I've been asking the question which is better. Expanded or Enhanced and decided to figure out the answer to that question for myself.

I've downloaded both, tested out both, and have an answer after dong some light digging. My verdict is: Expanded. This is no disrespect on anyone's work. It took a lot of work to program these mods. I'm not saying one is better than the other. I'm just saying they have their differences, and simply prefer how Expanded does things over Enhanced.

I'll explain why.

On the surface
LSPDFR Enhanced: Remastered and LSPDFR Expanded execute the same mission. They offer more to life than just patrolling the streets of Los Santos. But they do so completely differently. You may not have as many stores, restaurants, apartments, etc in Expanded but in the end that didn't matter to me. Mechanically, you're making sure your character has their needs met to perform well. (I may be misremembering but I'm not sure if it was an early version Expanded or Enhanced - a long time ago - that you also had to manage your character's stress levels. Arresting someone made them happier, or messing up upset them - and you had to go to the beach, or play golf, etc. to make them happy again.)

Shopping:
In Expanded, your character completes the transaction, gets a bag of items, goes home, and stocks those items. Not so in Enhanced. It's pretty much like regular GTA V. You buy the items and move on.

Patrols/Shifts:

If you're a busy person, Expanded gives you more flexibility with how you can utilize your free time when playing the game. You have the ability to adjust how long your shift is. Ten minutes, thirty minutes, or max hours. It's all up to you.

In Enhanced, you're either locked into a long session, or you get penalized for playing the shorter sessions. As in you get less money, and you have to grind a little bit longer. You also have to work a minimum of one in-game (which isn't much to complain about), turn in your evidence and write a report.

Enhanced does have a neat little feature where you can earn your police stations, and patrol zones. However, at the end of the day, that could be a little restricting. I certainly see the appeal of that though if you're wanting a little more "realism". It certainly added a different dynamic to how things were done. The chance to die and lose everything adds most certainly added a different aspect too. Of course, you can disable those features, but those few little things is what separates Enhanced from Expanded.

Expanded goes in a little bit deeper. You get xp for tickets, arrests, evidence, reports, etc. But the feature I thought was cool, was attending a briefing! That was pretty neat. You also can get points for processing suspects, like taking their picture. You can also work the front desk which is a neat little thing to do you if you're not feeling like patrolling and catching the same BOLO suspect.

In Enhanced. When you select your vehicle you go to the armory, get your duty bag, and put it in the car. In Expanded your character will place their duty bag in the car automatically. You also have the ability to clean or repair your vehicle too.

Enhanced can use EUP uniforms; however, Expanded allows you to do that as well with the addition of being able to use your own custom uniforms/outfits for duty.

Special Units:

Both allow you to join special units. I've noticed though that in Enhanced there's really not much of a difference. You're just on patrol with your special unit like. SWAT. Whereas in Expanded you get special call outs associated with your special unit (i.e. Vice Squad).

Housing:

They both have housings. Enhanced offers three basic apartments at a lot more spawn points around the city than Expanded. Which has apartments fairly spread out to cover most of the regions. Expanded also allows you to decorate your house! (This may take a bit of getting used to, but it's fun to do once you learn the controls.)

Food:

Enhanced does have a lot places to get food. Expanded though ... you can get food delivered to you. Long steak out? Have some food delivered to you. (Well, maybe not during a steak out.)

Strengths and Weaknesses:

Both of these plugins bring a lot to you, the player. Like I said earlier. This isn't a one is better than the other. It's more of ... how do you want to go about doing things? You can't have both, sorry. For me I'm going with Expanded. I like the spin on it. I like the other things the developer is working on such as off duty relationships, that's cool. Every time a new update is announced, I'm excited to see what new feature there is. (Honestly the same goes for any plugin on here. I've seen a lot of amazing work here. This community is awesome and I thank all of you.)

If I were to disable the strict patrol zones and unlock station access in Enhanced: Remastered, then I pretty much have LSPDFR Expanded. Also, Enhanced: Remastered makes me feel like just want to sell me Enhanced: Reborn ... which brings me too...

Closing Thoughts

At the end of the day the question isn't which is better. The question is how do you want to experience your LSPDFR role play? Do you want a ton of options? Or just options? Do you want to grind? Or to do you want to chill? Do you have a lot of free time? If not, I'd go with LSPDFR Expanded. If you do have a lot of free time .. try out Enhanced ... or both. See which one you like.

Edited August 30Aug 30 by Nameless New Guy
Deleted the "Elephant in the Room" Section.

I'd suggest taking a look at this topic from last week https://www.lcpdfr.com/forums/topic/157285-lspdfr-enhanced-or-expanded-or-maybe-just-policelifes/
A lot of what you mention has already been discussed there.

Yeah, I wrote the mentioned Thread. For myself, I ended up using LSPDFR Expanded, too.

Most appealling part to me was Expanded seems more like a real humans work, while Enhanced ended up beeing an AI-Slop Cashgrap. The modder is also adding off-duty stuff, and I pretty liked it so far. Expanded feels to me like a small replace of the "Online RP Servers" feel back than. It would be fucking awesome to see a NPCI support on features like that. Compared to Expanded, LSPDFR Enhanced looks like a AI/FiveM'ish slop just by it's previews... at least to me.

Only reason I might test out LSPDFR Enhanced could be to test a setup with Los Santos Alive, it advertises itself with a LSPDFR Enhanced partnership. But this would end up as test to me, not as replacement.

Edited August 30Aug 30 by Gruntelicious