“Havoc missions already do something similar with the bulwark wall sandwich horde: if someone backs off too much, it spawns behind them to trap the team. It’s a clever way to punish excessive retreat and force commitment”
I don’t particulary enjoy Bulwark spam, but this is a very clever way to force commitment. If Fatshark applied suggestions to make Elites more dangerous so there could be fewer of them, this could also be done with a Gunner + Reaper + Shooter kill squad that has special coding to hold position on a choke point (such as a bridge or corridor) the players have already progressed through, and despawn if players advance further in the map.
“So the system would need to recognize intent, tracking things like damage dealt, aggro drawn, or time spent in combat to tell the difference between a clutch and a bait.”
An exceptional mention. High aggro drawn, low team Coherency rate and/or far distance from team but high map progression, maybe with low damage dealt would be prime indicators of a “baiter”. This would be the perfect target for Specialists to focus the majority of their efforts on, and in a way they do already like you said as Disablers prioritize players out of Coherency.
Whereas on the flip side, the Director could reduce Disabler/Burster spawn rate if there was only one player (bots included) left standing.
These are all good metrics to track, though in the current state with the game engine pushed to the limits - as indicated by the plethora of silent Specialists in higher intensity engagements; to be most effective these changes would likely need to follow a reduction in Elite/Spec density across all difficulties.
Without outlier Talents/Weapons/Blessings nerfed and/or Elites made more dangerous first, however, reducing the density likely introduces the scenario where Darktide loses player retention very quickly.