-1. The reason ARF and Recon struggle to gain traction is not because the ARF kits are particularly lacking, or because the concept of recon isn’t enjoyable. It’s because this is a primarily PVE server and events, deployments, and general RP isn’t structured very well to support it. It’s fairly blatant when you look at the 41st for example, with our new recruits being able to select ARF or HVY instantly. Many new players will flock to ARF purely because recon sounds cool, and the kit comes with a sniper. The issue is, as I said before, this is primarily a PVE server; you can conduct recon and do literally everything right, stay concealed, but still get detected and start getting shot at by the AI because portions of the map have improper collision. That moves me to my next point, the map really isn’t built with recon in mind. Sure, there’s loads of vantage points and areas that overlook points of interest, but most of those areas are either difficult or impossible to reach without a jetpack or getting yourself stuck in a rock. Along with that, whenever the rare opportunity does come up for recon to be a viable option, generally speaking by the time you’ve established yourself and can begin your RP, the rest of the server has pushed up/past you and the information you could’ve obtained is already widespread knowledge. That will forever be the case so long as you have Jedi that can traverse the entire map in seconds, and a clone force of 40+ people that can decimate any objective in a few minutes unless they’re getting bombed to shit.
To finish this off - I actually do agree that most troopers should have access to very basic medical supplies, 1-2 of the old stims really isn’t harmful to medics and makes sense. But, with the way events, encounters, and deployments are structured (Generally being very 1 lane, run and gun), it just doesn’t make sense. There is rarely ever going to be a chance where you can’t find a medic while literally the entire server is clustered in/focused on the same area. This server and PVE gmod in general just isn’t built well to accommodate for recon, and likely never will be.