Hostile Takeover, introduced as a part of the Texas Heat campaign, had a potential to supersede the very outdated Shadow Raid. Initial testing showed that Hostile takeover could be completed in less than 2 minutes with the help of an ECM rush. Nowadays, Hostile Takeover can be completed in as little as 69 nice seconds on average!

Shadow Raid can sometimes be very slow. With Hostile Takeover, that time has become much quicker and a lot more consistent, resulting in faster rotation times overall!

Blue is the only one to bring along a Copycat-Yakuza setup, to be able to transport the NEO-2 a lot quicker near the end of the heist! On top of that, HOST does NOT do SW - they will be in charge of activating Stockholm Syndrome to ensure an easier heist completion for both Blue and Yellow's roles!

Why? This is because a civillian that you need can move around in the geometry of the map. In the briefing screen, the heist isn't actually frozen, so after some time (around 20 seconds) the civillian can move around the map and run away from the initial spawnpoint! Marcmb has made a video about this specific situation, as well as the KC guard which will be mentioned in the HOST section too.

Taking a closer look at the two heists, Hostile Takeover offers much better heist completion rewards out of the gate! To make things easier to compare, I decided to run both heists a few times on my own and compare them to each other. While Hostile Takeover can be a bit harder to learn, it offers much better rewards for completion for about the same completion time! It also offers a much higher Stealth Bonus, which will be useful in the rotation.

This role is done by HOST!

As mentioned at the start of the guide, HOST will not be upkeeping SW - instead, they will be using a different set of weapons: the Flamethrower Mk.1 primary for destroying the lab equipment, as well as a secondary pistol (as well as the Equilibrium skill, Basic) for faster switching/interaction times, and helping Yellow with the Library role afterwards.

HOST in this instance will place down the first and second ECM's of the heist, following the normal lobby order.

After placing the first ECM, HOST will need to switch to the flamethrower, preferably when jumping down the stairs (as there will be no speed penalty).

There is also a guard, which will drop the keycard necessary to enter the laboratory:


After the heist begins, he will spawn near the laboratory, either behind the desk (earlier screenshot), or next to the keycard reader. He will move from his spawn point to a few areas in front of the closer lab entrance (but no further), and as such it's very easy to spot and kill him. His patrol points consist of:

1. In front of the keycard panel
   
2. Next to the white pick-up truck
   

He may sometimes wander away from his patrol area, for example next to the benches[cdn.discordapp.com], the metal boxes[cdn.discordapp.com] or next to a wooden sign near the entrance[cdn.discordapp.com], however I believe this behavior is not intended as there are no patrol points set up in those locations by the developers!

Additionally, if the heist is started quick enough, the guard will not move away from their starting point, allowing for a quicker location and kill!

After killing the keycard guard and accessing the laboratory, HOST will now need to destroy 8 microscope sets inside the lab:
During the destruction of microscopes with the flamethrower, the lead scientist in remain in one place for Yellow performing the Library role, as Stockholm Syndrome will be constantly refreshed.

They each take 3 damage ticks to destroy, and using the flamethrower will ensure that the civillians will stay down for the Library role.

After destroying all the microscopes, HOST will then head into the open library with Yellow, and start searching the first bookshelf in the corner to the right, in a counter-clockwise direction (so opposite of Yellow):

This role is done by Blue!

Blue will be the only player bringing along a Copycat-Yakuza (Cards: 4/4/4/4/12) setup, with a pistol instead of their usual shotgun secondary, as well as the Equilibrium and Forced Friendship skills. This is to ensure the fastest switch weapon switch time, so that Blue is able to activate and keep up SW for the team as soon as they mask up and the first ECM is placed!

As soon as Blue enters the main office building through the front doors, they will have to go up through the first flight of stairs...

...and then straight ahead into the office space!


From there, Blue will have to:

1. Start hacking their active PC's:
   
   It is recommended to jump over the PC desks after finishing the hacking interaction, it's wasteful to walk around them!
   
   I recommend that Blue starts with the two PC's closest to and to the relative left windows, then moving to the other side and starting to check the PC's starting from the one closest to the wall, like so:
   
   
2. While hacking the PC's, check the office nameplates for Gabriel Santiago (a voicemail, which is one of the objectives, will be present in the room with said nameplate):
   

If, during Blue's first objective, the correct PC becomes marked in their area:

Just like in the screenshot above, point out that the PC section is done in chat, and there's no need to look for the PC any further!

