Forward Armor Recovery Station (F.A.R.S.)

[Colt556]

I still think it simply would take too much to recover, and people would sooner wait for it to respawn then jump through all those hoops. I mean seriously step back and look at what you propose.

In a public game, you'd have to get a tank crew of 3 with an engy (Which I've almost never seen). You'd then have to get three more people, to be engy's aswell. You'd have to drive THREE vehicles out to the tank after it's destroyed. You'd have to ask for a build order. You'd have to build the repair station. And then you'd have to repair the tank.

In the time it took to do all of that, the tank would have respawned and you could have killed several enemies or captured a flag. Tell me, how is that worth it?

Now, if you cut back on things. Like not needing any sort of repair vehicle, and two engy's, tops, can repair the tank to full health. Then it'd be fine. You get a single squad, three engy's in a supply truck and then the tank crew. The tank goes boom and the supply truck goes up and builds a repair base. The two engy's repair the tank and the tank crew goes on the way. Such stream-lining would allow the tank to be up n running in a fraction of the time it'd take to spawn. THAT would make it worth it.

If the entire process requires too many people, and vehicles, and still takes as long as it does for the tank to respawn, it's a waste of time to even implement the feature.

[Sadist_Cain]

I made a similar post about the same kinda situation

some differences but the same sorta aim.... Like anything that gives people a job to do, problem is when this game starts orientating around flags and getting bodies on them as opposed to stuff like this which should be more fun and important.

Makes making an Engineer Squad all the more appealing.

I agree with some comments however, Forgetting about public games etc (A game is what you wanna make it) The process cant take up too many players, of course irl an engineer platoon would be massive, but we've only 32 players to work with and you have to scale down how many people will be needed (unless you want 1/3 of the team missing everytime armour goes down)

This with much longer vehicle spawn times would rock...

I can picture leading the squad now as the repair post comes under attack... SMOKE OUT NOW GIVE US SUPPORTING FIRE GET THAT F*^%!ING TANK REPAIRED BOYS MOVE IT WE NEED THAT ARMOUR UP!!!

Too mashed to say more without soundin dumber than already...

IDEA GOOD ME LIKE

[gclark03]

Even if the only requirements to salvage a wreck are a command post, a Repair Vehicle, and an Engineer with a wrench, the crewmen can't be saved - meaning that somebody has to pick up a crewman kit and either drive back to the former, impatient crew or become the new crew.

[Colt556]

Originally Posted by gclark03

Even if the only requirements to salvage a wreck are a command post, a Repair Vehicle, and an Engineer with a wrench, the crewmen can't be saved - meaning that somebody has to pick up a crewman kit and either drive back to the former, impatient crew or become the new crew.

That's where the transport heli's come in!

[Tirak]

Like the idea, however I think it should be changed some.
Make the F.A.R.S. a normal structure without the despawn, and instead have it spawn an M88 Heavy Recovery Vehicle M88 Recovery Vehicle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia every 20 minutes with a maximum of one. As long as the M88 is close enough to the vehicle, it can be recovered.

[[R-DEV]motherdear]

i would really love this but i think that we need to implement this differently.

the F.A.R.S base should be deployable at bunkers or mainbases and should be a platform you would drive onto (or a garage or something) and the platform would repair the tank.
this would make it more realistic since there is no way in hell that engineers can repair a tank to full healt in the field. the engineers should be able to give it basic repairs so that it can make it's way back to the F.A.R.S and get the repairs it needs.
so i propose to put a limit on field repairs to let's say 30% of full healt, this will make it very important for teamwork in that you need F.A.R.S bases to support your armor (supply lines) also if you only need 2 engineers in a repair vericle on the field it won't impact troop movements and the unrealistic tank repairs in the field would not exist.

so 1: F.A.R.S bases are not deployed at wrecks but at bases.
2: F.A.R.S bases do not auto destruct after a certain time.
3: teamwork is needed to set up the supply lines
4: repair trucks can not repair themselves but gives the boost needed to start the repair(maybe it's hardcoded idk)
5: unrealistic field tank repairs are not possible anymore.

i believe that this would be a much better setup of the repairs and it would not require a ton of troops to set it up.
this was in the old bf1942 and it was one of the things i missed a lot in bf2.
idk if people would like this setup but it seems to solve a lot of problems with supply lines and it seems more realistic that quick field repairs are made and the tank goes back to the base for more time consuming repairs that are not critical (armor etc)

just my 2 cents hope that you guys like this better.

