1. Lobby Setup

Recommended teams:

• 1–2 Criminals
• Everyone else plays Police
• With 2 criminals, they may work together or separately.

Police Vehicles

• Primarily A Class
• Maximum 2 S1 Interceptors
• Interceptors are intended for high-speed pursuit support, not general patrol.

Criminal Vehicles

• A Class only

Lobby Settings

• Simulation Damage: ON
• HUD elements that reveal player locations should be disabled wherever possible.
• Mini-map/player markers/name tags: OFF where settings allow.
• Players may not use HUD/map information that would reveal another player’s position when they otherwise wouldn’t know it.

The goal is to make police find criminals through dispatch information, observation, communication, and searching, rather than player markers.

2. Objective

Criminals

Commit a fictional crime, evade responding police, and reach the designated Safehouse.

The criminal must travel through 2 or 3 predetermined waypoints before reaching the Safehouse.

Reaching the Safehouse after completing the required waypoints is an immediate Criminal Win.

Police

Locate the suspect using information supplied by Dispatch, pursue them, and stop their vehicle before they reach the Safehouse.

Police win when every active criminal has been caught or disabled.

3. Staging Phase

Every round begins with a 5-minute staging period.

Police

Police may spread themselves around the open world however they choose.

They can:

• Patrol major roads
• Sit near towns
• Watch highways
• Position near intersections
• Stage interceptors strategically
• Simply drive around

Police should not know where the crime will occur.

Criminals

Criminals use this period to:

• Choose their starting area
• Position themselves for their fictional crime
• Plan their escape route
• Prepare their vehicle

NO PURSUITS DURING STAGING

For the entire five minutes, police cannot pursue a criminal.

Even if a cop happens to see the criminal’s vehicle, they must treat it like ordinary traffic.

Police may not deliberately follow, shadow, surround, or camp the criminal before the crime occurs.

4. The Crime

There are no required in-game objectives. Crimes are roleplayed.

Examples:

• Gas station robbery
• Store robbery
• Bank robbery
• Vehicle theft
• Burglary
• Cargo theft
• Other agreed-upon scenario

Once the criminal commits the crime, Dispatch reports it over voice chat.

Example:

DISPATCH: Reports of an armed robbery at the gas station south of Mulegé. Suspect fled in a black BMW sedan. Last seen heading northbound.

Dispatch should provide information that witnesses could reasonably know:

Location + Vehicle description + Last known direction

Dispatch should not continuously reveal the criminal’s position.

5. Police Response

Once Dispatch broadcasts the crime, the round becomes active.

Police now decide individually whether to:

• Respond directly to the crime scene
• Search nearby roads
• Hold their current position
• Cover highways
• Watch likely escape routes
• Attempt an interception

This is intentionally a strategic decision.

If ten police officers immediately swarm the reported location, the criminal may slip through another part of the map completely uncontested.

6. Identifying the Criminal

Police cannot treat information they shouldn’t know as fact.

If Dispatch reports:

“Black A-Class BMW, last seen northbound”

then police are looking for a black BMW, not a player name floating somewhere across the map.

Police may communicate sightings:

“Possible suspect, black BMW westbound.”

Once positively identified:

“I’ve got the suspect. Westbound highway. Starting pursuit.”

Other units may then respond based on that information.

If police lose the suspect, they must actually search for them again.

7. Pursuit Rules

Once police identify the criminal, normal pursuit begins.

Police may:

• Chase
• Coordinate units
• Attempt rolling roadblocks
• Box the suspect in
• Block intersections
• Deploy the S1 interceptors
• Predict the suspect’s route
• Attempt controlled vehicle contact

However, this is Cops & Robbers, not Wreckfest.

Police should be trying to stop the car, not simply ram it repeatedly until simulation damage destroys it.

Strategic contact is allowed. Mindless high-speed ramming is not.

8. S1 Interceptors

The lobby may have a maximum of 2 S1 police cars.

Their speed advantage makes them special-purpose units.

