Security Van Random Event Guide

TLDR; skip to the "Strategy" and "Locations" sections.

After struggling to find the last few security vans I was missing and finding no posts with information about them, I think I've finally figured out their spawning mechanism. I thought this information could be helpful to others, so I decided to post a mini-guide.

All locations and numberings in this post refer to the ones used on the Rockstar Games Social Club checklist map (http://socialclub.rockstargames.com/games/gtav/career/checklist). If you haven't signed up already, I highly recommend doing so.

I assume you know what the Security Vans are, so I won't get into strategy about stealing the money once you locate them.

=Spawning Mechanism=

The security vans seem to spawn on a one-week in-game timer. This means that until the timer has expired, no security vans will spawn. Additionally, once a security van is "due" to spawn, the next spawn point you encounter will spawn a van and then no others will until the timer resets.

This timer reset only happens if you actually activate the encounter (the screen flashes and a blue dot appears). If you see the van but don't activate it, it's actually possible to leave the area and encounter a new, different one immediately. Conversely, if you activate one, no new security vans will spawn until the timer resets even if you immediately leave the area without taking any action.

This is why some of the spawn points seem to repeatedly spawn vans (such as #1 and #4) but others seem to never spawn a van because they are either in an infrequently visited location (#7) or shielded by several other nearby spawn locations (#5).

Additionally, some security vans appear already driving on the road, and these seem slightly more difficult to coax into spawning. I've found I often need to wait at the spawn location for a bit, pointing the camera repeatedly at the spawn point and away again in order to get them to spawn. Static spawns, by contrast, will always be waiting when the timer's up.

Another point to mention is that you will sometimes see non-random event security vans spawn on the road. While these can be blown up for money, they don't yield much and don't count as any random event, so they should generally be ignored.

I think all of these are available at the start of the game, but I know they're available before the second heist, as that's when I collected them.

=Strategy=

1) Allow 1 week to pass in-game. Either sleep repeatedly or go do something to pass the time.
2) Save the game, then drive to a nearby static spawn to confirm security vans are "primed" to spawn.
3) Reload your save, then travel to one of your missing security vans, carefully avoiding activating any other spawn points.
4) Collect the money.

Repeat steps 1-4 until you have every security van random event completed.

=Locations=

Unfortunately, the social club checklist map is imprecise about the locations. They can be off by as much as 1 block in some cases.

The following list tells whether each van is static or mobile, gives a position relative to the dot on the social club map, and includes notes to help you find the correct spot.

1. Static; Globe Oil gas station SW of dot
2. Static; Lucky Plucker fast food restaurant W then S of dot
3. Static; Paleto Bay Market SW of dot (sign says "PA__TO BAY M_RKET")
4. Static; Korean Plaza across street W of dot
5. Mobile; Heading NW along road through center of man-made canals a block SW of dot (!!!)
6. Mobile; Heading E along San Andreas Ave 1/2 block W of dot (near "Hit 'n' Run" coffee shop)
7. Mobile; Heading N along road just west of dot
8. Mobile; Heading SW along highway just SW of dot
9. Mobile; Heading W along El Rancho Blvd just around corner SW of dot
10. Mobile; Heading SE up ramp across Del Perro Fwy to SW of dot (near "Ban Windmills" billboard)

elduende05 posted...

=Spawning Mechanism=

The security vans seem to spawn on a one-week in-game timer. This means that until the timer has expired, no security vans will spawn. Additionally, once a security van is "due" to spawn, the next spawn point you encounter will spawn a van and then no others will until the timer resets.

Are you sure about this?

I'm certain I've hit more than one security van in less than a week of game time.

For example, I've hit van 2 or 4 in Los Santos then driven up the West coast (robbing stores on my way) and hit van 3.

Perhaps, like a lot of things that spawn in this game, the 1 week timer gets reset when you load or reload your game, or maybe the timer is set to a calender week and I've hit one van on Friday then another on the Monday a few days later.

I can't be 100% sure on anything, but here's the process I used to check the timer: I had a save (on Sunday around noon in game) that I used to activate one of the Security Vans (actually all 10 so that I could double check locations before creating this thread). I then slept in 2 day increments (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday) and didn't get another spawn (checking 2 locations each time, via helicopter so it was as fast as possible). I then slept one more time and immediately found another Security Van (it was 6 AM on Sunday).

At this point you'll probably note that that's less than a week. I figured it started at the beginning of the day, and it did occur to me that it might be an in game calendar week starting on Sunday or something, but I figured for simplicity it would suffice to say that the timer was one week. I also didn't really feel like reloading, advancing time some more, activating another security van, then sleeping in small increments to check again. I guess you could say the timer is "up to" a week. Perhaps I'll check that tomorrow if nobody else does before then.

I know the timer doesn't reset by loading, because my current save, for example, doesn't have any Security Vans active, whereas that other save I mentioned allows me to activate all 10 security vans very quickly.

TLDR; jump to the 2nd to last paragraph

I am now 100% sure that the timer is not exactly 1 week, nor is it based on an in game calendar week. Here is the experiment I performed:

1) Loaded game (Sunday, 10:44 or so)
2) Flew my buzzard over Security Vans #1 and #4 to verify they were spawning, but was careful not to activate them.
3) Flew to Trevor's Vespucci safehouse, then slept for a total of 4 days.
4) Flew out to Security Van #4, and was surprised to find nothing there (Thursday, a bit past noon).
5) I had messed up my chopper leaving the apartment, so about this time the rotors cut out and I had to make an emergency landing about where the Security Van normally spawns.
6) While trying to steal a vehicle to drive back to the safehouse, encountered an ATM robbery across the street (I didn't even know there was an ATM there). Chased the thief down on foot and eventually had to snipe him.
7) Drove back to safehouse, then slept for 2 more days.
8) Drove back out to Security van #4, found it there and stole the money (Saturday, 18:35).
9) Returned to the safehouse. Then performed 4 iterations of sleeping once then driving out to check Security Van #4 and the ATM (decided to be more careful this time). Encountered the security van after a 5th iteration (Tuesday, 11:41).
10) Performed 3 or 4 more sleep / checks, then the game froze up after I got into bed again.

