I can't lie, there's not really an easy cure for PAYDAY 2's vanilla AI, with years of old, outdated, and relatively broken code, it's a wonder that it works at all to begin with, which is why most of the major rebalances and overhauls tend to re-factor a large majority of it into something that suits their style of gameplay.
Of course, not everyone is fond of rebalancing huge aspects of the game, and wish they could have the AI fixes from those mods in Vanilla without locked match-making keys.
**And this mod is as close as you will get.**
Within the constraints of keeping things as close to Vanilla as possible while still fixing and improving AI, this mod will fix some of the bigger issues that plague the game.
**Cops are now somewhat close to tactical:**
Vanilla has an issue in which cops are constantly relocated to the position the player is, even if their objective isn't actually to assault the player. This is both a waste of performance AND makes them overly aggressive in a particularly dumb way, this also causes special enemies to be unable to use their special attacks 90% of the time, as they end up thinking they need to go into travel-logic.
This has now been fixed. Cops will approach the area the player is in, and wait until their teammates are close before pushing, they will also proudly announce them opening fire and pushing in.
**Enemies no longer break when sent into panic by skills or perkdecks:**
Due to a mishap in setting up the panic animations, once a cop goes into panic, they'll be stuck unable to move until either you force them to play another animation somehow, or, their level of detail gets updated. (It's easy to test in Vanilla, make a cop play a panic animation and they'll be stuck doing nothing forever until you either turn away from them or send them into a stagger animation.)
This no longer happens.
**There are now more high-definition AI enemies allowed:**
Vanilla has a maximum of 3 high-definition AI enemies per player, up to a total of 12 important enemies, however, if there's less players than that, the game never tries to add the maximum number of important enemies that there would be with 4 players, meaning that enemy AI is actively dumber in single-player than in multiplayer.
This is now fixed, and the number of important enemies dynamically scales with player count properly.
**Improved enemy pathing:**
Vanilla is riddled with tiny little things that make enemy pathing take way longer than it should, I'm just going to list those out:
- Pathing sometimes over-complicates itself, turning straight lines unescessary bends and delaying the intended movement.
- When an enemy is travelling to a destination, there's a tendency for logic updates to get wasted and cancelled early when it's not nescessary.
- Pathing priority is not sent correctly most of the time, this causes pathing to take way longer in the engine because it gets tossed in to the ultra-mega-backburner.
**Improved chatter:**
Enemies in vanilla have a bunch of unused voicelines. This mod adds some of them as functional things they can say. Just as a little bonus.
While there isn't much that changed, the hope here is that the changes will be noticeable enough to make the game feel just a little fresher and better, after all, AI is just that, it's artificial intelligence, the intelligence is all...**LIES**. (ba-dum-tss)
**OPTIONAL FEATURES:**
This mod isn't just all fixes and gray, there's a few things that are new in it.
**Customizeable Aggressiveness:**
If the mod starts making the game feel easy and cops feel too tactical? Just crank up the aggressiveness.
**Cover through LUA:**
Normally, cops taking cover is somewhat ineffective in Vanilla due to the engine functions relying on outdated information, meaning most of the time, their searches for cover will fail and they'll have to default to simpler movement instead.
By overriding the cover functions with my own, cops now take cover through LUA and actively try to cut line of sight with threats if possible. Toggleable.
**Fixed/Low RNG enemy spawns:**
Restores shotgunners and other unused enemies, also comes with the option to minimize the group spawning RNG for a more consistent spread of units.
**Allow assault groups to retire:**
After a specific update, assault groups could no longer walk off the map and despawn when an assault is over, this option restores that feature. Toggleable.
**Smart Engagement:**
Minimize the tendency for enemies to continue moving into danger if engaging at a distance would be viable for their purposes. Toggleable.
**FAQ:**
- Will this mod conflict with X?
Give it a shot on Holdout singleplayer, if it crashes only after this mod is installed, there's your answer.
