I say by the repair vehicle as it will be available at launch and it won't add much to the actual battle. An army will need to fight its' way to the damaged vehicle and clear a path for the repair vehicle to arrive and repair the vehicle in need of repairs. Devastators have a HUGE weapon they must contend with and shouldn't be worried about repairs. Only reason I didn't vote for Techmariens is because... well.. they won't be available at launch. I would like to repair vehicles from the start... xD
THIS. Details like these are not omitted because they are technically impossible, it's because they're massive sinks of developer time and money to create features that people won't notice, or worse, actively complain about. It's a terrible investment. Players don't like feeling out of control; features like this, even though they're intended to create "realism", can actually break immersion because a player killed during a sync or trapped in a loading animation has had their control wrested away from them. Having some things be instant is simply a symbolic way of putting all the control in the player's hands, so they don't have to micro who gets the first exit seat or whatever. Trapping players in a burning vehicle wreck is not going to make them feel like they're "immersed" or "roleplaying", it's just going to piss them off and destroy their fairness of competence and fairness. Back on topic: I think having an requisition-purchased repair pack with a limited number of uses, taking up a grenade loadout slot or something, is a great idea. Most people won't equip it, because they'd rather carry frags, but those who do will have a unique engineer role behind the frontlines that they can carry out for teamwork reasons rather than personal ones. And you still have attrition, because the repair "packs" are tied to requisition, thus avoiding the infinite-repair scenario in PS2. TLDR; Only a few people have repair packs (and are thus targetable by the tactically-minded), repairing is not a valid pub farming technique (limited uses, and actually COSTS requisition, so teamplay only), everybody wins.
The only thing I fear with this, is that by penalising a player for being a repairer (mostly by costing them more rep and minorly by taking away utility weapons like grenades) people are just going to forgo it entirely. In planetside, there may be situations where 5 engies are out-repairing the damage done by a AT barrage but there are just as many cases of engineers ignoring vehicles that need repairs (and soldiers that need ammo). Even when the system is set up to reward 'repair spam' people still won't do it in favour of getting more kills. I'd rather see that repairing (healing, rearming etc) is well rewarded and 'spammed' than be forever looking for a friendly carrying a repair kit. If they want to stop the 'engies' from out-repairing damage, have a system where you can only repair at 25% max speed if the vehicle has been hit (and damaged) in the last 5/10 seconds. It means they can adequately reward teamplay without having situations where you just can't kill that predator because of the 6 'engies' behind it.
I was mostly foreseeing it as a thing that you take when you're actually piloting a tank! Then you get out and use it when you need to. Either that, or you have these big megaguilds that are extremely coordinated and have members who don't care about personal gain, in which case you would get "pit stops" where guys behind the lines have been ordered to equip repair packs. It often seems like rewarding repairs and engineering roles is the right thing to do, but in cases like PS2, the benefit is an illusion. Hordes of medics and engineers farming exp off of meatgrinders and tank lines is not teamwork, it's just a clusterfuck created by emergent combination of self-interested individual behavior. There are ways that you could offset it, such as separating exp gain from requisition (which I really, really hope happens) so that people can gain exp by repairing even as they spend req to buy the repair packs. But frankly, I don't think the self-benefit for repair should ever be that high - repair should be a selfless job that occurs in a coordinated team, not an opportunity for farming. If you want support, take along people you trust, who are more interested in the fight than their personal income.
The only reason they do that at all is because of the reward. Take away (or heavily reduce) the reward for repairing/healing/reviving etc is going to create a massive shift (amongst the average player) away from support classes and to the best fighter available. No dev in their right mind is going to believe that players will act selflessly for their own satisfaction, they do it because there is a reward and the average player won't want to ditch combat effectiveness for a more expensive team support tool unless it's as good or better for his exp/score.
Yea that is true, For me I am a high focus-er in Supporting anything i can depending on my load-out and i rarely play in a selfish style. Though my Friend i play Bf4 with in a "I want the highest score" player and doesn't focus highly on anything else other then the best gun that kills people. the Average player will not go out of his way to completely support other players or will go out of their way unless it does benefit his goal greatly. Thing is for me, I don't believe having people being devastators and being able to repair and then having big guns just durdling around tanks is the best course of action. I do agree that having a limit on how a devastator can repair a tank or how long he can will try to improve the game in some degree
Me neither, you don't give big weapons to support based classes (anyone who remembers BF:BC2's machine gun medics will know what I mean). I'd like to see the tactical marine (and faction equivalents) be given 2 'equipment' slots, one for support (ammo or repkit) and one for offensive tools (grenades/explosives). The tacticals are in a middle between the melee supremacy assaults and the ranged supremacy devastators, giving them the support options and wide weapon selection makes them incredibly versatile. It means that the tactical will be the main vehicle using class so people don't need to wonder how you squeeze 5 HB's or 5 jumppacks into a predator.
Iirc they aren't confirmed for launch, so we are going to need a stop-gap repairer before we get the mechadendrites out.
Halo reach did it fine. I mean come on battlefield was a joke to me seeing people teleport out of a plane that was shot down. I just think it would add to the game. As for the repairs I would like to see tech marines. But then Iv never really liked vehicle repair mechanics in games.