[Onil]

I think there is no need for F.A.R.S

Remember what happens when you place a command post next to a firebase or a bunker? The command post will auto repair the asset over and over again. That is why the command post will be placed by the mapper in main base and still have the option of repair and rearm for vehicles. If you would place a F.A.R.S with auto repairing the same would happen.

In my opinion this should only work for armor, it's absurd to repair the wreck of a jeep that is totally blown up or any air asset aswell.

You would need a repair HMMWV that would spawn in main base and that would have the ability to drop a tools box with some spare parts (like the ammo caches). To repair a tank's wreck you would need 2 tool boxes 50 meters away from the wreck and 2 engineers. This way the HMMWV itself wont repair anything and the tool caches will only help on the recovery of the wreck as you would always need 2 engineers to repair it.

This would only work until maybe 20% of health after that the tool caches would disappear so that it makes it possible for the tank to fall back to the command post to be fully repaired. You can still continue the repairing process with the 2 engineers.

This would make so that you need a squad of 2 engineers to constantly drive between the front lines of our armor and the main base or assets to resupply the tool boxes as a repair HMMWV would only carry one. At some point you can have more then one repair HMMWV in game and that will help alot if well coordinated.

What do you guys think?

[[R-COM]Darkpowder]

Personally i think for the average player or squad to even comprehend:-

1: withdrawing a damaged tank for repairs, while its compatriots cover its withdrawl.
2: having an engineer in the turret for quick repairs
3: Any major repairs - i.e. beyond a certain damage state or any specific disabled state requiring "the repair truck" or a "std. command truck and/or two crates, requiring the command trucks to fetch and carry to deliver all "the supplies" needed.

would be plenty of complexity, without the need for complex new commander assets, new models, new vehicles or new rules.

Tanks die very quickly when badly manned, and the reason why is not the absence of repair stations close to the front line, is that people would rather "have fun" and respawn after wasting the assets than they would withdraw and even consider a repair job on their tank.

Very few tanks ever bother withdrawing to reload their ammo, and you know why - because they die too fast and the penalties for the "individual player" manning them isn't high enough.

Stick people who lose major assets on a big spawn timer and people would hesitate before taking anything more complex than a rifle onto the battlefield if they weren't competent at using it.

[M.Warren]

Keep in mind that the Forward Armor Recovery Station (F.A.R.S.) does not do anything special in particular. It does not spawn infantry, it does not give ammo, it does not repair. What it does do is temporarily offer the ability for a vehicle to be recovered (revived) from a wrecked status.

The key reason why the Forward Armor Recovery Station (F.A.R.S.) must be a temporary deployed structure and not a mobile unit is to prevent any type of vehicle being camped around it. Let's say if the F.A.R.S. did not have a despawn time, people would place the bunker up, then proceed to huddle vehicles around it. When a vehicle get's destroyed all the engineers need to do is wrench it back up from the wrecked state... Which is very bad and will impact gameplay in a negative fashion. It must remain a deployed asset developed and completed with teamwork and proceed to despawn when finished.

If your curious on what methods players may hopefully use to rearm and repair a vehicle, check this other thread of mine. The return of the Engineer Repair Truck (E.R.T.) vehicle. This unit will do the work of rearming and repairing instead of the F.A.R.S. asset as it should be.

Keep in mind that the use of a F.A.R.S. is purely optional. Chances are about 80% of the time you may not even get to use it simply because the area is not secure and is under heavy enemy contact. That will truely hinder any chances of recovering a vehicle.

It's just there as a potential option if under the right circumstances, to save a vehicle. Providing your team is coordinated enough to perform this, you shall reap the benefits of good teamwork. If not... Well, looks like you'll be hurting.

But you can't blame the game for 1 man squads and people running off with assets by choice or impulse. If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. People do it to themselves and I don't understand why. It can only mean they're too lazy to teamwork. If that's the case then you're playing the wrong mod, simple as that.

Once again. The idea of the F.A.R.S. is to offer the ability to recover vehicles you can. Meaning they are in a safe enough location to perform this action. Not deploy a F.A.R.S. every single time one gets blown away.

[gclark03]

The best thing to do is this:

1) Allow a wreck to be recovered by 2 engineers and a supply crate, dropped by supply truck or by helicopter. (This prevents a truck from following the tank around all the time, as in 0.6.)

2) Following your other suggestion about the Vehicular Supply Crates, it would be very nice to have transport helicopters with 2 types of crate: one being the standard crate, and the other being the Vehicular Supply Crate. Using this system, a pilot could fly to the site of the downed vehicle, drop a VSC and 2 engineers, and allow the engineers to repair the tank and bring it to the nearest firebase.

3) Firebases should increase the rate of repair for engineers, simulating extra parts and support at the firebase.