Undertow Games Forum

I've been playing the game for a while now, and seen some rather interesting ways to grief ships. I'm posting this not as encouragement, but as a warning. Watch out for these, because a lot of them are SUPER subtle.

• Once someone sabotaged the ship by slowly and methodically unwiring every single wire on the ship. I didn't notice at first, as I was busy driving, but I did notice once the ship just completely shut down. It's an incredibly destructive method, as it literally leaves noone but people skilled with electricity and engineering (the construction part of it, knowing how to wire things correctly) with any hope of fixing the ship. However, it's also incredibly time consuming.

• Someone once put a twist on the classic "husk everyone" trick. He played a few rounds as a good doctor, gaining our trust, and then injected everyone while holding a stimulant in his hand. It made us think he just wanted us to GO FAAEEST. We didn't even notice at first. He managed to inject the ENTIRE ship. It was actually quite interesting. One by one the ship went silent. And then chaos erupted as people bit each other.

• The final method was... Weird. I still have no clue how he did it. Everything was going well, and then at the end, the ship just... Completely shut down. No wires were missing, the reactor was working, but the power grid was at 0. I have absolutely no clue how this was done, but one of hte players took the blame, laughed at us, and then left.

• A FOURTH TECHNIQUE! I AM EXPERIENCING AS I AM WRITING THIS. It's not a sub-destroying grief, but pretty terrible nontheless. Someone, a fellow doctor named nans (and the round later also Nick hur) took chloral hydrate from the cabinet, injceted me as I was grabbing my stuff, and then stole my keycard and earpiece, leaving me trapped and unable to communicate to the rest of the crew.
  So. Now you know three weird but interesting griefing techniques to watch out for. Good luck.

Final method isn't griefing, but just engineering being terrible at their jobs. They set reactor output too high above grid load so the circuit breaker/junction box blew up and grid load would then display as zero.

The first type is the reason why whenever i see a person with a screwdriver in hands, i start following them everywhere and checking wires near them.

Never trust a person that is holding 2 syringes. One of them may be a stimulant but the other one can be a poison. If he was only using 1 hand, then you shouldn't trust a black syringe, unless you are the one using it.

If no wires were missing, that's either junction boxes and relay components getting broken or the power system had a relay component in its main part, and the guy that took the blame just turned the relay component off. That's impossible to notice without fiddling with wires, since relays don't show their state without some monitoring system connected to their output. Worst part is that a lot of the subs have their power grids set up in a way that makes rewiring them into a simpler version burn the junction boxes. So toggling that single relay component off is pretty much fatal for the sub. But the griefer can't just turn it off without having to add a button or move the wire from some button nearby. Watch for the people moving wires around.

Never stay with someone you can't trust without any witnesses nearby. Watch for whatever their hands are holding. Be ready to start fighting or running away at any moment.

Damn, playing with randomers is stressful. You can never feel safe around them.
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Here's my story.
It was possible for the griefer to pull that off due to the layout of the ship and because it did not have many spare tools and wiring parts. First, he took all of the cutting tools and spare buttons that the ship had and probably dropped them in some sneaky spot, because i never found them. Then he removed a wire from the oxygen generator. It cut off our communication, as we had to wear masks instead of the radio. The whole crew rushed to the part of the ship with the reactor and oxygen generator to check what was going on. And while that was happening, the griefer went to the opposite part of the sub and removed buttons on our side from the doors leading to the parts of the ship such as the bridge, security, med room and the airlock. Even if there were witnesses, they couldn't warn the crew in time because we were wearing masks. We didn't have any tools to cut through the doors. We didn't have any buttons or signal components that would let us open the doors. The airlock was on his side too, so we couldn't even get out of the sub. We were trapped in the engineering part of the ship, forced to keep the reactor going to stay alive, while the guy had a whole bunch of meds, weapons and the control room he could use to move the sub anywhere he wanted.
Always have a cutting tool or a spare source of wiring signal; fix things as quickly as possible; and try to make sure that while your crew is busy at one place, nothing sketchy is going on at the other.

Also, watch out for the "duck hunters" type. The guys that shoot at you with the railgun while you are outside going for the artifact or leaving the respawn shuttle. Death from the shell with explosives is instant, you won't even have a chance to warn the crew. Watch for the railguns, if they are following you, try to get out of their field of vision and ask who is aiming at you, so the crew would know that somebody is using the guns. That way, if you die, at least the crew would know why that happened.