You can use the information in our guide to learn the factors that will help you detect hidden things in PAYDAY 3 and to put them to work.
This is the guide vampire☆ it was created by. You can find the author’s link at the end of the guide.
Exploring Radios, Detection and Cameras in Payday 3
Explore the intricacies of stealth in this guide, delving into the specific factors influencing detection. Learn how radio mechanic works, gain insights into how guards, civilians, and cameras detect players at various stages of the stealth heist.
How Radios Work
Radio timers are not affected by difficulty, but the count of Radios to answer can change with difficulty. At Normal difficulty you have 4, at Hard and Very Hard you have 3, at Overkill you have 2.
When Radios Appear
Radios have a 4-8 second time to appear after you killed a guard, take them as human shield from their behind, or take them as a hostage using Manipulator/Menacing skill. When you take a guard as an hostage, there is a time period where they drop their gun on the floor and start to cower. While breaking line of sight during this process will cancel the intimidation so time window for Radio will start right after they drop their gun. You can also see an ammo box drop when they put their gun on the floor. When you cancel intimidation, they will refuse to be intimidated and you can delay Radio as long as you spam intimidation. To break their refusal, a simple melee can do it, then you can intimidate them again.
You can save some time if you attempt to carry killed guard’s corpse and cancel it, as the game will increase Radio’s appear time with the time you spent interacting with the corpse to not put you in a bad situation when you try to actually carry the corpse.
Answering Radios
Radios take 6 seconds to answer, but can be shortened to 3 seconds with Grifter/Open Mic. Alternatively, players can use CQC Specialist/Cover-Up to answer Radios immediately after performing a takedown. Also alternatively, players with RUSH buff can answer Radios instantly when they kill a guard during an active ECM Jammer with Scrambler/Speed Hack skill.
To answer a Radio, players need to be in 0.5 meters range of the cowered or killed guard. Players who take guards as human shields can also answer the Radio while holding them, as well as players who performed a takedown can press interaction again to carry them instantly or players who are carrying their corpse after killing them can also answer their Radios.
Consequences of Failing a Radio
When you run out of Radio count, the next Radio you answer will trigger the search phase. If the search phase is already active, then it’ll call for an alarm.
Radios will stay active for 5 seconds, and players need to answer it. Not answering a Radio will reduce your Radio count twice, and will task a nearby guard, if available, to look out the place where the Radio is not answered. If the guard completes that action and doesn’t detect anything, they will go back to their patrolling state. If players let go interaction button before radio is successfully answered, same precautions will be applied as if players never attempted to answer it.
All guards have one Radio to answer, but in some heists from Very Hard to upwards, Lead Guard modifier spawns a guard that has infinite Radios that appear between 80 seconds.
Detection For Guards, Civilians and Employee
Detection rate is also not changed with difficulties, but certain actions will make them build up faster/slower, running or crouching, being unmasked or masked, performing suspicious actions and your distance is all affecting and do stack with each other. If you have a human shield hostage, guards will build up their detection faster for an example.
During Social Stealth
Guards when they detect unmasked players in Private Area while search mode is not active will try to escort them to a Public Area. Players who get caught will see a chamber appear on their screen, in the place of them where they got caught, and they have to stay in that chamber while the guard approaches them. Leaving the chamber for more than 6 seconds will task the guard with arresting the player. But they are free to move away from it as many times as they want as long as they return within the time frame.
Being Escorted to a Public Area
When the guard approaches this chamber, they will lecture about they are not supposed to be in that place, and this takes 3-5 seconds depending on their voice line. Then the chamber will stick to the guard, and players should stay in the chamber while moving with the guard to complete the escort phase. Again, leaving the chamber for more than 6 seconds will task the guard with arresting the player. But they are free to move away from it as many times as they want as long as they return within the time frame. If players move away from the chamber and break the line of sight with the guard, they can do suspicious actions without being caught, and other guards, civilians, or cameras will not build up detection but they do get alerted if they see you performing illegal actions.