They should primarily be used for:

• Catching a fleeing suspect
• Highway interception
• Getting ahead of a pursuit
• Setting up roadblocks
• Rejoining a pursuit after losing ground

The rest of the police force remains A Class, matching the criminal’s vehicle class.

This gives criminals a reasonable chance against individual patrol cars while making an organized police response increasingly dangerous.

9. Simulation Damage

Simulation Damage is ON.

Crashes therefore matter.

Both sides should drive with some degree of self-preservation.

A criminal who destroys their own vehicle during an escape can lose the round.

Police also shouldn’t treat their cruisers as disposable battering rams.

If a police vehicle becomes realistically unusable due to damage, that officer is out of the active pursuit.

10. Getting Caught

A criminal is caught under either of these conditions:

Vehicle Stop

Police successfully force the criminal’s vehicle to a stop and prevent them from continuing the escape.

Examples include:

• Successfully boxing the vehicle in
• Pinning it against an obstacle
• Blocking its escape
• Otherwise bringing the pursuit to a definitive stop

A momentary stop during a collision does not count if the criminal can immediately continue driving.

Vehicle Disabled

The criminal’s vehicle receives enough simulation damage that it can no longer reasonably continue the pursuit.

If the vehicle is effectively destroyed or incapable of escaping, the criminal is caught.

11. Arrested Players

There is no respawn or jail mechanic.

Once caught:

The criminal goes silent in voice chat for the remainder of the round.

They cannot:

• Give information to another criminal
• Report police locations
• Warn their teammate
• Act as a spotter
• Help Dispatch
• Influence the ongoing round

They are effectively out of play.

This is especially important during two-criminal rounds.

12. Waypoints & Safehouse

Before the round, 2 or 3 mandatory waypoints are established.

The criminal must reach them in order:

Crime → Waypoint 1 → Waypoint 2 → [Waypoint 3] → Safehouse

This prevents the criminal from simply taking the shortest possible route directly across the map.

Waypoints can deliberately force the pursuit through different environments:

• City
• Highway
• Mountain roads
• Rural roads
• Desert
• Dirt roads

The police do not need to know the criminal’s exact route.

They know the ultimate objective is to escape, but they must determine where the criminal is going through observation and coordination.

Once all required waypoints have been reached, successfully reaching the Safehouse ends the round immediately.

CRIMINAL WIN.

13. Two-Criminal Rounds

With two criminals, both players participate in the same scenario.

They can:

• Commit the crime together
• Split immediately afterward
• Travel together
• Use different routes
• Attempt to divide police resources
• Reunite later

Police must decide how many units to dedicate to each suspect.

Each criminal must individually complete the required route and reach the Safehouse.

If one criminal is caught, that player immediately goes silent.

The remaining criminal continues alone.

Win Condition

Full Criminal Victory: Both criminals reach the Safehouse.

Full Police Victory: Both criminals are caught.

Split Result: One escapes and one is caught.

14. Information Rules

The core rule:

IF YOUR CHARACTER WOULDN’T KNOW IT, YOU DON’T KNOW IT.

No using:

• Player markers
• Name tags
• Map information
• Another player’s stream
• Spectator information
• Eliminated-player information
• Other unintended methods of tracking someone

Police information should flow naturally:

Witness → Dispatch → Police → Police radio communication

Once visual contact is lost, officers only know the suspect’s last known location and direction.

That uncertainty is part of the game.

15. Sportsmanship Rules

The lobby depends more on everyone playing along than rigid enforcement.

Criminals

Don’t:

• Exploit inaccessible terrain solely to make pursuit impossible
• Intentionally abuse game mechanics
• Pretend a destroyed vehicle is still perfectly usable
• Ignore agreed-upon waypoints

Police

Don’t:

• Hunt criminals during staging
• Use unavailable information to locate suspects
• Deliberately camp the crime location before Dispatch
• Turn every pursuit into a demolition derby
• Use S1 cars beyond the two-interceptor limit

Everyone

Play the scenario, not the loopholes.

If something weird happens that the rules don’t cover, use whatever ruling produces the fairest and most entertaining pursuit.