So I've been scouring Google for a way to increase bots. I've found all of the console commands. I haven't been able to get more than 26 bots consistently with 5 or 6 players.

The setup:

I'm running a listen server, not a dedicated server. I have tried editing the default_server_hunt.cfg and creating listenserver.cfg. I have tried renaming the hunt CFG to server_hunt.cfg.

It seems to work fine for stuff like default round time, default supply and the various round wait time counters.

I have:

"ins_bot_count_hunt_min" "36"

"ins_bot_count_hunt_max" "36"

"ins_bot_count_hunt_default" "36"

Attempting to use maxplayers or altering lobby size in the CFG file appears to crash my game.

None of the in-game console commands seem to work. I've tried them at the loadout screen, in the actual game, etc. So that's ins_bot_add, ins_bot_quota, etc.

I would love a listen server for 4 or 5 of my friends where we can manipulate the number of bots directly. What am I missing/doing wrong?

EDIT: I have also edited the lobby size. Had it at 8 potential players today after running a console command. It didn't help.

EDIT2: I found the answer.

So setting maxplayers was the answer, but not in the config file. Now what I do is I type 'heartbeat' into the console, then use the console to set maxplayers, and then load the map. It'll pick up the various bot settings from inside of my config file and at least grab the default value (I haven't tested it with a min and man setting that are different so that it tries to scale based on player number yet, but presumably that'd be fine).