Patrol Spawn Mechanics

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Guide on figuring out how Patrol Spawn Mechanics works in Helldivers 2 will allow Helldivers to make runs easier or more challenging depending on the actions taken in the mission.

There is a lot of confusion and frustration in the community regarding what feels like random or unfair enemy spawning behavior. This article will help to understand Enemy Spawn Mechanics better and realize what contributes toward enemy patrol spawns.

Types of Enemy Spawns

There are 4 different types of enemy based on how they are added into the game world:

• Static spawns. These are the enemies placed around Points of Interest, enemy Outposts, and Objectives (both Primary and Sub).
• Reinforcement spawns. These are the enemies that are in Dropships or come out of Bug Breaches.
• Fabricator/Nest spawns. These are created from Fabricators/Nests and unless aggro'd will generally just stand near their parent.
• Patrols.

Enemy Patrols

A patrol is a group of enemies that appear somewhere on the map at set intervals and then walk towards another point on the map. Their path will always have them cross very close or even directly on top of a Player's position at the moment the patrol is spawned. These enemies simply appear out of thin air. If you look at a patrol and "Mark" it, your character will actually say, "Enemy Patrol". They are the only enemies on the map that will move around without an external influence. Patrols will despawn if they are able to successfully path off the edge of the map or if they get far enough away from all players.

Patrol Spawn Points and Tick Rate

How does patrol spawn, when and how often?
The server possesses a "Tick Rate," which refers to the frequency at which it updates the game's state. For simplicity, let's assume the server performs a "Tick" every 1 second, although in reality, the Tick Rate is likely much faster. Each "Tick" produces a certain number of "Spawn Points," which accumulate in a spawn points pool. Once this pool reaches a predetermined threshold, a patrol is spawned, and the pool is subsequently emptied. The number of Spawn Points generated per Tick and the threshold needed to spawn a patrol can be influenced by various factors.

Default Spawn Points Values

The base for the further calculations will be solo timers that were measured by the community.

Enemy Patrol Base Spawn Timers (in seconds) for a Solo player

Difficulty	War Front	Baseline	War Front	Baseline
1	Automaton	192	Terminid	Unable due to TCS missions
2	Automaton	255	Terminid	Unable due to TCS missions
3	Automaton	255	Terminid	174
4	Automaton	240	Terminid	174
5	Automaton	215	Terminid	155
6	Automaton	200	Terminid	136
7	Automaton	185	Terminid	125
8	Automaton	160	Terminid	113
9	Automaton	110	Terminid	99

Multipliers Speeding up Enemy Patrol Spawns

Additional players modify these baselines by speeding up the patrol spawn timers, it can be calculated by multiplying Base value for the Players Modifier.

Additional Players Patrol Spawn time modifier

Amount of players	Modifier Multiplier
2 Players	0.8333
3 Players	0.75
4 Players	unknown

Following activities either increase the Spawn Point Generation or decrease the Threshold, speeding up enemy patrols as a result:

• Players being in proximity of Primary Objectives, Secondary Objectives, Enemy Outposts and the Extraction point
• Clearing out enemy Outposts (Fabricators/Nests)
• Completing the Primary Objective
• Player Reinforcement

To clear up some misconception and myths in the community, following actions have NO effect on the patrol spawn timers:

• Time spent in mission
• Engaging in combat
• Stratagem usage
• Breaches/Bot Drops (with one exception that is detailed further down)
• Planet
• Mission Type. All of this data only applies to "Regular" (ICBM, Sabotage Supplies, Purge Hatcheries, etc) missions. We have done no testing against Eradication, Blitz or Civilian Evacuation missions. These mission types are almost impossible to get clean data and aren't really relevant to this anyways.
• Being in proximity of Points of Interest
• Using Terminals or interacting with Objective elements such as turning the radar dish or loading artillery shells
• Completion of Secondary Objectives (with a caveat that is explained further down)

Areas of Influence and Heat Generation

Patrols Area of Influence infographics.

