OK, thanks, that's a tremendous help!

Enemy tactics are specified both per unit and per unit within spawngroup in the groupai tweakdata. We have a rough understanding of how some of them work, but in general the tactics remain one of the less understood, yet very important, parts of the game.

This thread is to start teasing them apart. The following tactics are currently called or specific in the groupai tweakdata:

charge
deathguard
ranged_fire
flank
provide_coverfire
provide_support
shield
shield_cover
smoke_grenade
flash_grenade
murder

There are additional tactics which are apparently now going unused, some of which tie into map elements that have also fallen out of use. My eventual goal is to document how these are implemented and identify points for possible improvement or revision.

For now, can anyone tell me where in the decomp these get detailed? I can likely start picking them apart if I know where to start looking.

I see, that explains all the irregular behavior! Thank you!

There's a zipline between the towers that was used for scripted spawns in payday 1. I've noticed that payday 2 spawns a cloaker that can't do anything on the far tower where the zipline is. I need to look into it further, but my guess is they ran out of time to implement it.

´bags_spawned（3）´ ElementCounter 100887

Starting a thread here, won't have time for a deep dive right now.

Initial plane attempt time: 120-130 to start the plane's attempt script.
Plane has 45% chance to succeed (check_chance).
Plane timer on second chance: 35-45 seconds.

Snipers:there are three separate sniper spawn loops, with one active for the saw, construction site, and escape stages. Respawn is instant, except saw stage, where it's 15-25. Each is 1 sniper only on all difficulties.

Dozer out of SWAT van at final drill: 30% chance, dozer may be properly set to difficulty level (I don't know the model types).

Chair interrupter: 25-45 second delay on respawn if tied or killed. Might actually trigger an additional interrupter if tied, then killed! Also actually uses proper enemy type for difficulty, for once.

Need to look into cloaker spawn on opposing tower. Looks like maybe a zipline event is borked there.

The scripted spawns for different parts of the map are definitely active, but they all show up as zero in the script file dump. Not sure what's going on there. Example of the relevant groups is under "add_prefered_escape_bridge_spawns".

"escort_enter_scaffolding001" resets values for cloaker spawns upon scaffold entry, but the table the group selects from is empty and oddly variable across difficulties. Need to write out details of how those are composed.

The game attempts to spawn cloakers to hide along the route at each stage on different difficulties. Details not defined yet.

Misc:

The heist still has tracking info left over from the Darkness achievement from payday the heist.

Number of "sneaky_cop"s (police who try to kill elves):
2/3/4 on N+H/VH+OVK/MH+DW+OD
They appear to be on a continuous loop, such that if all of the set die, a new set will spawn. This may mean that tying down or converting a sneaky cop will dsable the mechanic until the waylaid cop dies.
If all elves die before minimum bags secured, 10 second death timer on N-OVK, DW, 15 on MH+OD.

Number of snipers: 1/2/3 on N+H/VH+OVK/MH and up. Once all snipers die, the next set spawn after a 70-130 second delay.

The heist can spawn a maximum of 3 trap bags. Triggers for these are unclear. If a bag is tossed into a chimney, it decrements the counter so you can get another one.

1 turret, spawns 180-360 seconds after start of first new assault on VH and up.

Safe loot counts for the 100 bags achievement.

First chimney opens 240 seconds after start of first assault. After a chimney closes, the next opportunity to secure loot or escape occurs after 180-240 seconds.


Timing of elves stopping work, amount of time chimneys stay open, triggers for trap bag spawns. These seem to be cued to elements of the objects themselves and are not in the default True file.


The file refers to the area under the chimneys as water, and the escape vehicle as a boat. This explains some things, but raises the question of why Bain refers to it as a van.

This heist has an unusually large number of zeroed out scripted spawn groups.

OK, the one I noticed was "civi_conv_pool_check_basement003" and "civi_conv_pool_check_basement004" . Both are referenced in a couple places, but are not actually called or executed. This is because unlike civi_conv_kitchen commands, there isn't an intermediate step that would initiate the chain of behaviors.

I have a few from counterfeit, I think; I'd need to track them down again.

No worries, that answers that question! Thank you!