IMPORTANT NOTE:
You should not treat this mechanic as some sort of goal you should reach every game. This mechanic was created to allow for players to play with whatever setups they have, and to make the mod adapt to those setups. Difficulty 0 should overall feel close to vanilla DS, while having additional mechanics detailed in the descrption bellow, that would make gameplay more interesting, while higher levels would try to push your setups to the limit.

Heists start at adaptive difficulty level 0. It can increase/decrease based on factors such as global average and highest individual KPM (kills per minute), downs, and enemy presence on the map. Basically the better you are at managing current enemy swarm, the higher the level will go. Additionally adaptive difficulty will go up a level if assault wave ends prematurely (if enemy spawn pool (max amount of spawns per wave) was emptied), but not to level 5.

Generally, every level increase will increase amount of enemies that spawn in per squad, max amount of enemies that can exist on the map, amount of enemies that 1 assault wave can spawn (if this number is depleted, assault ends prematurely), and enemy action speeds. Enemy action speed code is taken from Think faster - if you have it, you should uninstall it to avoid conflicts with DSBW.

Additional adjustments:

Level 1:

• Upon reaching this level, can not go below to level 0.
• Starts affecting spawn amounts for light and heavy swat.

Level 2:

• Starts affecting spawn amounts for medics, tasers, shields and green bulldozers.
• Adjusts weapons that are used by enemies, making them use only heavier hitting options, but does not add any new weapons.

Level 3:

• Starts affecting spawn amounts for cloakers and black bulldozers.
• Adjusts weapons that are used by enemies, making them use only heavier hitting options, while also removing lower damaging weapons.
• Enemies will start prioritizing shooting players with higher KPM stats whenever possible.
• Friendly AI now deals 20% less damage. (Sentries, Jokers and Team AI bots)

Level 4:

• Starts affecting spawn amounts for medic and grey (LMG) bulldozers.
• Adjusts enemy weapon usage, allowing enemies to use G36 rifles which deal 375 damage per shot and do not have fall off.
• Enemies now have 20% damage resistance against all human players. If player's KPM value is high enough, the damage resistance against this specific player is higher, at 33%.
• Friendly AI now deals 33% less damage.

Level 5:

• If maintained for long enough, enemies will get a permanent 33% damage resistance against all human players on the team, and even 50%, if the player reaches a specific KPM threshold. This penalty will stay with players until the end of the heist day.

Whenever you start an interaction, a "hotspot" is created at your position. Hotspot heat level depends on what objective/deployable you have interacted with when creating the spot and how many players are close to this area. Hotspots can also be created at player's location without interacting with anything.

Hotspot's heat level is constantly updated by the mod, and it depends on amount of players in proximity to the hotspot. If a hotspot was left alone for long enough, it's removed.

The mod will dedicate multiple enemies to try and guard top 3 hotspots with highest heat level. Some enemies are excluded from this task. Whenever unit is assigned to a hotspot, they will instantly rush towards it, locate nearest available position, and dig in. They will not move. They defend the hotspot until it's either discarded by the mod's logic or until they die.

This system makes objectives harder to defend, and makes camping harder, since hotspots created at player's positions will constantly have enemies come towards them, because enemies will completely disregard safety and cover searching protocols to try to get to the hotspot as soon as they can.

Works exactly as presented in the GIF above. Any interaction can be interrupted by any enemy.

If you have a cop close enough to your location, you will be cuffed automatically during interactions. This mechanic starts working 1 second after you start the interaction, BUT if your interaction is a player revive, it will be delayed, and only activate after 3 seconds.

To get rid of cuffs, you need to either wait for a minute to uncuff yourself, or one of your teammates needs to come and rescue you. Inspire does not get you uncuffed.

All cuffing mechanics work on other (human) players as well, exactly the same way. If clients have DSBW installed as well, they will be able to handle cuffing on their own, eliminating ping related issues with this mechanic.

Can semi-randomly spawn at the start of an assault. When they spawn, all enemies gain global damage resistance. Global damage resistance always overrides personal damage reductions that you may have due to a high adaptive difficulty level. Additionally, while boss is active on the level both normal and Bulldozer medics will get a red highlight to help you out a little.

First miniboss appearance always sets global damage resistance to 33%, while latter ones set it to 50%. If the permanent damage resistance penalty from level 5 of adaptive difficulty was reached, this resistance is always set to 75%.

At the start of each assault bosses roll their chance to spawn in. Starting chance is set to 10%, which is then increased by [5% * adaptive difficulty level, so can range from 0-25%]. If the spawn roll was successful, miniboss spawns in, if it was not sucessful, current spawn chance is increased by another 10%, and saved for the next assault wave.
Note that heists may force this roll on either the 2nd assault wave, or the 3nd. This depends on if the heist is tagged as "hard", for more info on those check assault pacing info.
If the first assault of the heist is endless, miniboss will always spawn in (heists like Hoxton breakout day 1 or escape days)

While miniboss is present it increases the adaptive difficulty level by 2 for enemy spawns, without additional effects like damage resistance or weapon usage.

If miniboss is not defeated by the end of an assault, it despawns and their debuffs are removed. This can also happen if boss is despawned via mission scripts (like going up the elevator shaft on Beneath The Mountain).

Reduced chances for a stun from 80%-100% every second to 18% every second. After enemy is stunned, they will be stunned for only 1.5 seconds, instead of 3-9 seconds (in vanilla duration depends on enemy type).

