Recovery Vehicles

[Bisclaveret]

I've been waiting for someone on the devteam to make any nods towards increasing realism and taking away the vanilla-ness of engineers using a wrench for a long time, and I haven't seen much to replace that, except for the armor resupply HMMVs in .5 and .6 versions. With these taken away, and seeing 2-3 engineers recover burning, about-to-blow-up or tracked tanks after a minute or so and putting them back into full health..

I'm thinking, how can we improve this while encouraging team and gameplay and not hurting realism. In some other realism-based games, out of commission tanks and heavy vehicles are left for dead or towed back to a FOB or main base for repair and retrofit -- there's not a realistic or non-time-intensive way to repair a barrel or retrack a tank in the field, especially during an engagement. Instead of the engineer wrench as being an all-in-one magical revive tool for everything under the sun, can you implement something akin to the M88 series Armor Recovery Vehicles, preferrably the Hercules. These have been in use for the US and UK for a long while in modern warfare.

I don't know the limitations of the BF2 engine, as i'm not a developer, but I was wondering if it would be possible to get a towing vehicle or not into the game. They could tow them back to an armor repair point (suggested somewhere else in the forums, i can't remember atm) or at least back to a bunker to resupply and rearm. The real-life vehicle is capable of lifting and towing 70-150 tons and is used to retrieve tracked or bogged down tanks or repair them even while under fire, and has the ability to refuel tanks as well. They're also used for construction, bulldozing, etc so they could have a secondary use as a replacement for the "too many commander trucks" problem, to set up razorwire and bunkers/firebases.

They're lightly armored tanks with 3-4 crew (but for your purposes that could be 2 or 3) and only have enough armor for small arms or .50 cal AP protection, and the only armaments on them are a .50 cal machinegun emplacement.

PS: What's up with using the old M35 Duece and a half's for commander trucks? They've been decommissioned for at least a decade, replaced with the LMTV (Light Medium Tactical Vehicle) Unless you're using an odd skin of an M1078, I'm used to seeing M1093's when I was growing up and around the Navy depot here.

EDIT: Found a good vehicle reference guide for it: http://www.inetres.com/gp/military/cv/eng/M88.html

[TexLax]

not possible to tow vehicles.

[Jagger]

Have you tried repairing a vehicle in 0.7? It takes forever.

[LtSoucy]

This has been suggested many times before(Sometime in late 0.5). It cant be done due to the limitations of the Battlefield 2 engine. In other words its hardcoded. But we do wish it could be done.

[Maxfragg]

it has not to be done, that they tow the other vehicle.
a recovery tank with an crane, that can be used to repair vehicles faster, and perhaps build up structures and alow placing them, when near would also be great, it would be diven by an crewman or an engineer and could have an maschinegunner on top
the US use this one:
M88A2 HERCULES


the brits have the CRARRV
http://plain-military.tripod.com/id146.html

and the MEC and Russia could have an BREM-80U (T-80U chassis)

they would ofcause have to be moddeld, but it would really ad a great aspect

[[R-CON]77SiCaRiO77]

dont forget the chinisee

the ZJX93 recovery vehicle .

[[R-MOD]Bob_Marley]

As has been said, not only has this been suggested, it is also impossible with the engine. Locked. Please use search.

[[R-DEV]Masaq]

Not quite locked, Bob....

NOW it's locked

What is it with you, Dune and Wastey thinking threads lock themselves just by saying it's so in the thread? It's become quite a thing recently