Repair station in heli's?

[PLODDITHANLEY]

Might be nice to give more chance and quicker response time for repairs.

With so many 4km maps it's often too far to take a logy, I wouldn't have thought it'd be too hard to implement. It would also give trans pilots another useful job as we all know mid game it can get boring. The trans would be running a high risk of being shot down as most of time the repair would be in a hot zone, so the pilot would have to judge the availability of replacement armour and heli with the risk of being shot down.

it might also encourage armour to pull back to repair as opposed to slogging it out to death as the drive to and from main is too far and boring.

The only downside I can see is that any equipped heli could land and repair itself, unless it could be made that repair stations only repair land vehicles.

We have this fun teamwork orientated repair facility in game but is rarely used because of being too far from a truck and of course the normally rapid time between being immobilized and exploding.

To be discussed which helis, maybe start with the heavy's (Osprey & Chinook) with the MI-8 & BH for balance. Not the Hueys as on Muttrah it would give a disadvantage to helicopterless MEC.

[Roque_THE_GAMER]

i have been thinking about that for a while and i agree.

and about the chopper land to self repair actually not work, in Pavalosk bay my CAS huey has burning i land at the repair station and drop a repair from the truck, and the huey get to slowed repaired i keep inside but still blowed up after some seconds being repair, so the chopper was "blending" faster than could repair

if that repair station cold be just a field repair to give hit points enough to fix the wheels and just to roll back to main that's not remove the repair truck job in big maps that can full repair all vehicles.

[Rudd]

it may be possible for the repair station to only affect helicopters, BF2 has several vehicle categories, boats, planes, helicopters and land iirc. For example, the mortars are classified as boats, this is how it knows the ammo bag can rearm it. This leads me to believe that there could be a helicopter only repair station. I'm not sure how repair wrenches work, they might work only on certain armour types rather than vehicle types. Please continue the discussion, but that's how the game can work afaik.

[Roque_THE_GAMER]

it may be possible for the repair station to only affect helicopters, BF2 has several vehicle categories, boats, planes, helicopters and land iirc. For example, the mortars are classified as boats, this is how it knows the ammo bag can rearm it. This leads me to believe that there could be a helicopter only repair station. I'm not sure how repair wrenches work, they might work only on certain armour types rather than vehicle types. Please continue the discussion, but that's how the game can work afaik.

the actual repair station from the truck can repair all vehicles in the game but in the chopper is worthless because when he is critical he take more damage than repair the actual repair station can be enough and that cant be used as a exploit for self repair helicopters they still need back to main if you need it i can do test to confirm that with all heavy choppers and make a video like i did with the hind.

and the disable Tanks/APC need to be full repaired to get back the movements or actually just need some percent of hit points?

[gdpr_user1]

This is a great suggestion that Ive been wanting to see for a while. Ploddits description about how it can give airtrans another task during mid-game is spot on, as well as making the armor crew hold their vehicle a bit more dearly knowing that all is left to do after getting hit is NOT trying to YOLO the enm. This would also enable a bit more teamwork and communication.

One downside I can see though is that it could remove that window of opportunity for the enm team after they managed to get all your armor damaged and in need of repair forcing you to get back to mainbase. Instead you can quickly repair in the field and will be back in action way faster.
Although in turn, that would make it even more important to deny enm air transports


Devs, is there anything else that stands in the way of adding this feature?

[DesmoLocke]

+1 but only if the heli repair crate is exclusively for land vehicles.

Would there have to be a small repair crate like there are different sizes of supply crates?

[PLODDITHANLEY]

Roque said that the helicopter bleed is quicker than the repair station, but even so you could call a second trans heli to help.
I can't see any other downsides, and I imagine it's use would be confined to very patient armour crews that pull back to a safer location for repairs, but anything to keep the trans guys busy and available all round.

[mries]

Good suggestion, makes the trans squads more valuable midgame!
It gives the trans an even more supporting role which is great!

[Mats391]

Having a repair station for only land vehicles is no problem.
To make this a bit harder i would only give it to big choppers and also make the repair drop very sensible to fall damage. This way you would have to land near the disabled vehicle instead of just making flyby drop.
I would also give it a bigger radius as normal repair station to make it a bit easier for pilots.
Further i would give it limited ammo so that the chopper has to return to base to reload the crate.

[Rhino]

Further i would give it limited ammo so that the chopper has to return to base to reload the crate.

Ye, in r/l a chopper wouldn't help out with field repairs per say, what they would do is air lift the vehicle back to base for repairs and since we can't do that (at least not very well), simplest way to represent it would be to have choppers having a single small repair crate that could do minor field repairs to vehicles but would need to be reloaded back at base.

[MasterX]

I would've been nice if you could get the vehicle transport code from BF: Vietnam

Man that was fun, trolling pp by picking up their tank and drop them mid air or in the water . Is that possible or even allowed?

