Guide to Preventing and Deterring Griefery with Commands

(REQUIRES ADMIN COMMAND KNOWLEDGE) This is a guide detailing the things i personally do in order to stop and control griefing using ingame admin commands. If you don't use commands you might also want to read this guide simply to get some tips.

Introduction

Hello, my name is Jimmy Illballs (As of writing this guide), you may have seen some of my older, now outdated guides. and i figured since i've spent a couple months running my own server, and many more just playing the game, that perhaps i should share some tips that i found through experience.

If you've ever been on the internet, you've probably encountered Griefers. They go by many names and subtypes, Trolls, Hackers, Etc. But a common trait among them is the desire to have fun at the expense of others/others gameplay. Griefers are quite numerous in Barotrauma, as barotrauma has a sort of "hub" system making it so its easy to join, grief, get banned, join. So if you've run a server you have definitely encountered such an issue.

But before we move on, i want to credit the guide that inspired me to make this, it doesnt go over commands but i think it provides some good tips aswell, heres a link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2613315783

General Things/Tips

Now, this is a section about general tips in order to help ingame. In a moment ill go over the specific subtypes of griefing that i've encountered, but here are some general tips that most people can use.

Logs

If you want to host a server, you NEED to know how to use logs. Logs can be accessed when you have access to admin commands, it is shown middle right of the screen when in the lobby, and top right when ingame.


Logs detail alot of things, from chat, attacks, game errors and even wire/item interaction! You choose what you want to see by clicking the buttons on the left, if its checked it will appear in the displayed logs, and when it isnt it will not appear, this is useful for when you need to see specific things like who dewired the pump or who shot the other person first in combat.

If you have traitors on, you can search the logs to see who it chose, or do traitorlist in the command tab.

Names

While not a surefire method, and definitely not going to tell you if someones a griefer, names often tell you of the persons character in of itself, people like apple eater or john legumes are generally eh names and probably arent much to worry about, but names like ben dover or ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 9000 are at the very least people who arent taking the game too seriously, and not very likely to be very helpful to your crew. not every ben dover is a griefer, but every griefer is a ben dover. Unless they attempt to name themselves like a bot, something like Thomas Carpenter or Max Hunt can be confusing, but hopefully most people realise that you can look at their ping to see if they are a bot or not (those on the leaderboard who have a ping are players!)

Item/Machine Sabotage

Reactor Bombing


Reactor Bombing is a very. very common source of griefing, i record every ban i make on my server and this is a very common one. Reactor bombing is when a player fills every slot of a reactor with fuel to make it overheat and explode, exploding takes awhile (depending on its state of repair) but the explosion is MASSIVE and on most vanilla subs it will take out half the ship alone and give any survivors rad poisoning. The good thing is that its piss easy to fix with commands. If you are willing to fix EVERYITEM on the ship in order to prevent half of it from disappearing, open the console and type in fixitems. The reactor explodes when its repair state hits 0, so fixing it will make it take longer to overheat. The best way to stop it from exploding is to initiate the power command (turns off reactor remotely) and THEN do fixitems repeatedly until it stops sounding the accompanied alarm. For bonus points, you can instead of stopping it from exploding just run fixitems over and over and over until the crew comes to fix it. This will confuse the HELL outta the griefer as this makes it so the reactor never explodes.

"But what do i do if it already explodes?"

Good question, what you do is fixhulls, fixitems, and revive playername on anyone who happened to die from it. This will fix almost all damage done from the griefer, and if you wanna fix ALL of it feel free to heal anyone who may've gotten rad poisoning from the blast but didnt die.

Unwiring


I consider this form of grief as a sort of "Glass Cannon" as it can do alot of damage to the ship but at a cost of being very, very easy to discover, wires will either hang from the object or stretch across the map, and wiring gets its own panel in the log tab. Unfortunately, there isnt a command i know of that can fix wiring. So your best bet to fixing it is to use the say command to tell the crew whats unwired, who did it and perhaps how to fix it.

Welder Bombing


Welder bombing used to be a pretty common form of grief. Most sailors know that welding tools take welding fuel, if you mess up and put an oxygen tank in there instead it has a small explosion, stunning those nearby and doing a tiny bit of damage to anything in its range. This recently has dropped in use due to the explosions range and damage being nerfed so that its more useful as a short stun than anything else. Still, if this happens you should revive command anyone involved, and if the hull damage is notable do fixhull command to fix it. I wouldnt recommend much of a punishment for this, as it can be done on mistake.

