This guide is purely my advice/opinion on etiquette for Roleplay/Serious type campaigns hosts with traitors turned off and how to deal with griefers. At the end of the day, do what ever you wanna do and to each their own. Take everything I say with a grain of salt and most importantly, have fun. I hope this guide helps improve your Barotrauma campaign experience!

As host, it is your main duty to deal with griefers as quickly as possible so everyone can have fun and the campaign will move forward.

Again, to each their own. But I've seen first hand a lot of people won't take you seriously and will grief if you are cheating. (e.g. giving yourself or the submarine godmode, spawning yourself items, ect.) Especially if it's advertised as roleplay/serious.




Try your best to employ trustworthy people as admins/mods like your friends for example or people you see as trustworthy.
This will make your life as host a billion times easier. More eyes on the server logs most importantly, but also having trustworthy allies to cover ground on your sub to assist in finding the individual(s) who are griefing.


While not perfect, this tool is your bread & butter to running a tight ship and tracking down the individual who wants to ruin everyone's fun.


Long story short. It is a flawed system unless heavily edited to your liking. If not, the Karma system punishes people who aren't griefing
Basically: A lot of people think it is a lazy form of admining. And for the most part, it is.


Nobody likes a power tripping overbearing authoritarian. So try to be as kind as possible when pushing the envelope of your crew. Or else your crew will grief, sabotage and try to cut the legs out from under your leadership because they don't take you seriously.

There are a handful of different things players can do to grief your campaign, even if you have admins/mods or karma enabled.

1. Jettisoning items
   
   • This is probably the most effective way to grief undetected.
     
   • They can grab a storage item like a crate or duffel bag for example and just stuff it with items like oxygen tanks, materials or fuel. Then exit the sub when no one is looking and toss it and the diving suits out the airlock.
     
   • The only way to counteract this sadly is to be as diligent as possible and keep an eye on on provisions and how they're used. You can also find out/see item interactions on the server logs.
2. Sabotaging/scrambling the wires/appliances/reactor
   
   • This is the most common and problematic way players will grief if given the chance.
     
   • To prevent this from happening: when you are in the server lobby, there is a "settings" button in the top-middle of your screen. Click it, then under the "Anti-Griefing" tab there is options to disable rewiring and lock all default wiring.
     
   • If you want wiring enabled for obvious beneficial reasons, having a crew member who knows how to wire is MUST have so they can nullify this, or else you will be forced to restart the mission or worse, have damage you don't know how to fix.
     
   • This is fortunately one of the more easily delectable offences displayed in the server logs. So keep a close eye on it! :D
3. Poisoning crew members
   
   • Not much to say about this. Once the damage is done, the medic or anyone with the antidote will have to counteract the affliction asap. Make sure who ever is administering drugs to you is trustworthy/creditable.
     
   • This can be detected in the server logs fortunately
4. Putting oxygen tanks in welders and welding tanks in diving suits
   
   • This is like poisoning but much easier to get away with if the staff and crew aren't aware of it.
     
   • Putting on a suit that has a welding tank in it will kill you extremely fast, and using a welding tool that has an oxygen tank it in will explode in your hands but is less likely to kill you.
     
   • This is detectable by the server logs thankfully

When running a public Barotrauma server, it can be very stressful at times. And you will unfortunately no matter what run into a small % of people who just plainly want to ruin your campaign for good or 98% of the time, bad reasons.

• As previously mentioned above, your main weapon when dealing with griefers is the Server Logs which is located at the top right-hand of the screen.
  
• You should always keep a very close eye on this and keep an ear to the ground if you feel someone might be griefing.
  
• For example. If you find out the reactor alarm is going off, Avast everything you are doing and immediately open the server logs and type "reactor" This will bring up all the latest interactions and what people have done to the reactor.
  
• DO NOT rely on hearsay, especially if it's coming from randoms. When hosting and dealing with these issues, You have to play detective. And the server logs will give you irrefutable evidence to punish the right offender.

• Once you believe you have found out the culprit behind the issue. It is up to you or your staff on how to punish them.
  
• Some subs have a jail cell, but that will never permanently stop someone who felt motivated enough to grief.
  
• If you deem they should be banned permanently or kicked from the server for what they have done, You can press the tab key ↹ to quickly bring up the crew's roster. Right-click the offender and swiftly punish them. Then assess the punishable damage they caused afterwards. e.g. disconnected wires, turned off appliances or RDMing.
  
• If you don't have anyone aboard who knows how to fix the issue they caused, especially scrambled wires. You should cut your losses and restart the mission.

This is my very first guide I've ever made, I didn't expect to get such a reaction! Thank you so much! ❤️

Please feel free to add me on steam so we can play Barotrauma together!