🔎 Forensics, rebuilt
Evidence now comes from what players actually do to each other.
- Shots leave casings and bullet holes that point to one gun, gunshot residue on hands, sleeves and car seats, and wounds that show the caliber and range
- Fights leave blood, prints, fibers, scratches and DNA. Cars pick up prints, hair, paint transfer, glass and soil.
- Skids, burnouts and ruts in the dirt stay on the ground for hours
- Crowbars, screwdrivers and drills leave tool marks the lab can match to the tool
- Officers mark, photograph and collect evidence, then book it into the lab. Results land in the MDT after a short real-time wait, and senior ranks run the lab work.
- The lab only names people who are on file (booked, Livescanned or swabbed). Everyone else gets an unknown-profile number that links scenes until they're identified.
- Coroner: examine a body for time and cause of death; Physicians do autopsies in the new morgue at Pillbox
- Toxicology from blood samples, and a crash data recorder in every car
- Counterplay works too: gloves, wipes, bleach, picking up your casings, changing clothes
📻 Radios & cameras
- Encrypted radios for police and EMS, from the locker. Without the key you only hear scrambled noise, and a stolen radio works only until it's shut off remotely.
- Radio range is real: handhelds reach a mile or two, car radios much farther. A weak signal crackles and drops out.
- SENTRY MR-9 car radio in police and EMS vehicles, with an emergency button
- Cameras take real photos onto memory cards: the Vantage D70 DSLR (police) and the Snapmatic Pocket Z5 (Digital Den). Import them into the MDT's new Digital Media library.
- Camera controls while raised: LMB shoot, RMB focus, wheel zoom, F flash, G grid, Q playback
🚔 Police
- Callouts by department and division: LSPD covers the city, LSSD the county, BCSO Blaine and SAHP the highways. Gang unit, narcotics, detectives, SWAT and traffic each get their own calls (47 new ones). Suspects can turn up in the MDT with flags and warrants.
- Air units: helicopter crews can take callouts, plus 11 air-only calls (pursuits, foot searches, missing hikers, water rescues, stranded climbers, street races). Hover low to hoist people out.
- New helicopter camera: E camera, H Nightsun spotlight (everyone sees the beam), LMB lock onto a target, Space lock onto a spot, RMB switch sensors (including FLIR), G share a mark or live track with ground units, X rappel from the back. Works in any police helicopter.
- ALPR hits players too: speeding past a camera or a patrol car, stolen cars (a few minutes after they're taken), and owners with a warrant or a suspended license
- In a car the MDT becomes a dash laptop (CorvOS on a SENTRY MDC-30) in your department's colors, with Day / Night / Auto. The ALPR unit got the same treatment and can be resized.
- The patrol plate reader works in our own police cars now, and ambient cars hit far less often
- ERS options moved into the Left Alt menu, and the "Kneel" order no longer makes suspects bob up and down
⛓️ Bolingbroke Penitentiary
- Prison is open. Book a cuffed suspect from their MDT charges (Left Alt > Police > Book into Bolingbroke).
- 1 month = 1 minute, up to 2 hours, served only while you're online and inside
- Prison jobs, a canteen, commissary and a doctor. Leave the wrong way and the alarm sounds and a warrant follows.
💰 Crime
- Dirty money: crime now pays in dirty cash. Business owners can wash it through their business; everyone else will have to find someone who knows how. Police can seize it.
- Store robbery: hold up the clerk (aim at them, or Left Alt). Some comply, some panic, some reach for a shotgun. Empty the till, then work on the back safe. Police get silent alarms, camera footage and the getaway plate on ALPR.
- House burglary: case the house, learn who's home and whether they're asleep, then beat the alarm and the safe. Loot carries serial numbers police can run, and hot goods fetch less.
- Drugs: grow and breed weed, cut coke, cook crack and meth, and sell on street corners. Quality matters, and not every buyer is who they seem.
- Car boosting and a chop shop, for those with the right contacts
🎣 New civilian jobs
- Fishing: cast, wait for the bite, then fight the fish on the reel. 29 fish plus shellfish depending on where you are, from lakes to deep sea. Size and bag limits, protected species, reserves, crab pots, boat rental and markets with daily prices. You need a fishing license (piers are free).