Certain elements in Helldivers 2 create an Area of Influence around them. When player enters that Area of Influence they will trigger the Spawn Points Generation multiplier of that area. We have identified the following elements that have this effect and each element has some nuance which will be covered later in the article:

• Primary Objectives (IE The ICBM Silo itself)
• Primary Subobjectives (IE ICBM Launch Codes or Reactivate Power Generator)
• Secondary Objectives - Stratagem Jammers, Crashed Datapods, Illegal Broadcast Towers, etc
• Enemy Outposts (Automaton Outposts/Terminid Nests). Light Outposts do NOT have an Area of Influence. Only Medium and Heavy do.
• Extraction Point

Being within an Area of Influence creates "Heat" and the effect of this Heat is to increase the amount of Spawn Points generated per Tick which means more frequent Patrols.

The center of the Area of Influence is the Element's icon on the map. The amount of Heat generated scales based on a Player's distance from that center. Within 50 meters, Heat Generation is at its maximum value and then it has a "Falloff" that extends out to 150 meters and the strength of the Heat Generation decreases by 1% per 1 meter. For example, if you are 100 meters from the Icon, the Heat Generation will be at 50% strength. At 75 meters, it's at 75% strength. At 125 meters, it's at 25% strength.

The vast majority of things that generate Heat have a maximum effect that increases spawn rates by 50%. There are some situations that increase it another 10% such as certain Secondary Objectives (Detector Tower or Stratagem Jammer for example) or Heavy Outposts.

Areas of Influence do not stack. If you are within overlapping Areas of Influence, only the one with the most Heat Generation applies.

The amount of Heat is calculated every Tick so as you move closer/further from an element producing Heat, the amount of Spawn Points generated per Tick is constantly changing.

For example, using our Baseline of 240 seconds, if you spotted a freshly spawned Patrol while outside any area of Influence and then moved towards the center of an Area of Influence and then stayed there, your next Patrol would spawn between 158 and 240 seconds. If you then stayed within the full strength Area of Influence, you should expect a Patrol after 158 seconds. Finally, if you either left the Area of Influence or stopped its generation, you would again expect the next Patrol between 158 and 240 seconds. Heat Generation can be stopped but the conditions under which this occurs is specific to each of the different types of things that are generating it and will be detailed in a separate section.

Clearing Outposts

Enemy Outposts are a distinct type of map element that comes in Light, Medium and Heavy variants. The number of Outposts varies from mission to mission at the same difficulty. Destroying these Outposts will result in a popup message indicating "AREA SECURED" and provide the player with Requisition Slips and Experience. Only Medium and Heavy Outposts produce an Area of Influence and therefore Heat. Light Outposts have no effect or one that is so small that it is negligible. Destroying too many Outposts causes a reduction in the Threshold required to spawn patrols, making them appear more often.

Destroying a lot of Outposts means more enemies? Destruction of an Enemy Outpost also removes its Area of Influence from the world. This means that the global spawn rate might go up but being in those areas of the map no longer increases your Heat. Its perfectly fine to clear outposts that are in a players way, and it will be beneficial in terms of the patrol spawns.

Destroying ALL outposts on the map results in the Threshold being multiplied by 0.85. This means patrols spawn ~17.5% faster. Using our Baseline of 240 seconds per patrol, it would become 204 seconds.

You can safely destroy 50% of the Outposts with no impact. The type (Light, Medium, Heavy) of Outpost does not matter.
Once you cross 50%, the strength of the impact scales in a linear fashion.
This Threshold reduction persist for the remainder of the mission

For example, if you spawn into a map with 8 Outposts, you can safely destroy 4 of these with no consequences. When you destroy the 5th outpost, the strength of the Threshold reduction is at 25% or ~4% faster patrols. When you destroy the 6th Outpost, it goes up to 50% strength or ~8% faster patrols.

Primary Objective

Completion of the Primary Objective has by far the biggest impact on the frequency of Enemy Patrol spawns. As soon as you complete the Primary Objective, the Threshold gets multiplied by 0.275 meaning you are receiving Patrols almost 4 times as often. Using our Baseline value of 240 seconds, this gets reduced all the way to 66 seconds.

Objectives Heat AoI

Patrols Objective AoI Comparison

Patrols Objective AoI

As discussed above, certain elements on the map produce an "Area of Influence" and being inside this generates "Heat" that quickens the spawn rate. The way Primary (Both Main and Subobjectives) and Secondary objectives generate their Area of Influence is kind of complicated. If a location has static spawns attached to it and the Objective is in an "Active" state meaning it hasn't been completed, it will generate Heat as long both these conditions are true:

• The static Enemy spawns are still alive
• The objective is still active

If either condition isn't met, no Area of Influence exists. The static spawns that are relevant to this are only the ones in the "Main" area for the location and do not include the spawns in outlying structures. Taking out those Enemies will allow to lower Heat generation of the Objective area.