After Blue finishes both of their roles upstairs, they will need to head back downstairs and then right into the event room, where the NEO-2 is located:

When Blue reaches the event area, they will need to tie down the present civillian (woman in black suit), making sure NOT to kill her in any way, then have her follow the player in a path that will go close to the front of the display case:

As soon as the display case is opened, the civillian is no longer needed - Blue can safely SW on top of her, and focus on transporting the NEO-2 over to the van, located behind the SERA building!

This role is done by Red!

Similar to Blue, Red should also bring along a pistol and the EQUILIBRIUM skill instead of their usual secondary, which will be extremely helpful for shorter interaction delays.

Red, upon arriving at 2F and first immediately heading straight to the East Offices, has to search the rooms on the same floor for:

1. Active PC's to hack (The same search process as with 1F + NEO-2 - if the PC is found on 2F, it should be called out with a "g" in chat by Red!)
   
   
   It is recommended to jump over the PC desks after finishing the hacking interaction, it's wasteful to walk around them!
2. The voicemail in Gabriel's office (The same search process as with 1F + NEO-2 - look for the name Gabriel Santiago on the plates next to the offices! This will be slightly more difficult however since both offices are further away from the PC's Red will hack)
   
3. In the OTHER (the West Offices) area, a small recording device that's located inside Rainey's desk
   

After finding two out of the three blackmail items (the e-mail from the PC, and the voice recording), Red has to head to Rainey's CEO office, and activate the recorder, show in the screenshot above!

Why not go right first instead? The reason why Red should go left first, which would allow us to take the CEO's recording early, is to be able to jump out from the office when all the roles have completed their tasks. To help with that, the devs helpfully placed a billboard triangle setup - which is tall enough to not have anyone to go down, thanks to the non-linear fall damage system of PAYDAY 2 - which means Red can just jump down, directly to where the escape area is!

This role is done by Yellow!

They enter through the FAR entrance, as opposed to the one that's next to spawn:

Yellow by far has the simplest role out of all the players. They only need to get the RFID tag[cdn.discordapp.com] from the lead scientist[cdn.discordapp.com], and then use it to open the library door:

Inside of the library, there will be several interactable bookshelves:

Yellow from this point on will want to start to search through every single bookcase, going in a clockwise direction from the closest bookcase from the entrance.

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCE, EVEN IF IT SEEMS FAST, SHOULD THE DOOR TO THE IMMEDIATE LEFT OF THE LIBRARY ENTRANCE BE LOCKPICKED OPEN AS IT JUST SLOWS DOWN THE HEIST A LOT MORE THAN NEEDED!

Depending on what stage are the 2F and 1F + NEO-2 roles, there will be two possibilties to how the heist goes.

As soon as two sets of research documents are spawned, the searching interaction is disabled, and so both Yellow and HOST will want to start moving bags towards the golf cart, located near the entrance to the Library-side of the lab:

At this point, Yellow - after grabbing one of the four bags - should not go back into the library! HOST will throw over the other three bags!


Since only 4 bags of research are needed to activate the escape area, the other two that are dropped by the game are just left behind as they aren't necessary!

After 3 bags have been thrown into the golf cart, the first player to it should get in it and drive the golf cart around the back of the building towards the escape van. The last bag will be taken and secured by the other player!


As soon as two sets of research documents are spawned, the searching interaction is disabled, and so both Yellow and HOST will want to start moving bags towards the golf cart, located near the entrance to the Library-side of the lab.

At this point, Yellow - after grabbing one of the four bags - should not go back into the library! HOST will throw over the other three bags!

However, if Blue and Red are done with their blackmail roles at this point in the heist, there's a very big chance that they will join the other two players - therefore, the golf cart is completely skipped - the bags with the research documents will be thrown along the back of the building, where the slower variation would normally take the golf cart!

On top of that, Red will be taking a different path to get to the thrown bags faster, jumping out of the window of Rainey's office:

This guide is just a small part of the much bigger The Beginners' 5-Maps ReDUX[pastebin.com] guide, which will be put out to the public soon! I would also like to thank Synnef for help with the 2F section!

If anything is unreadable or unclear, please let me know in the comments below and I will do my best to explain it and update the guide ASAP!

Thanks for reading!

- Chari