From this information, we've learned several new things. First, once a security van is available, it isn't available forever. I'm guessing the window is shorter than 4 days, but it's also definitely longer than a few hours. I need to experiment more to discover exact details.

The second piece of information is that security vans can become available in significantly shorter time intervals than 1 week (Saturday - Tuesday) and can become available right after not being available on odd days that aren't related to a calendar week (Sunday vs. Tuesday).

My current hypothesis is that each day, the game randomly determines whether or not a security van / ATM event will occur with a low probability. This information persists through saves, so if you encounter a van or ATM robbery shortly after saving, you can load the save to encounter a different one. If you activate one, no others will spawn that day. The end result is that every few days, you're likely to run into either a security van or ATM robbery.

I've also been keeping track of my spawn times for a while now, and have recorded 22 such instances (starting from before I'd detected any sort of pattern to the spawns). I've seen vans spawn on all 7 days, and from all 4 six-hour windows of the day. Here's some statistics:

Days: Sun (2), Mon (4), Tues (5), Wed (2), Thurs (4), Fri (2), Sat (3)
Times: 0:00-5:59 (3), 6:00-11:59 (9), 12:00-17:59 (3), 18:00-23:59 (7)
Vans: #1 (5), #2 (2), #3 (0), #4 (7*), #5 (1), #6 (0), #7 (1), #8 (0), #9 (1), #10 (1)

* (although I included the 4 vans from the above experiments in the "days" and "times" stats, I excluded them from the "vans" because by then I had figured out how to get specific spawns and thus including those 4 would skew the data.)

Regardless, a reliable way of generating security van spawns seems to be to sleep for a day or so, save, then check for security vans. If you find one, load your save and then drive to one you actually need to unlock. If not, go back to the safehouse and repeat the process. You should encounter one within a few days in-game, which is much better than driving around aimlessly in the vain hope that your timing is just right.

I'll perform some more experiments to try to determine the length of the window and whether or not it's tied to an in-game day (midnight to midnight) or something different.

I just did some more experimentation and the window they're available seems to be quite long. I loaded my save, which is on Sunday at 10:44 and the vans are available continuously until Thursday at 01:28. This means they can be available for *at least* 3.5 days once they start spawning.

Thus, if I were looking to spawn security vans, I'd probably sleep in approximately 2-3 day increments before saving and checking as that would advance time faster while still leaving *plenty* of time to get to whichever security van I'm missing.

Have you by any chance kept track of the time and day each van has shown up?

At this point, my guess is that each van has an specific time and maybe also a day of the week in which they spawn.

Security Van 4 just spawned for me on a Thursday at 10:29 pm (22:29). Maybe you can double check on that specific time and see if it's consistent?

At first, I thought that might be the case, which is why I started keeping track of data. I wrote down time, day, and van # for all 22 of those data points. They seem pretty randomly distributed. I recorded van #4 specifically on every day other than Wednesday, for example, and times ranging anywhere from 00:42 to 22:08.

Once I realized that van times were random and that the distribution of vans was heavily weighted toward #1 and #4, I started looking for other reasons to explain their behavior. At some point immediately after switching to Franklin, I ran into security van #4 again.

I realized I had just saved after finishing the Under the Bridge challenges with Trevor (those annoying 2 you need a buzzard for at the north end of the Los Santos river). I wondered if the security van spawn would persist through a save, so I decided to reload and try going to the same one. This time, when I switched to Franklin, he was in a slightly different location and I passed a different van on the way to check #4.

At this point, I wondered if I could load the save and travel to any one, including those at the far end of the state I was still missing (#7 and #8). Lo and behold, it worked, and I was able to load that save 10 times and fly Trevor's buzzard to all 10 security vans.

Once I discovered this, I realized why #1 and #4 were so common for me -- they're choke points in the city. Any time you cross through from west to east, you're going to drive right by those 2 security vans, which is why they always come up. Van #7, by contrast, is on a small dead end road. Van #5 is almost completely surrounded by four other vans.

Once you know that you can get any specific one to spawn once they're active, the trick is making them become active. Fortunately, I've tried sleeping at a safehouse in 2 day increments, saving, and then checking a nearby static spawn a couple of times now and it's never taken me more than 5 minutes to spawn one. It's a quick, reliable way of generating security van spawns in order to fill missing random events. Try it yourself and you'll see what I mean.

Ok, I'll give that a try.

You think you could maybe post the specific times and days each van has showed up? Or is that too much trouble?

Sure:

Van 1: Saturday 15:38; Tuesday 23:26; Tuesday 11:03; Monday 7:01; Wednesday 6:59
Van 2: Friday 15:54; Thursday 21:53
Van 3: No sightings recorded*
Van 4: Monday 6:15; Tuesday 5:11; Saturday 13:01; Friday 00:42; Thursday 9:52; Monday 18:00; Thursday 22:08, Sunday 10:44, Sunday 6:07, Saturday 18:35, Tuesday 11:41
Van 5: Thursday 22:04
Van 6: No sightings recorded*
Van 7: Monday 4:16
Van 8: No sightings recorded*
Van 9: Wednesday 21:07
Van 10: Tuesday 6:28

* before I started keeping track

Also, technically the Sunday 10:44 time (or within 1 or 2 hours of that time) for Van #4 was for all 10 vans, as I loaded that save and activated all 10 in order to double check locations and headings.