- Hunting: animals see, hear and smell you, so watch the wind. Clean shots are worth more. Tag your kill, field dress it and sell at the lodges in Paleto Bay and Sandy Shores. You need hunting and firearms licenses; rifles come from Ammu-Nation. Poachers get reported.
- LS Water & Power: crews of up to 4 fix streetlights, cabinets, water mains, meters and substations, each with its own minigame. Mind the live wires. When the grid goes down the whole city goes dark, and so do some alarms and cameras. Apply at City Hall.
🪖 Merryweather & Gruppe 6
- Merryweather Docks HQ: a full company building with lobby, armory, locker room, break room, medical bay, firing range and motor pool
- Range drills at HQ train Marksmanship
- Bring up to 6 AI operators on an op. They ride with you, get out when you do, and can be killed.
- Air Wing: a helipad base, pilot ratings earned with check flights, air support and air contracts, and fast-rope insertions from any helicopter
- Police get 911 calls when armed company aircraft fly over the city
- Gruppe 6 casino work moved into the complex under the casino. Trucks drive down the service ramp into the loading bay.
🎰 Casino
- Blackjack against the house (with splits) and roulette, with dealers at the tables
- Slots: you sit properly on the stool, plus auto-spin and sounds
- A front desk for memberships and the Master Penthouse, and a bar
🏠 Homes & nightlife
- Home cooking: stock your fridge (food keeps longer in it), cook 30 recipes at the stove with a minigame for each step, and eat well for a buff. Groceries at 24/7 and LTD (Left Alt on the clerk > Buy groceries). Kitchens are being set up home by home, so not every interior has one yet.
- Couch: sit, lie down or play video games. Being at home calms you down.
- Pillbox lower level: a new street-level Emergency Department with ER bays, two ORs, CT, X-ray and the morgue, and elevators to the main floor and the roof
- Strip club booths for groups: bottle service, toasts, split bills, table dances and celebrations
🗺️ Map & menus
- Dark postal map on the pause map and the radar.
/postal 8239sets a route to a postal;/postalalone shows where you are. - 45 custom map blips for businesses and jobs
- New pause menu (ESC) in the server's look; P still opens the map
- New look for the radial menu
🚗 Driving & flying
- Helicopters and planes are faster and handle better
- Cars have more power and don't bog down at launch; tuned AWD cars stop understeering
- Smoother, smarter traction and stability control
- Freeway traffic actually runs around 75 mph, and AI drivers hold their lane when you come up fast behind them
- Sirens work on lit vehicles outside the emergency class, and Merryweather has its own tones
🔫 Weapons & inventory
- Recoil kicks once per shot, aim sway is much lower for new shooters, and you can hold middle mouse to zoom while aiming
- Holstering no longer throws your camera at the ground
- Your own gunfire stresses you less as your Marksmanship grows
- Worn backpacks carry things, and duty belts get their own Duty Belt slot and panel
- The weapon card only shows when you actually draw, swap or holster
🖐️ Left Alt
- Dots sit on the thing, not above it
- About 50 interaction points moved to where they belong: the LS Water & Power yard, the casino exit, Gruppe 6 casino posts, prison bunks, mechanic storage, the hunting lodge and more
🐛 Fixed
- Job helicopters couldn't spawn
- The helicopter camera did nothing in some add-on helicopters
- Solo blackjack and roulette didn't start
- The City Hall clerk vanished after a relog
- Merryweather convoys and asset transfers failed at the first step
- Police sometimes got "Could not offer a callout"
- P sometimes needed two presses to open the map
- Garage sign-outs failed without saying why
- Evidence booked into the lab again was examined twice
- Gruppe 6 run sheets asked for totals the run didn't have
🗑️ Removed
- The old jail (replaced by Bolingbroke)
- The old weed, drug, store robbery, house robbery and scrapyard scripts (replaced by the new systems)
- The old police helicopter camera
- Parachute packs as storage