Entering a Secure Area, performing an illegal action, and entering lockpicking state will also make the guard arrest the player who is being escorted. Normally, only performing an illegal action will immediately make the guard arrest a player, as they only build up detection when entering Secure Area or entering lockpicking state.
When the guard successfully escorts the player out to the Public Area, once again they will lecture about they shouldn’t go back in or they will arrest them next time for 3-5 seconds, however, players are free to get caught by the same guard as long as they apply to their rules. Using Hacker/Glitch Protocol during their escort state will free the player from escorting and make the guard return to their patrolling state.
Guard and Civilian Reactions
If a guard is shot but not killed, they will raise the alarm, but if they are shot but not killed during escorting, they will attempt to have a line of sight with the shooter first.
Civilians do not detect unmasked players in Private Areas, nor the employees.
Guards when they detect unmasked players in Secure Area or Private Area while search mode is active or performed an illegal action, such as stealing a key card, turning off something they shouldn’t will immediately try to arrest. Using Hacker/Glitch Protocol before the arrest will make them forget the player’s location; however, they do start the Search Phase if it’s not started yet.
Civilians and Employees have the same type of detection regardless of them being in Search Mode or not.
Civilians do not detect unmasked players in Secure Areas and won’t notice illegal actions, but Employees do. Players with RUSH buff and Grifter/Social Engineering skill can overcome this feature, as long as their buff is running. If an employee caught an unmasked player in a Secure Area, they will call for a guard, and when they complete that interaction, a guard will come to arrest you. Moving too far away from that place will make the guard call a search phase; if the search phase is active, the guard will not call for an alarm.
Hacker/Glitch Protocol works if the guard was escorting a player, the guard will go back to patrolling. If the guard was about to detain a player, the guard will go into Search mode instead.
Distractions and Investigations
Guards will attempt to investigate when they do see a loot bag. But they don’t detect tool bags, deployables or tools. They do build up detection faster when players try to place a tool, though. Also, you can cancel this investigation by picking loot bags from the ground as many times as you like. When investigation finished without any cancellation, guard will call for a search phase. If the search phase is already active, then guard will not call for an alarm, but they return to their patrolling.
Civilians and Employees won’t detect loot bags, tool bags, or tools. But Employees can build up detection when players try to place a tool.
Guards will immediately rush to investigate when they see a cowered or tied hostage or a dead body. This action is normally not cancellable, but guards that players kill with CQC Specialist/Pressure Points needs to be investigated further, so picking corpses up and hiding them after a guard detected it would cancel their task and make them return to normal. When investigation finished without any cancellation, guard will call for an alarm. They also free up cowered or tied civilians.
Guards will not see alerted civilians as long as they start cowering or starting to escape. Civilians do start escape after being alerted if players break the line of sight with them.
Civilians when they see cowered or tied hostages or a dead body will run through the nearest guard to notify them, then that guard will investigate the location that civilian notified. If you cover up your mistakes after this, the guard will return to their patrolling state; however, civilian will call for police regardless, so you need to take down that civilian as well.
Employees when they see cowered or tied hostages or a dead body will call guards to notify them, then that guard will investigate the location that civilian notified. If you cover up your mistakes after this, the guard will return to their patrolling state, so do employees.
Guards will try to investigate sounds they heard, some sounds make them call for a search, some of them are not. Using lures, running in Secure Areas, slide kicking doors, breaking a throwing knife by throwing it to a surface will not make them call for a search. Breaching open doors, gunfire, not breaking a knife with Infiltrator/Retriever when throwing it to a surface and not picking them back up, sabotaging objects such as breaking glass will make them call for a search. If the search is already active, so they will return to their patrolling. Only exception is gunfire, though they will call the alarm.
Guards also do investigate visually sabotaged objects, such as broken glass, broken cameras, some objects after players interacted with them such as computers in hacking state.