If a location does NOT have static spawns attached to it (for example Crashed Datapod or SEAF Artillery), the location generates an Area of Influence until the objective is completed.

However, there exists an exception to these rules and it is best illustrated by the behavior of Detector Towers and Stratagem Jammers (along with other Secondary Objectives).

For Detector Towers and Stratagem Jammers, the main object(s) generating the Area of Influence are the Fabricators in these locations. Once the Fabricator is destroyed most of the Heat generation stops. However, the Detector Tower/Jammer itself ALSO generates an Area of Influence with a small Heat coefficient. While the Fabricators create Heat that increases the Spawn rate by 50%, the Objective structure itself does so with a 10% increase. These effects combine multiplicatively. Essentially, if you're going to attack these objectives, the Fabricators should be your first target.

Extraction Point

The Extraction Point is a special location in that it generates an Area of Influence at all times and there is no way to remove it. Even if you drop on the extraction at the start of the match and have done nothing else, you are being affected by its Area of Influence. Actually calling in Pelican-1 has no effect, the increased spawn rate is simply due to being near the Extraction Point. The Extraction Point generates Heat that results in a 50% increase in spawn rate.

Players Split Up

Patrols Split Groups Patrol Spawns

A Player Group can be defined as any set of players that are 75 meters or closer to at least one other player. A player by themselves is still considered a "Player Group", just with one member. Each Player Group maintains their own Spawn Point Pool and when that Player Group's pool is filled, it will spawn a Patrol for that Player Group.

For example, if 4 players were all over 75 meters away from any other player, you have essentially quadrupled the spawn rate because every Player Group is spawning their own separate Patrol.

Each Player Group can be affected by Areas of Influence independently. One Player Group being in an Area of Influence does not increase the Heat for any other Player Group. The modifiers for Outpost Destruction and Primary Objective completion are global and affect all Player Groups.

For example, let's consider a match with 2 players in it. If these players split up and Player 1 entered an Area of Influence but Player 2 did not, Player 1's Spawn Point pool would increase at a faster rate than Player 2's.

The behavior of what happens when players split and rejoin repeatedly is very difficult to test and get clean results for. There is also no information of the importance (if any) of Host vs Client.

Split Player Groups can result in Patrol Spawn on top of the other Player or in the close vicinity, as a result of being right next to another group spawn radius.

Patrols Spawn Locations

There is no specific Patrols spawn locations other than it will not spawn them outside of the map edge. They do not originate from enemy Outposts or POIs although they can spawn in them so it looks like they do.

As for where a Patrol will spawn when split up, testing showed that it does NOT spawn a Patrol for a particular Player Group actually near that Player Group. If two players about 400 meters apart consistently had spawn cycles where one player was receiving 2 patrols while the other player received none. It was hard to discern any pattern nor actions players could perform to affect this and assume it randomly chooses a location near ANY Player Group when spawning a patrol regardless of which Player Group it is assigned to.

Patrols Unit Compositions

Patrols have different "Templates" that they simply randomly choose from when created. Research couldnt identify any factors that either increase or decrease the intensity or composition of a Patrol.

Player Death and Reinforcement

A player dying in and by itself appears to have no effect but spending a Reinforcement Point might adds a random amount of Spawn Points to the current pool. It was tested by extensively by spotting a freshly spawned patrol, immediately killing someone and then reinforcing them and timing how long it took for the next patrol to appear. There was no discernable pattern in our results. Sometimes it would result in a drastic reduction in time (upwards of 6x faster) and sometimes it seemed to have almost no effect at all.

The main takeaway here is that Reinforcing dead players can drastically speed up the next Patrol Spawn. It wasnt possible to identify if spending more reinforcement points within a single spawn cycle has any effect given the random nature of it.

Although it was observed the next spawn being slower than expected, it was either faster or on time.

Bot Drops / Breaches

It appears that triggering a Bot Drop/Breach can introduce a short delay before the spawning of the next patrol. This delay only occurs if group is close to the next patrol spawning.

