It is true that many runners suffered from the fact that cop car strat is not consistent. Steps could be taken to have a ready-to-use police car every run.

If you are a runner who tired of the resetting loop, then you do have an alternative way to dodge the curve ball:

-Step 1: Drive as fast as possible to reach An Old Friend's marker at 20:41 -Step 2: Save your game at Ocean View Hotel -Step 3: Load your game

Then you will have a cop car right after you get out of the Ocean View. This happens every time, so the fear of not having a godly spawn will definitely be eliminated!

In conclusion, the most "salty part" (Quote of m00nchile) has now been facilitated. Without worrying about bad RNG, more runners will be tempted to conquer this game (At least I hope so!).

-P/s: This is certainly not my discovery, I have seen it somewhere I could not remember, and then I re-posted it here hopefully it will be helpful for the community

But chances are you mostly get it, by the way

This is good to know at least.

I raised this topic on IRC and these are the things I read and some speculations from myself. TL;DR is: try this strat with a ridiculously slow hard drive or on PS2. The speed of your storage device (hard drive) might make a difference, since when you load, all models are unloaded and slow storage means that new models load slower - probably. ¤

The line of reasoning goes like this:

• for a car to spawn, it's model has to be loaded -> the more cars are loaded, the wider the variaty of cars that can be spawned is
• after loading the game, only the cop car model is loaded - so only a cop car can be spawned
• the shorter it takes for more models to load, the faster it can spawn many different cars, therefore, the less likely it is to get a cop car
• the faster the storage device, the faster the models are loaded

Ractrot says that the precise frame you save and/or the precise frame you load might make a difference. My blind guess is that if that is true, if you save at the right time then you get a cop car every single time you re-load the save. ^^ Frame perfect strats. :D That might be the reason for the difference between your result and other people's - if you did not start from a new game.

¤ I say that based on experience by Powdinet in III, by myself in SA (saving and reloading to get a cop bike) and because Nick knows that on "New Game" only the cop car model is loaded.

Despite the apparent inconsistency and "slowness", it's definitely a good thing to go for in races (which nobody does anymore so this post is pointless).