Enemy Units

"All ZEAL Force members are now sourced from the Zulu procurement program. The specifics of this program are classified, but the Zulus are the most experienced and battle-hardened fighters to be found anywhere, at any time. They will resist coercion, ignore pain, and exercise outstanding trigger control. These warriors represent the vanguard of the Legion. Don’t ask where they come from, what their training is, or how we command them; they know better than to answer.

Notes: He's not joking; these soldiers clam up immediately around any of our own officers. They also insist on retrieving the remains of their fallen comrades—God knows where they take them. I have no idea where Kataru is getting so many of these soldiers from, or how they're moving into and out of the district unimpeded."

Overview

Two ZEAL units rescuing civilians in Henry's Rock.

Enemy Units in the Crackdown Mod (and PAYDAY 2 in general) consist entirely of NPCs that appear through the dynamic spawn system during assault waves, which are hostile towards players and will shoot them on-sight. Enemy units can be split into three categories:

• Standard Units, which don't have special abilities/attacks, and make up the majority of an assault.
• Special Units, which possess unique abilities that can drastically alter a firefight—especially when in a group.
• Bosses & Minibosses, which typically have drastically increased stats compared to normal units.
  • Note that the Crackdown Mod does not add any new boss units, however, as they're all heist-specific.
  • Due to its nature, the SWAT Turret falls under this category.

The behavior, abilities, appearance and statistics of these enemies primarily vary based on what faction the player is set to encounter—which itself is determined by the heist's difficulty—ranging from standard SWAT on normal to the ZEAL Force on Crackdown.

Standard enemy archetypes

On all but the lowest difficulties, enemy assault groups are divided into four types distributed across two axes:

• Light assault rifle enemies
• Light shotgun enemies
• Heavy assault rifle enemies
• Heavy shotgun enemies

Light versus Heavy armor

Light enemies have less health and wield weaker weapons, but are able to move and react more quickly. They are generally the most common enemy type during assault waves. Heavy enemies move slower, but have more health and generally deal more damage. On most difficulties, Heavy enemies wear torso armor that nullifies incoming damage from conventional attacks. These enemies also retain some degree of resistance to explosive attacks.

Assault Rifle versus Shotgun

Enemies bearing assault rifles fire more rapidly and have greater accuracy and damage at longer range. By contrast, enemies bearing shotguns do very high damage at close range. Shotgun-wielding enemies are often the highest threat to the player in the Crackdown mod. As a standard convention, these enemies are usually given red highlighting and unique outlines to make them easier to identify.

Beat police archetypes

Beat police appearing on the lowest difficulties have their own set of enemy types, intended to ease the player into enemy recognition as a skill:

• Pistol cops
• SMG cops
• Magnum cops
• Shotgun cops

These enemies also appear as scripted spawns on higher difficulties.