The longest amount of delay that can occur is ~1/6th of the Baseline value and this only occurs if you are in the last 5/6th of the current spawn cycle.

For example, if helldiver engaged a freshly spawned Patrol and this patrol called for reinforcements, the next Patrol will spawn exactly on time as the call happened too early in the spawn cycle. Using our Baseline of 240 seconds per Patrol, if I engaged some units that call for reinforcements 195 seconds into the current spawn cycle (or 81.25%), it will have no effect on the timing of the current Patrol cycle. However, if I were to trigger a reinforcement call at 235 seconds, the current spawn cycle will get delayed by ~40 seconds. The timing of the next cycle is not affected and will arrive after 240 seconds barring any other factors.

Mission Time

Verifying whether or not Time in and by itself had an impact on Spawn Rates was the first thing research team did as they would need to account for it going forward. As each new mechanics was discovered, it was retested against Time to see if it was affected. Research discovered that Time has no impact on anything related to Patrols.

• Does it impact the Baseline? No
• Does it impact Heat generation or Areas of Influence? No
• Does it change the impact of completing the Primary Objective? No
• Does it alter the intensity or composition of Patrols? Not that we can tell but this one is difficult to lock down due to Patrol composition being randomized.

Takeaway here is that general misconception of being in the mission longer makes spawn more frequent comes from sum of all multiplicators listed above, resulting in drastic spawn timers increase further in the mission.

Real Life Implementation and Examples

The following factors combine in a multiplicative fashion:

• Primary Objective Completion
• Area of Influence Heat
• Outpost Destruction's effect

Some examples:

If a solo player was in a Level 4 Automaton Mission, they have a Baseline time of 240 seconds.

• If they destroy all the Enemy Outposts, their baseline time shifts down to 204 seconds.
• If they then complete the Primary Objective, their baseline time shifts down to 56 seconds.
• If they then enter an Area of Influence at full strength (such as Extraction), they will receive a patrol every 37 seconds.

If a Duo was in a Level 4 Automaton Mission, they have a Baseline time of 200 seconds.

• They don't destroy over 50% of the enemy Outposts so there is no effect to their time from Outposts.
• If they complete the Primary Objective their baseline time shifts down to 55 seconds.
• If they then enter an Area of Influence at full strength (such as Extraction), they will receive a patrol every 36 seconds.
• If these players also destroyed 75% of the Outposts and were at Extraction, they will receive a patrol every 33 seconds.

If a solo player was in a Level 9 Automaton Mission, they have a Baseline time of 110 seconds.

• If they destroy all the Enemy Outposts, their baseline time shifts down to 93.5 seconds.
• If they then complete the Primary Objective, their baseline time shifts down to 25 seconds.
• If they then enter an Area of Influence at full strength (such as Extraction), they will receive a patrol every 17 seconds.

When we consider that these Patrol Spawns can be duplicated if Players are split into separate Player Groups, you can easily have an effective spawning speed that is less than 10 seconds.

When we also consider that even a single death can drastically shorten the time to the next patrol, it's easy to see how players get stuck in a "Death Spiral".

Impact of Localization Confusion Booster?

As of 3/14/24, the Localization Confusion Booster has no effect on the Baseline times or any of the mechanics described. It appears to not have any effect on Patrols whatsoever.

Localization Confusion increases the time between calls for Reinforcements (Bot Drops/Breaches). It does not delay the time for a particular enemy to call, it just lengthens the time before another call can occur.

Rough Testing on this looks to be a ~10% increase but getting a clean stable baseline on this is difficult due to relying on AI behavior.

Population Cap

It is difficult to determine hard numbers on this but there does exist a global "Population Cap" that will prevent the spawning of additional Patrols. If too many enemy units are active in the world, no patrols will be created until some enemies are killed or despawned.

Final Thoughts

Enemy Patrol Spawn Mechanics in Helldivers 2 is more complex than people think.

If Helldiver teams would like to go through the mission without too many patrols following tips should help:

• Stay in one group
• Finish Primary objective last
• Try not to destroy more than 50% Outposts
• Try to stay away from nests and objectives unless there is a plan to clear/finish them
• Clear enemies guarding the objectives fast to lower the heat buildup.

The original Research and writeup by /u/gergination from Reddit Post Let's talk about Patrols: An In Depth Analysis of Patrol Spawning Mechanics

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