Combat

PVP Griefery


PVP (Player VS Player) is when two people fight eachother. When a griefer does it, its either because the person stands in their way via fixing what they break or attacking them, or if they just dont like said person. The issue is often that you may not know what exactly happened. When two people fight eachother, my recommendation is to kill command both of them, teleport playername them to areas where their body cannot be looted, and ask both of them what happened. You may also want to consider killing them and asking seperately, as they may both start arguing with eachother. When you get your explanations, cross examine it with logs then handle the one in the wrong and revive the one in the right.

When one person kills the other without the other fighting back, just ask them what happened and crossexamine with logs to determine yourself.

SVS Griefery

SVS (Ship VS Ship) is when two ships fight eachother, this is especially loud and easy to notice.the most common case is when someone on the ship attempts to shoot down the respawn shuttle. The issue is there ARE cases where this is a fair, but morally wrong option, such as when a griefer is respawning. In such cases you can either agree with them, and teleport playername command anyone who is innocent off the shuttle and onto the ship, or if you dont agree with them teleport playername them away from the periscope, or kill command them then revive command them when the shuttle arrives.

There are also cases, depending on the ship where someone can shoot their own ship. (Ship VS Self) When this happens, handle them and do fixhull command to fix any damages they caused to the hull.

Tip

If you're a pretty dedicated gamehoster and are making/editing ships, i would recommend cutting down lethal weapons and adding more stun-based ones so that combat in general would have to be a pick and choose based on if they want to waste their ammo on someone or not.

Non/Indirect Griefery

There are some forms of grief that, from the griefer themselves may not directly harm anybody, but may elicit a punishment anyways.

Manipulation.


This is a rare, but possible occurrence that may be more or less often depending on the type of crew you keep around on your station. It is basically when the griefer uses manipulative means to convince someone to do the griefing themselves. This is often stuff like killing someone or breaking into areas they arent meant to be, as these are much easier to convince someone to do than just saying "Hey, help me unwire the pumps!". The thing about this tactic is that if you dont see it happen its really hard to even know of or prevent, as if they use voicechat it cannot be logged like chat would. Your best bet is to ask all that are involved what happened, then crossexamine with logs to decide what happened. Depending on what the griefer used to convince the manipulated, you may want to punish the manipulated aswell (In situations where the griefer tells them "Hey, this guys annoying help me kill them, the manipulated may be entitled to a punishment, but if they were told something like "This guy killed the captain, help me stop them" they should be let off.)

Microphone Spamming

Now this one is a bit choicey on if it warrants punishment, but oftentimes people may micspam to play songs or at worst play loud ♥♥♥♥ to hurt peoples ears. If its a song and it is too loud, ask them to turn down their microphone volume in settings, and if they refuse or just dont. You can mute them in the lobby (and possibly ingame, but i cannot check it as of now.) If they are playing loud noises to hurt folks ears, just mute them. They cant spam chat or else autokick will get rid of them.

Flipping it Around

Now, there may be times where you are sad that you have to get rid of someone, maybe they were a good teammate, or they saved a lot of lives, or were generally a good person for the whole server. Now i personally have a list of things that i do to punish people in game so that they are not entirely removed, but i will only list a few:

Bounty:

When the ship is in a really bad condition, whether by griefer or bad circumstances. You can do the say command and say something like "Playername has a bounty on their heads, if you kill them i will fix (either something specific or everything, you choose)." This provides hope for the crew and hope for the griefer, and makes the round interesting for everyone.

Guppie:

Guppie is the term i use for Hammerhead Spawn, you've likely encountered these if you've fought a hammerhead matriarch, as they spawn them. Basically what you do is spawncharacter hammerheadspawn cursor command, then do setplayercharacter playername hammerheadspawn command. This makes them an almost harmless, easily killable creature. I recommend you do this when the crew is searching a wreck/ruin or any chance you get to put it in the water, as they die outside of water. You can also tell the crew that you have done this if you wish, i think its funnier if they know.

Pirate:

Now this is VERY situational, as it requires the players to be fighting pirates. What you do is when they die, tell them that they are a pirate and do setplayercharacter pirateRANKHERE (Tip, press tab to autofill commands.). This allows the crew to know that they are opposing the crew, and allows the griefer to do what they were doing before, but legally.

Closing Info

This guide was written at 4 AM, so if i missed something or you think something should be added PUT IT IN THE COMMENTS SECTION. If i add it to the guide, you will be credited.

I hope you enjoyed this guide, i havent made one in awhile but it may also be worth it to check out
some of my other guides, outdated as they may be.

Credits:

No one yet.