- Will this significantly affect the game's difficulty?
Maybe, you might see special enemies using their attacks MUCH more often in certain cases, the change to panic animations might make certain perkdecks like Muscle feel a little weaker, but it'll all be within the intended behavior that was SUPPOSED to be there to begin with.
- Does this improve Team AI?
Slightly. The pathing changes apply to them too, and I adjusted one of their functions to help them get to players properly in maps with funky navigation meshes.
- Why did you name the mod LIES instead of something more friendly?
I was originally going to name it Fuglore's AI Deals and this entire page was gonna be themed like a car sale, but then I realized that'd be funny and I'd not allowed to do anything but use exclamation marks.
Version 2.98:
- Fixed an issue that caused Cloakers to be stuck beating players endlessly after a sprint kick. (Vanilla)
- Fixed an issue that caused Cloakers to spam smoke grenades when dodging or kicking players. (Vanilla)
- Fixed some small issues related to enemies seeing/opening fire on players that are barely covered up. (Vanilla)
- Fixed enemies trying to fire through walls at their targets instead of at the last-seen position of the target when shooting. (Vanilla)
- Fixed a few crashes caused by Iter...but you should **really** not have both installed.
Version 2.97:
- Fixed a crash caused by a missing sanity check. (Vanilla)
- Fixed a crash in which I made the same mistake as Vanilla did above. (Not Vanilla)
- Fixed enemies not retiring as they should be when Low RNG spawngroups are enabled. (Chocolate & Strawberry)
Version 2.96:
- Fixed Cloakers not leaving their hiding spots.
- Some small stuff to make enemies entering attack logic update their detection faster for faster reactions when engaging.
- Small optimizations.
Version 2.953:
- Fixed a crash in CopLogicTravel caused purely by Iter. (Using Iter will result in bots having strange paths. Use whatever you'd like, but don't blame me for that. Either take out Iter, or take out LIES.)
- Small optimizations.
- Made it more likely that cops will try to face their target after moving.
Version 2.952:
- Actually fixed the CopLogicAttack crash. For real this time. If you get it again, you didn't update, or you're using some funky mods.
- Fixed a crash in multiple logics related to weapon_range not being set properly (Vanilla, usually mod-related.)
Version 2.951:
- Fixed a crash in CopLogicAttack.
Version 2.95:
- Fixed small bits of buggy behavior from Shield enemies.
- Fixed cases in which enemies would play a "Surprised" animation during Loud meant for recently alerted enemies only. (Vanilla)
- Fixed a bug in which enemies would play a crouching animation when already crouched, this was most noticeable with Medics, who would constantly play this animation when damaged. (Vanilla)
- Fixed a crash with hiding cloakers.
Version 2.94:
- Made it so cops try to take cover close to doorways when approaching the area they are moving to.
- Improved shields' response time to pathing and positioning. Bring a GL.
- Made it so enemies try to check if they need to turn more often. (I cannot fix the turning animations themselves being broken, sadly, as that would cause desync between client and host.)
- Fixed cases in which enemies' heights wouldn't be checked properly regarding things like cover and such.
- Fixed a rare case of drop-ins crashing. (Vanilla)
Version 2.93:
- Fixed cases where if a Taser was not already opening fire, but tried to tase a player, they would get stuck unable to shoot or tase.
- Made tasers better at recognizing WHEN to tase a target.
- Minor task optimizations to diminish how much the task queue gets overwhelmed.
- Made the "hit" variation of enemy dodges proc on enemies being shot rather than being based entirely on stagger animations.
Version 2.92:
- Fixed a crash in Nightclub.
- Made it so enemies only cry out for help when *entering* the suppressed state, and not when leaving it.
Version 2.91:
- Fixed a variety of issues with enemy and bot pathing.
- Fixed a few instances of potential crashes for drop-in clients caused by a deprecated function. (Vanilla.)