This is practically a nerf to Hacker Perk deck, because it's stun effect, and it's spammibility is way to high.
This implementation unfortunately affects standard ECM jammers as well, but oh well, Hacker is just too good.

This change does not disable Hacker's ability to gain health, and dodge for killing enemies affected by PECM, since enemies are still affected by it, they just don't get stunned, and can fight back.

ECM/PECM has 100% chance to stun the "Devil" Miniboss.

Flashbang fuse timer reduced from 2 to 0.9 seconds.
If flashbang was not successfully destroyed, it has a 45% chance to turn into a fire field trap, 22.5% chance to turn into an average power explosive, and lastly a 7.5% chance to turn into a much deadlier explosion.

These grenades do not hurt enemies or civilians.

Light swat have 25% chance to surrender. Heavy swat's chances are set at 15%.
Getting them to less than 33% health will double your intimidation chances.

As a bonus: super light cops and guards, will have 100% chance to surrender regardless of circumstances. These easy to give up cops also can rarely spawn during assaults, making for easy to trade hostages, or converts (don't expect for them to live for long tho).

If you are struggling with intimidations, use relevant skills in the Mastermind tree, get enemies as close to <33% hp threshold, and try getting guard-like cops at the very beginning of the game.

Depending on current adaptive difficulty level, enemies will use different weapons.
Weapon archetypes are based on weapon damage and damage falloff, but can have different skins depending on the enemy faction (for example American swat's may use an m4, while Mexican forces would use an ak47, but both would have the same damage).

List of weapon archetypes that light/heavy SWAT enemies potentially could use:

• 225 rifle - deals 225 damage per shot and does not have damage drop off (same damage at any distance)
• 150 rifle - no drop off
• 375 rifle - no drop off
• 67.5 SMG - no drop off
• 80 LMG - HAS drop off
• 525 shotgun - HAS drop off
• 225 shotgun - HAS drop off

Following table represents chances for enemies to spawn with weapon archetypes mentioned above.

Additionally most special units will now use higher damaging weapons, which don't scale with adaptive difficulty. Bulldozers can sometimes use the VD12 stunning shotgun from broken marshal shield units.

Max possible amount of enemies on the map reduced from 120 to 30. Enemy spawn speed is significantly increased. Enemy squad groups were re-done to freshen up the squad spawn variety a bit.

If an enemy is killed too close to their spawn point, that spawn point is disabled for a few seconds to prevent spawn camping, and to allow the game to spread spawns across the map better.

Very first assault wave is shorter and easier than the 2nd and onwards. During the first assault wave, enemies from normal, overkill, and mayhem difficulties will spawn in, as 'recon' units. By the end of the first assault, some zeal units will start to appear, but in smaller quantities.

After a regroup, 2nd assault and onwards will be in full force. Acting quick and accomplishing objectives during the first wave is preferable.

Some heists, which are deemed "hard heists" by DSBW, are exceptions to the rules above, and will have a less forgiving first assault, which will last slightly less than 3 minutes, and will still be a bit easier, but nowhere near as easy as standard maps. 2nd assault and onwards have full force.
Maps that are exceptions, are usually made this way due to logical reasons (like Alaska being a set up, so "recon" assault is not needed), or to make maps feel better (like default bank heist, because it has an absurd delay before enemy spawns start).

Second assault and onwards have a duration of ~5 minutes. After main assault phase is finished, fade begins, and will last it's maximum duration of ~60 seconds if the assault ran out of it's time. If assault was ended prematurely by exceeding the enemy spawn pool (max amount of spawns per wave) the fade duration will be limited to its minimum duration of ~10 seconds. During fade no enemies spawn in, so you should clear enemies that are left alive, and complete your objectives. After fade ends, regrouping/waiting phase begins, during which enemies also do not spawn.

Escape days will now always have endless assaults.
This was done just to make them harder. They also count as "harder" maps.

Captain Winters may now spawn on maps that he usually does not appear on. In such case DSBW will print a welcoming message for him in chat (so that you know it's not some voice line mod).

Instead of building up to 50% damage resistance, captain will now instead call out his position with voice lines over a period of 1 minute, after which he will initiate his new penalties.

New penalty will uncap special limits, allowing for any amount of bulldozers (or other specials) to co-exist on the map at the same time. It will also raise max enemy spawn cap to 150, which will most likely overwhelm you quickly. While captain is present he is also adding 2 levels to the adaptive difficulty, but this does not affect additional bonuses like damage reductions and enemy weapon usage, but only enemy spawn rates.

Lastly, captain Winters can now reappear roughly 10 minutes after his previous appearance.

To make heists last slightly longer and for breacher skills to be more valuable.

• Immortal Dominated cops - may prevent frustrations when playing with randoms
• Gilza - my own weapon/skill rebalancing mod. It makes gameplay overall slightly less dependant on DPS skills, but overall is harder due to harsher weapon control and ammo pick up. This rebalance also the game overall slightly harder, so maybe give it a go on vanilla DS difficulty first :)
• TdlQ's Lobby settings - saves lobby settings properly and allows you to limit players who can join your lobby based on their infamy/playtime but unlike NGBTO will do all these checks while players are connecting, so they wont be kicked after joining, but rather declined on the Crime.net screen
• TdlQ's Anti crash - self explanatory. People sometimes are assholes, and DS difficulty attracts these assholes like no other. This anti crash seems to be the best ones of the ones i tried.
• Peer Mod List Highlighter - highlights mod names with color you specify when viewing player's mods. Helpful for avoiding cheaters.