Payday 2 – Is it Possible to Change Loadout in the Middle of a Heist?

From The Long Guide by Frankelstner - detailing stealth mechanics analyzed from the extracted game files:

Terms used:

• "Cool" refers to the state of person or camera during stealth when he/it has no exclamation mark.

• Once the person or camera has an exclamation mark or alarm goes off, there is no going back: The subject can never become cool again. I refer to this state as "uncool". Dead or broken subjects are not included.

Stealth - Alerts

Alerts are noise and instantly turn people in hearing range uncool. In the context of this game, alerts mean that neither the orientation of the head nor obstacles make any difference and that the person becomes uncool instantly without becoming suspicious first.

Human observers become alerted by the following:

• Glass breaking (range: 12 m)
• ECM feedback (range: 100 m)
• Gunshots (range: 25 m when enemies shoot, usually 45 m with player weapons)
• Gunshot impacts (range: 1/4 of the gunshot noise)
• Grenade/Flashbang explosions (range: 100 m)
• Trip mine explosions (range: 50 m)
• Taking fall damage (range: 2.5 m)
• Civilian screams upon becoming uncool and at various other times (range: 2 m)
• Civilian or enemy screams when experiencing moderate or heavy hurt or death (range: 6 m without Shinobi or Hidden Blade aced, else 0.25 m). Even handcuffed guards scream. Non-lethal melee attacks against civilians cause no scream.

Unless you shoot in the sky, every gunshot ends with a gunshot impact. The noise origin is the impact location. Technically, gunshot impact alerts are of the same type as gunshot alerts. As a result, gunshot impacts may cause alarm on day 1 of Big Oil, but they can also be used together with Control Freak to intimidate civilians.

When your gun has issued a gunshot alert (i.e. you have fired your gun), subsequent gunshot alerts by the gun are blocked for 1.5 seconds, unless the origin of the alert differs by more than 5 meters. Whether you fire your CAR-4 once or 15 times within 1.5 seconds to control civilians with Control Freak, they both issue just a single gunshot alert. There is a separate but pretty much identical block for gunshot impact alerts, where the 5 meters rule has a greater effect.

All player weapons have an alert range of 45 meters with the following exceptions: Brenner, KSP. MG42, R93, Thompson, Queen's Wrath, Lion's Roar, minigun, Lebensauger have an alert range of 40 meters. The Thanatos has a range of 35 meters. The saw also causes gunshot and gunshot impact alerts and has an alert range of 35 meters when not using up the blade (2 m if silenced), else 75 meters (8.5 m if silenced). The flamethrower has an alert range of 300 m. The grenade launchers and RPG do not cause gunshot alerts.

All weapons with an alert range of 45 meters have their alert range reduced to 1 m when silenced (thus their gunshot impacts have a mere 0.25 m range). Weapons with an alert range of 40 meters or less (except saw) have their alert range reduced to 0 when silenced.

Uncool civilians cannot hear anything but gunshots (and gunshot impacts) caused by the players. Control Freak basic fully intimidates civilians when hearing a single gunshot alert. When hearing too many gunshots of players without Control Freak basic in quick succession, untied civilians will stand up no matter their intimidation level (only Dominator aced blocks this). This being said, due to the 1.5 seconds cooldown it is virtually impossible for a single player to make a civilian freak out and flee.

Uncool enemies cannot hear anything but gunshots (and gunshot impacts) caused by the players. Technically, they were supposed to listen to explosions and glass breaking caused by the players as well. However, the function used by HE rounds, hand grenades and the grenade launchers explicitly claim that the cause of the noise is the group of civilians and enemies, but not the players. As a result, any alerts caused by that function are ignored by uncool enemies. Breaking glass also does not work correctly and is ignored by enemies. Thus enemies behave like civilians in that regard and will react to gunshots only (and maybe trip mines). Enemies prefer to target players whose alerts have been heard and may also decide to shoot due to alerts.

Stealth - Alarm

There are 4 different ways alarm can be raised:

• An uncool person (guard or civilian or gangster) calls the police.
• A camera is uncool.
• A pager is left unanswered or answered unsuccessfully.
• Map-specific triggers. Usually motion sensors (lasers) or alarm buttons.

Basic ECMs disable the first two triggers as long as they are active. With the ECM pager skill, alarm is raised only by map-specific triggers.

There are three ways to figure out if alarm has been raised:

• All exclamation marks suddenly disappear simultaneously despite the enemies still being alive.
• A text message appears on the screen. Some map-specific alarm triggers do not show any message at all (Rats day 2, Big Oil day 1, Firestarter day 1, Framing Frame day 3), or are otherwise incorrect (alarm buttons on Trustee bank).
• The music changes.

On Big Oil especially, if you are not the person stealthing it, the only reliable method of figuring out if there has been alarm is paying attention to the music, as there is no alarm message and the disappearing exclamation marks might be due deaths. Conversely, as long as you can see a single exclamation mark, you are still in stealth as no alarm has been raised yet.