Masked Up
Guards when they detect masked players, regardless of the area they are in, will frightened at first, then reach up to their guns to shoot. From the animation they play, you have 5-6 seconds to prevent them from shooting. If Hacker/Glitch Protocol used during this phase, guard will raise the alarm after dealing with hacked radio.
Finally, a melee to a non-alerted guard will instantly make him alerted, with no detection build-up. If players manage to break the line of sight, sadly, guard will raise alarm. Using melee on civilians though, makes them cowered instantly.
Camera Mechanics
Cameras, just like guards and civilians do not build up faster with difficulty, but do build faster with actions you make that I’ve mentioned above. While difficulty is not directly affect them, from Very Hard and upwards there are two modifiers can change their behaviours; Titan Cameras and Cerberus Core.
Titan Cameras will make cameras indestructible. Cerberus Core will make cameras reset after 5-second intervals.
Camera Looping and Disabling
Normally, in a heist with no Cerberus Core modifier, players using Hacker/Basic and Secure Loop to hack cameras to loop them by using one Runtime, up to 3 times at the same time with Hacker/Basic, Ace and Scrambler/Basic. This effect is infinitely working, and if a fourth camera is trying to be looped, the first looped camera will return to normal and refund its Runtime cost. Looped cameras emit a blue light, instead of red.
Also, normally in a heist without Cerberus Core; players can turn off cameras infinitely with Scrambler/Cam Distortion and placing ECM Jammers near 0.5 meters of cameras. As long as ECM not being used, it’ll turn off the cameras within the range until being used up completely. On paper, one ECM can shut down all cameras, but in reality, the only instance I can remember cameras being too close to each other to be shutdown with this ability is in the container area of 99 Boxes. Also, using Scrambler/Full Recall and Scrambler/Extra Pockets would greatly increase the efficiency of this strategy.
Both looping and disabling will be reset with Cerberus Core intervals, you will get a refund on Runtime, but placed ECM Jammers can’t be get back unless players using Scrambler/Full Recall.
Camera Detection
Cameras work similarly to guards and civilians in many ways, they will not detect loot bags, tool bags, deployables or tools, but they do spot players placing tools and performing illegal actions. Unmasked heisters will be detected in Private Areas; however, players using Grifter/Walk the Walk with RUSH buff active will be ignored. Unmasked players in Secure Areas will be detected no matter what.
Interactions Between Cameras and Guards
Once an unmasked player is spotted in Private Areas while the search mode is not active, the nearest guard will be tasked to investigate the area players caught in. They will call the search mode if they return empty-handed, but this can be prevented as any player getting caught in the zone, being escorted out successfully. If players are caught during performing illegal action or in Secure Area or in Private Area during the search phase, the nearest guard will task to arrest the player with no investigation.
Once a camera is broken if the heist doesn’t have the Titan Cameras modifier, no guards will be notified, but if a guard comes across the camera, they will investigate, then call a search phase. If the search phase is already active, then the guard won’t raise the alarm; they will return to patrolling state.
Cameras will detect cowered or tied civilians, and will task the nearest guard to investigate. However, if you cover up your tracks, the guard will call for a search instead of raising the alarm. If the camera detects a dead body, then the camera instantly raises the alarm. Cameras also raise the alarm if they detect an unmasked player.
How Camera Drones Works
All of these rules do apply to camera drones, with a few changes. Drones can’t be looped, but can be disabled for a few seconds with Scrambler/Basic. Drones also are not affected by modifiers, so even in a heist with the Titan Cameras modifier, drones can be shot.
Camera Operators
Almost every heist has a camera operator, usually behind a blue key card required door. The only instance I could remember not having an operator is Turbid Station. Distracting this guard will temporarily turn off ALL cameras, but once they return to their task, cameras would go back on. Another special condition is on Syntax Error, as cameras on the bottom floor are controlled by SINS and you can’t shut down the AI without going into loud. If you want to infinitely disable cameras, then you have to either kill the guard, or take them as a hostage. Like all the other guards, this requires a pager.
