Vol. 90 — Ready or Not Development Briefing

Welcome to the 90th edition of our Ready or Not Development Briefing, Thursday July 30th, 2026. 

In this briefing we are introducing the Mission Editor, a new feature allowing granular tweaking of gameplay variables within an existing mission, with a particular focus on customizing non-playable characters.  

The Mission Editor will be releasing for free along with bug fixes to all platforms in the coming weeks as part of the v1.5 Update for Ready or Not. 

This is our initial introduction launch for the Mission Editor feature; be on the lookout for improvements to Mission Editor in the future, along with more bug fixes and content for the game. 

Note: These development briefings serve to keep you in the loop about parts of our ongoing support for Ready or Not. However, the briefings do not encompass everything that we’re working on at a given moment. Please keep in mind that the content in our development briefings may still be a work in progress and subject to change. 

The Mission Editor is a precise modification tool that allows you to custom tailor Suspect, Civilian, SWAT AI, and player along with some other gameplay related variables for a given mission. This feature is arriving in the coming weeks to all platforms in the free v1.5 update for Ready or Not. 

Suspect AI modifiers make up the brunt of the content in Mission Editor. These modifiers allow you to fine tune behaviors and combat effectiveness of suspects. Appearance presets from other missions can also be selected, including their associated voice-over sets. Note that mission-specific characters who are objectives, named, or otherwise required may remain. 

\[Image below: Body of a paramilitary suspect spotted by the flashlight of a SWAT officer on Thank You, Come Again] 

For players that want more elusive encounters, suspects can be assigned the cowardly archetype so that they are more likely to hide behind or under objects in missions. If you want to go against a more coordinated threat, assign the ‘tactical’ archetype to suspects. 

If multiple archetypes are included within a mission’s archetype pool, the mission will randomly use archetypes from that pool for eligible AI— subject to mission-specific rules and required characters. The same archetype pooling approach is present in Civilian AI customization too. 

\[Image below: Suspect from the Carriers of the Vine mission surrendering on Buy Cheap, Buy Twice] 

Choose the pool of primary weapons that your suspects are using from an M249 to a bolt action rifle, and which backup weapon they may have. If you’re comfortable maintaining a 21-foot distance, assign your suspects knives, bomb vests (the total number of which in a mission can be changed), irrational archetype, and no primary weapons. 

\[Image below: Suspect from Sinuous Trail seen on the Leviathan mission with an M249 light machinegun and explosive vest]  Perhaps you only want one suspect on 23 Megabytes A Second, you can do that too. Or on another level you might like a manhunt by setting maximum civilians, but just one suspect that is also using the cowardly archetype with a concealed weapon. 

SWAT AI modifiers are geared toward modifying the combat effectiveness of your SWAT NPC officers, although containing less variables than Suspect AI. These modifiers include SWAT visual stimulus reaction time, Morale Damage by SWAT Activity, and Morale Damage by SWAT Activity Multiplier. Examples of SWAT activities that cause morale damage include compliance commands, less lethal weapons, kicking in doors, gunfire, and ordinance usage. 

Civilians share a subset of the modifiers available for suspects, without the same emphasis on combat. These modifiers will let you change how compliant civilians are and adjust their civilian behavior archetypes.

For example, the prisoner archetype will result in civilians being pre-restrained upon entering a level. This can be used as a quality of life measure for players who want runs with less civilians to restrain, or to emulate hostage-type scenarios. 

The amount of player health can be modified, as can the max number of bandages. With this setup, players can choose to enhance how hardcore a given mission is. With only 50hp, any shot that defeats armor could be immediately lethal to a player. With only one bandage, players only have one opportunity to stem a bleeding wound. 

A select number of miscellaneous mission-related modifiers can be changed too, which affect how the mission presents itself or how much complexity is offered. 

The length of bomb timers in a bomb threat mission, multi-selectable door trap types, enabling/disabling default character spawns, max locked doors percentage, max open door percentage, and chance of suspect suicide can be modified. 

Being able to change the maximum amount of doors open can create an increased challenge due to suspects having increased sightlines throughout the level. This contrasts with the max locked doors, which generally can be a quality of life change since you won’t need to make as many forced entries. 

A video containing a short preview of some of the fixes coming in v1.5/1.5.1 went up on our YouTube channel today. This video only contains a handful of the fixes that will be included in the full changelog:

The Mission Editor affords you increased replayability and unique gameplay situations through its deep modifier suite for AI characters and gameplay variables.  

From swapping appearance of suspects of one level with another, giving all suspects knives or M249s, tweaking the behavior of civilians, to giving yourself only 50hp, there are countless new ways to engage with missions with this feature. 

Get ready to create, save, and share edited missions with your squad mates and the community in the v1.5 update for RoN, arriving in the coming weeks.  

Once again, this is our initial introduction launch for the Mission Editor feature; be on the lookout for improvements to Mission Editor in the future, along with more bug fixes and content for the game. 

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