Excerpts from 'Dispelling Common Misconceptions' Reddit /r/paydaytheheist post by KarateF22:

• Civilians are alerted by bags: They only care about body bags and only at close range. Guards, gangsters, and cameras do care about all bags, however.
• You can stop a camera alarm after detection with ECM or by killing the operator: False. Operators aren't even alerted when the camera is; once a camera fully alerts stealth is guaranteed to fail in 7 seconds.
• Grenades sound the alarm on Big Oil Day 1: Hilariously they do not. Gunshots and the saw still will however, so be wary of that.
• Shinobi Ace is useful: Kinda. It works as claimed for clients in a game. However, there is currently a bug where hosts always silently kill targets, regardless of having the skill or not, which makes this much less useful if you host frequently.

Here is a guide on how to complete the Framing Frame heist stealthily. I have included videos of each day demonstrating how the execute the plans but remember that each game has a variety of randomised elements which means you have to adapt the plan to your particular spawn.

Day One

Mission Objective

The Elephant wants you to frame a senator, you're going to do this by stealing paintings that have just been sold from an art gallery, framing them in frames with cameras fitted into them and selling them to the senator. The art gallery has up to nine paintings marked with red sold stickers stickers, get them.

You need to steal at least four paintings. Get the paintings from inside the art gallery to a van outside.

The Plan

The art gallery has a total of six guards, one of these guards will remain stationed at the front desk unless alerted, and another will remain in the camera room until you breach it.

You will need the following abilities between your crew:

• at least one crew member with the Dominate ability,
• at least one crew member with the Cleaner ability aced to dispose of bodies,
• a crew member with the ECM Overdrive ability aced to get into the security room
• a crew member with Catburglar is optional for the fall into the room with active lasers

It's best to also get the Camera Feeds asset, and position one of your crew (that isn't responsible for any of the above abilities) on the camera feeds to help mark the guards. Assign another of your crew to scout around on the roof, helping the two breaching the art gallery by marking cameras and guards.

One crew member can breach via the roof if you want but my favourite method of cleaning up the guards is to draw them towards the bathroom at the front of the art gallery (there is a pickable door outside on the way up to the roof) by activating the hand dryers. This allows you to pick off the first four guards one at a time without drawing too much attention to yourself. Bag these up and hide them in one of the cubicles.

Spot the camera in the first hall from the roof before running in, and start clearing up paintings. Throw the paintings up to the spotter on the roof and he can throw them over towards the van.

Move from room to room, spotting the cameras from the roof first until you reach the room that is blocked off by lasers and then exit the building.

Normally by this point you have enough paintings to fulfil the objective but if you want or need more you can have one of your crew members breach the last room from the roof while the two of your crew move the paintings to the van. The spotter on the roof remains in position to catch paintings.

To exit, kill the guard and quickly run over to the van before the pager times out (the Sprinter ability is good for this) and you'll get out without an escape.

If all goes well, you'll be in and out without triggering an alarm and you'll get an achievement - Painting Yourself Into a Corner.

Here is a video of day one being stealthed:

Day Two

Mission Objective

Get the paintings to the buyer, get the cash to the van.

The Plan

The plan is simple - get the paintings out of the back of your van, into a train car nearby that has a ringing phone in it. Answer the phone to start the deal with the buyer and he will request that you all get into the train car and throw the paintings out through the roof.

For each painting delivered, you will get a bag of cash. Don't throw the last painting out until you've got all of the bags of cash over to the door at the far end of the train car as doing so will start the next section of the mission. Get the cash out of the train car and head towards the getaway van - ensuring that any civilians who see you are controlled quickly, or several ECM jammers are used to stop anybody phoning the police.

If you happen to get all nine paintings on day one, you'll get an achievement once you've completed trading the bags - Big Deal.

Here is a video of day two being almost stealthed:

Day Three

Mission Objective

The objective of day three is to break into the senator's house, steal five of his personal gadgets that can be used to gain access to his desktop computer, use the computer to gain access to the vault, plant cocaine in the vault and (optionally) steal all of the gold.

The paintings you stole on day one have been fitted with cameras, which can be viewed using a laptop on the roof. During the first stage of the heist you will want one of your crew members watching these cameras constantly, marking guards and locating the senator's gadgets.

The Plan

You're going to break into the senator's house, take out the first four guards and answer their pagers - dispose of the bags on the roof near the start so that nobody will find them. The fifth guard will need shouting down. You can mix this up a bit - if you get an opportunity to shout down a guard in a part of the house that nobody else is going to go, or within a timeframe where the other guards will not be a problem, then do so.

You will need the following abilities between your crew:

• at least one crew member with the Cleaner ability aced to dispose of bodies,
• at least one crew member with the Dominate ability

There isn't a security room in the house so you can't directly take control of the house cameras. You can, however, melee them to break them and clear yourself a path to the vault.

Find the five gadgets and take them to the laptop on the roof, which will allow Bain to unlock the desktop computer in the office upstairs. At this point you'll need to assign a crew member to use the computer, as it is used to open the vault and also temporarily disable the lasers in the vault.

Once the vault is open, you'll need to turn off the lasers with the desktop computer - these will only stay off for around 15 seconds but they will beep several times before reactivating.

Once you've got the gold out to the vault it should be a simple case of transporting it all to the exit point on the roof. If all goes well, you'll be in and out without triggering an alarm and you'll get an achievement - I Wasn't Even There!

Here is a video of day three being stealthed: