After a drug war...

[Docfaustino]

Hey all. This may be completely old, not sure. Appears you can sort of play Free Mode offline in TBOGT. Coincidentally, my XBL shut off as I was doing this. I had just completed the Northwood drug war, which involved killing some gang members at a dock and taking their stash. As we all know, Armando and Henrique are hostile during a drug war mission. Any hostile pedestrian that comes after you, will be shot up with their .44s. Taking advantage of this, we went down into the subway. I was careful to only push each NPC once, enough to make them hostile, and get A and H to murder them for it. Eventually I decided to push my luck. Went into Perestroika and blew the place up as best I could, with 3 grenades. No wanted level. Beat up some triads, one of them even got stuck in a wall on Diamond St (I was able to knock him in there with a punch). No wanted level.

 

By now I decided to phone the cops, and see if shooting at them would make any difference. I get the message, "I

'm sorry, but all our peacekeepers are busy filling quotas or fooling with paperwork. Please call back later." The result is 2 bodyguards who will attack any hostile NPCs, and no repercussions for them or for you. Is this a known exploit? Thanks.

[GTA Phreak]

Normally the wanted level will be capped at 2 *'s during the 2nd part of a drugwar (an exception is the police trap variety with automatic 4*). Also the traffic level will be reduced.

But I don't think I ever noticed a drugwar with no wanted level, - it is definitely not a general feature/exploit.

What number of wars have you done ? (maybe it's only the early ones)

 

[AlexGTAGamer]

I haven't found this, yet another good find.

[Docfaustino]

That was my 16th drug war. I know generally it's possible to get up to 2 stars during a drug war mission, but the fact that after using an inventory full of grenades, I got nothing, and I was unable to phone the police department makes me think somethings up. Actually I'm going for 100% completion, so I'll let you know if the rest of the drug wars act up.

[jnzooger]

This is something I've known for a while, but I thought was general knowledge... Maybe I was wrong.

[Finn 7 five 11]

No cops? Boo Yah!

[GTA Phreak]

Ok, - I found it too. There is a variety of drugwar where cops are absent or rather mostly absent.

The wanted level is still capped at 2, but with cops absent and civilians (just as you) unable to call the cops it is pretty hard to get a wanted level at all.

You will however still get 2*'s for trespassing on forbidden areas, an once you do the cops come after you.

Strangely there are still cops at the toll booth's, so around those it's business as usual.

 

In general it is hard to find anyone to pick a fight with though as the ped and traffic levels are way down (and in the end I crashed the game)

 

[Docfaustino]

360, Original EFLC copy.

 

There are 4 kinds of drug wars.

1. Normal amount of cops, normal amount of traffic during the war

2. Normal amount of cops, low amount of traffic during the war

3. No cops, normal amount of traffic during the war

4. No cops, low amount of traffic during the war

 

Once you complete the drug war, there will be a very low amount of traffic in the streets. Cars will still be parked along the road as usual, but hardly any will be driving. Also, there will be about half as many peds as usual. In ped-heavy areas you'll find pretty much exactly half. In low-population areas, you'll almost always find none. Subways, and landmarks are a good place to look for peds.

 

No matter what version of the drug war you find yourself completing, you'll be able to tell right away how many cops there are. GTA Phreak, I got a different result on the tollbooths. For me it seemed, if you drive through a tollbooth and get no wanted level, that's your indicator that the cops are absent. If not, cops are set to normal. Also, Armando and Henrique will always be hostile as long as the drug war is technically still going. It is only over when you reach the dropoff destination. You can put that off indefinitely as long as you don't die, and during that time, if ANYONE tries to harm you, they'll pump him full of lead. They'll only harm anyone until their health bar is fully low. Even if the downed pedestrian is still blinking, TECHNICALLY alive, A and H will leave them alone. Also if during the actual WAR for the drugs, if you get a wanted level, this means you were unlucky and cops are set to normal. Wanted level will ALWAYS be capped at 2. So yeah, that's my final thesis

 

GTA Phreak, I'm gonna go test the forbidden areas thing, sounds neat

[GTA Phreak]

There's at least 1 more type

 

5: The vehicle is a trap and you will instantly get 4*'s when you interact with it in any way (5*'s if the vehicle is a boat)

The wanted level is definitely not capped at 2, even after you evade the initial ones. I'm not sure if it's capped at 4/5.

 

A drugwar has 3 phases: 1) Before you get to the war 2) when you get within a certain distance of the target and during the war 3) from when you pick up the drugs and until you reach the drop off point.

 

Phase 2 will fail if you go too far away from from the drugs.

 

All my observations is from phase 3 where you can move freely. If the drugs are in a vehicle then you will fail if the vehicle is destroyed, but you can just leave the vehicle somewhere safe and use something else (the vehicle will stay and be marked on the map, but you can go as far away from it as you like)

 

Even if there are cops at the toll booth it is not 100% certain that you'll get a * for barging through, so stop and look or barge through a couple of times to make sure. The couple of times I've explored during "no cops" drugwar, there has always been cops at the toll booths.

Also with no cops, you will still occasionally get a wanted level. For example running amok with an APC in Star Junction will eventually get their attention.

 

With the restricted areas beware that they can behave differently. For instance the wanted level is totally off at the airport during races (perfect for stunting around with a Nitrous car, while it lasts), whereas the CC area behaves normally during races. I haven't tested the prison much.