- Made it so that Fixed Spawngroups will use the proper shotgunner GENSEC SWAT models.
- Fixed a small issue in which preemptive dodges would not work if clients or bots aimed at enemies. (Vanilla.)
- Small optimizations for cops in idle logic.
- Fixed a crash in GroupAIStateBesiege.
Version 2.9:
- Improved Cloaker logic while they are hiding to help them get out of the hiding spot better.
- Made the OVERKILL MC Biker Leader more aggressive.
- Fixed Team AI not obeying being called if you're near them.
- Adjusted Smart Engagement on lower aggression levels to be more cautious.
- Adjusted Jokers to follow players better overall.
- Added a new option to disable Jokers being hurt or staggered.
- Fixed a rare crash in CopLogicTravel.
Version 2.81:
- Fixed a crash with scripted pathing from characters.
Version 2.8:
- Fixed cops walking back and forth during travel logic.
- Improved travel logic updates for even less wasted updates.
- Adjusted some map-specific navigation that was glitchy.
Version 2.74:
- Fixed a crash with Bulldozers.
Version 2.73:
- Attempted fixing cops getting stuck walking in place.
Version 2.72:
- Fixed Brooklyn 10-10 softlock.
Version 2.7:
- More pathing optimizations.
- Made Team AI and converts better at following players.
- Fixed low RNG spawngroups not spawning enough cops, and reduced the RNG even further.
- Improved Bulldozer chasing behavior.
- Fixed an issue from Vanilla that causes desync for clients when cops start a walk action and the first nav point is a navlink. Only works for clients if you're host.
Version 2.6:
- Adjusted enemy pathing and pathing optimizations.
- Improved how cops take cover in travel.
- Fixed a bug from Vanilla that would cause Team AI to follow players in Stealth when they weren't supposed to.
- Improved Team AI response times to pathing.
- Adjusted enemy aggressiveness settings.
Version 2.51:
- Fixed a crash.
Version 2.5:
- Added new options.
- Made special enemies update their logics more often through brain updating.
- Fixed cases in which enemies would never stop firing.
- Greatly reduced the frequency of enemies walking through walls.
Version 2.41:
- Fixed a crash with CopLogicAttack.
Version 2.4:
- Added warnings if the mod is outdated.
- Moved a few tasks to delayed clbks in GroupAIStateBesiege to prevent them from filling up the task queue.
- Adjusted the enemy aggressiveness settings slightly.
- Adjusted upd_movement to give priority to movement and cover behavior.
- Fixed cops not reloading their weapons while moving, fixed various issues in upd_aim.
- Fixed some issues in TaserLogicAttack.
Version 2.3:
- Fixed a crash in GroupAIStateBesiege.
Version 2.2:
- More Team AI adjustments.
Version 2.1:
- Adjusted Team AI follow distance code to make sure they don't constantly walk back and forth.
- Fixed a massive fucking oopsie causing NPCs to walk through walls sometimes.
- Fixed the allow assault groups to retire option not working.
Version 2:
- Improved enemy pathing further, fixed an issue with Team AI from vanilla.
- Improved enemy chatter.
- Added some customizeable options.
Version 1:
- Release
Credit me if you need to take anything from this mod.
Dependencies
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SuperBLT (https://superblt.znix.xyz/)
Off-site Mod
Instructions
**Make sure to first have SuperBLT installed. Click the link in the dependency list.**
Optional video tutorial for installing SuperBLT, BeardLib, and mod_overrides mods: https://youtu.be/rin_sjSJIkg
1. After downloading the mod, use a program such as [7zip](https://www.7-zip.org/download.html) or [WinRAR](https://www.rarlab.com/download.htm) to extract the main folder of the mod.
2. Drop that folder into the `mods` folder which is supposed to be in the game's installation folder (don't know where that is? click [here](https://wiki.modworkshop.net/books/payday-2/page/finding-payday-2s-install-folder))
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