Yo reaching out as I've been speedrunning this game the past week and trying to make time I'm struggling to work out how to get the no Boss Exec1, labbing it I assumed it would be similar to Ballroom but no luck. If anyone has come about any knowlege on how this is achieved it would greatly demistify future runs...Thanks!

This is also something I've not managed to pull off on my runs yet. I believe only one runner has been able to consistently pull that strat off? (need to check), but aside from watching their run I have no idea what the specifics are

By the looks of it you need to leave a certain number of enemies alive in the level, take out the group of people with the hostage, and then clear out the rest of the level to stop the boss from being able to spawn.

I don't know the technical specifics, but the only thing I can think of is that this game has a limit to how many characters can be in a level at one time (possibly due to a memory limit?), so by leaving a set number of enemies or hostages active you can stop the game being able to load more in, and can then quickly get the counter down to zero to trigger the bomb to spawn.

I think this might be why Ballroom is so consistent is because you have so many hostages loaded in and not many terrorists. So by being careful and only taking out the small group of terrorists you can avoid triggering the rest of the enemies, get the counter to zero and end the level early because it can't spawn anymore. (possibly)

Executive 1 starts with 18 Terrorists, he enters the table room and kills 5 terrorists and the hostage seems scripted to always die.

The number drops to 14 and then immediately jumps back up to 18 again with another lift load of terrorists to replace them.

He then leaves through the nearest door and then kills 3 more on the way to the conference room. The counter on screen is at 15 enemies.

This room has 10 terrorists 1 hostage and once the room is cleared the terrorist count goes down to 9. By the time he leaves the room another lift load dumps (2?) more into the map, and by then it's just a case of clearing up the remaining 10 enemies to reach 0.

What makes this level less consistent than Ballroom seems to be down to routing, RNG and speed.

The NPC's in this game like to wander around and can often be inconsistent in where they wander off to, so this run here had some very good RNG to get all the remaining goons bunched up in one area and not have to hunt them down.

Also how grenades behave in this game is inconsistent too, so clearing that room with 2 was very good.

The counter theory seems right. Round start, I run left break the glass kill the first goon in table room, jump on the table throw a granade right, then left (that hostage can be saved), through the door's, kill the first goon then two lifts go down, I've been experimenting running to throw a granade to clear the goons far left first because after the conference room these guys can sometimes wonder into the kitchen. Then kill the two goons outside of the conference room > strafe right to left shooting two rows of chairs as you did waiting for the goons to gather and throw one to two granades > run out left side turn right kill those two goons that like to enter the conference room far side > clear the hallway.

It's at consistent as I've got it but I've noticed even if I've killed these guys fast the boss still comes down sometimes and it's still rare I get the exploit.

Hopefully this can be worked on and I'll post again if I figure out something consistent, thanks for the information man