[StevePl4y5]

Ye, in r/l a chopper wouldn't help out with field repairs per say, what they would do is air lift the vehicle back to base for repairs and since we can't do that (at least not very well), simplest way to represent it would be to have choppers having a single small repair crate that could do minor field repairs to vehicles but would need to be reloaded back at base.

What choppers do in real life is transporting combat engineers to the stranded vehicles that need repairs, which is something we can do in PR with what we've got. Although I don't know how effective the wrench is, since I've only seen it used to repair vehicles which have suffered small amounts of damage by small arms or indirect explosive hits.

[Kerryburgerking]

Ye, in r/l a chopper wouldn't help out with field repairs per say, what they would do is air lift the vehicle back to base for repairs and since we can't do that (at least not very well), simplest way to represent it would be to have choppers having a single small repair crate that could do minor field repairs to vehicles but would need to be reloaded back at base.

Just give the big helicopters that possibility then (like the chinook and big chinese one for example)

[Rudd]

lol, I got the wrong end of the stick, I thought this was about helicopters being able to self repair, I kinda liked the idea as long as it was super slow

[Rhino]

What choppers do in real life is transporting combat engineers to the stranded vehicles that need repairs, which is something we can do in PR with what we've got. Although I don't know how effective the wrench is, since I've only seen it used to repair vehicles which have suffered small amounts of damage by small arms or indirect explosive hits.

In very few cases things are ever repaired on the front line afaik and if they are, they are normally recovered and pulled back slightly from the front line for the repairs to take place.

In all cases I've heard of helis being used in a repair/recovery effort, they have only been to air lift out the damaged vehicle back to base.


But as for transporting combat engies, you can do that ingame with a player using the engy kit

[Spook]

except you only can repair light vehicles with the wrench. like humvees and such.

[Gracler]

Not saying it is a great idea but, what if the big helicopter was the repair station in itself and you had to land next to the vehicle and stay there for like 2 min to fully repair something!

This would prevent helicopters from teaming up and creating super repair stations on the maps where you have like two big helicopters and you can just make a quick flyby and drop repairs over and over. Instead the helicopter would be just as vulnerable as the logistic truck is when attempting to slowly move in to repair something.

Helicopters could still team up but they would be sitting on the ground being easy targets unless if the team had managed to secure the area like they should.

I don't think this solution is perfect I just wanted to hear someone else's opinion on it.

Lets be fair most skilled pilots can easily do a quick flyby few feet above the ground so fall damage would not fix this except in areas that are very uneven unless if it was like 0,5m which would force the pilots to actually touch the ground that would be good, but also annoying if you land next to a dip in the terrain and it gets destroyed even when landed.

Technically I don't know if this is even possible to make passive repair but maybe someone can think of a workaround like giving the pilot the engineer vehicle aura from vbf2. I forgot how this works though.

[Roque_THE_GAMER]

Not saying it is a great idea but, what if the big helicopter was the repair station in itself and you had to land next to the vehicle and stay there for like 2 min to fully repair something!

This would prevent helicopters from teaming up and creating super repair stations on the maps where you have like two big helicopters and you can just make a quick flyby and drop repairs over and over. Instead the helicopter would be just as vulnerable as the logistic truck is when attempting to slowly move in to repair something.

Helicopters could still team up but they would be sitting on the ground being easy targets unless if the team had managed to secure the area like they should.

I don't think this solution is perfect I just wanted to hear someone else's opinion on it.

Lets be fair most skilled pilots can easily do a quick flyby few feet above the ground so fall damage would not fix this except in areas that are very uneven unless if it was like 0,5m which would force the pilots to actually touch the ground that would be good, but also annoying if you land next to a dip in the terrain and it gets destroyed even when landed.

Technically I don't know if this is even possible to make passive repair but maybe someone can think of a workaround like giving the pilot the engineer vehicle aura from vbf2. I forgot how this works though.

in BF2 if you are engineer inside of a vehicle you can repair by stand close to the friendly vehicle.

could that ability given for the pilot but only works in the heavy choppers?

[Rudd]

Not a fan of the AoE helo repair idea

maybe it would just be simplier if the engineer kit could repair tanks to a slower degree (?doable because it has different materials) so the repairs could get started, if the logi truck arrives then you get a faster rate beause it's combined, if the logi truck doesn't arrive then hopefully the engineer can get the tank to a state where it can get home or RV with a logi elsewhere. Could get engis repairing helos too I guess in the same way.

[Psyrus]

I think an easier solution than making the helos drop repair stations would just be allowing the repair station to be deployed within 50m of a crate, thus nothing really has to change except a small bit of python regarding deployables. It means that tank squads could do super slow repairs at fobs or get field repairs from choppers dropping supplies at them.

Logi trucks would still be more useful as you could deploy a crate & a repair station, then drop a second repair station out the back, effectively giving you double the repairing goodness.

Obviously you wouldn't be able to deploy a repair station within 1 grid square of another, to prevent exploits.