Repairing the Repair Tool
We've all seen seemingly indestructible tanks take incredible amounts of punishment thanks due to a repair tool wielding player strategically hidden below in a crater. To be sure, I love the concept of the repair tool and think it lends itself well both to the Battlefield theme and to teamwork in general. And if this were a case of "If it ain't broke don't fix it" then we'd have nothing to speak of. But the repair tool as not grown with BF. While other facets of the game have evolved the repair tool has been stuck in arrested development.
I'm a big believer in making sustaining damage and healing damage two distinct phases. That is to say that you should not be able to negate damage while it is being inflicted. A good example of this is vehicle self repair. If you are shot during it then it ceases and you must begin again. An exception to this would be the quick repair upgrades as their explicit purpose is to restore health immediately and under any circumstance and I think that is fair because the pilot/drive is sacrificing other upgrades in favor of the capability of quick repair.
When you have units using the repair tool who are well concealed you inadvertently create super vehicles and go against the doctrine of no healing while sustaining damage. A great example of this was the Little bird from BF4. Before some patching was done you could have two repair units on the flanks with fast repair upgrades constantly repairing which meant that it could, within seconds, negate the damage inflicted on it and repair to full health faster than any other vehicle save for jet skis and atvs. Eventually the repair tool was toned down on the LB but it still remained a very difficult vehicle to counter.
So how do we solve this without making the repair tool viable? After some consideration I think the best way would be a combination of making the repair tools have ammo and tweaking the time the "overheat" kicks in.
- Give the repair tool a magazine with an ammo counter of 100 which depletes as they repair. The ammo depletes as you repair (or attack) until it reaches 0 at which time the magazine will auto replenish on its own and take about 60 seconds to do so at which time you will have a new magazine filled with 100 units of repair tool ammo.
- Adjust the overheat so that it kicks in faster. Maybe that's 5 seconds or 10 - IDK the exact number but it needs to be enough of a slow down that is prevents a vehicle from becoming a juggernaut but not so much that it deters people from using it.
- [BONUS] The problem with the Little Bird repair mentioned above was that the repair tool was doing a flat rate of repair on all vehicles. This was a problem because in the game files a tank had 1000 health points while a Little Bird had 500. This mean that you could repair the LB twice as fast and having two repair units with repair upgrades equipped meant you could do it even faster. Hopefully the devs remember this lesson and make sure to tailor the repair tool healing to each vehicle to make sure you can't repair damage faster than it is dealt.
Will this discourage people from using the repair tool? If done properly then I suspect not much as being able to keep your team's vehicles in the field is always an asset. Of course, players should also be compensated for their efforts with an appropriate amount of points to encourage use. It's important to remember too that players will likely have a healthy array of gadgets to choose from so just because you don't see 64 players running the repair tool doesn't mean it's underpowered.
I want to anticipate some of the potential pushback and preemptively respond. I suspect some will point out that with 128 players and the ability for anyone to run RPG that you will now, more than ever, need repair tool as it is traditionally implemented. To that I say this. While there will be more RPG users for sure, there will also be more space on each map as well as more vehicles which means that the effect will be diluted and the need for repair tool reform remains.
