile. This strategy won't guarantee you don't get trolls. But it does filter most of them. Any time you get new crew you'll have to watch your gear more closely again. But its easier if its 1 person instead of everyone.
Also, check the logs before you dock. And make sure new crew don't try and log off with all your fuel rods before you dock.

[Buggy Boy]

Originally posted by Bucholz:

Never lock anything in the editor, even the docking port. Server locks only.
You want something rewired - you:
1. Shut down the server.
2. Copy your save file before rewiring. Even trusted engineers sometimes screw things up unintentionally. They will thank you later :)
3. Enable wiring and restart with only trusted people onboard. Engineers do their magic, the rest of the crew (if any) should be busy tidying the ship.
4. Check if everything is working as intended. Keep your save from step 2 for awhile even if everything seems perfect.
5. Disable wiring, restart and go kill stuff.

As a general rule i don't like to rewire mid-mission, because some important machinery have to be powered down or control lines cut temporarily. So enabling wiring on the server is mostly only useful for trolls.

But what purpose would there be in rewiring the docking port if it's already wired for power? Admittedly I mostly run solo on my own custom subs so all of the wiring is working and done, but assuming that is the case then I'd just lock off wiring in the server settings if I didn't want the hassle of wiring trolls. Having said that, I have a complete wiring schematic on paper so I know exactly how to put any wire back. I have had someone unwire guns (completely) which I think puts off average players as most don't think it's possible to rewire them and start calling for a restart or just leave (I've been in servers that restart at almost the first sign of griefing, and others that were going to hell and the host apparently unaware or not doing anything about it), this is where my opinions are coming from on keeping essential things like that permanently locked. If an engineer wants to rig up some kind of auto firing gun, hmm, I'm not a fan of those as they deny security gunners the chance to gain weapon skill.

[Bucholz]

Originally posted by Buggy Boy:

But what purpose would there be in rewiring the docking port if it's already wired for power?

Making another airlock (Humpback).
Implementing autodocking (for those who like to play drunk :)
Also, not all subs come with properly wired docking port. Most subscribed sub, Sweet Memory Pea, is an example.

Originally posted by Buggy Boy:

Admittedly I mostly run solo on my own custom subs so all of the wiring is working and done, but assuming that is the case then I'd just lock off wiring in the server settings if I didn't want the hassle of wiring trolls.

Yeah, that's exactly what i suggest.
My point is, i don't rewire anything on the go. A hatch, a door or wetsuit lockers maybe, but not the stuff like guns or batteries, let alone the nav console. And those doors can definitely wait till the end of the round as well.