Okay, after a little practical experience I realized I made an error. Playing around with the new patch I found that things get linked both to you AND the kit currently afield. No more wall of IPS shields after revive.

Here's what I'm talking about.

If you pick up an assault kit you will be able to deploy the med crate. Doing so will destroy any other med crate deployed by the last person to use the kit. Dropping the kit and picking up another assault kit will let you deploy another med crate and destroy any kit deployed by that kits original user. At one time poaching assault kits I managed to make myself a fort of invincibility with 10 med crates and 4 ammo crates taken from poached kits. Standing in that on a pistol only server made me regen health faster then people could take it out with pistol fire and gain ammo back faster then its possible to unload PAC pistol clips. Of course, the reverse is true too. If someone picks up the kit you dropped and deploys another med crate, then your med crate will self destruct because it belongs to the same kit. When the original owner of the kit respawns then they can also cause your deployables to self destruct by deploying their own. This is only the case with deployables limited to one per kit. (Med Crate, Ammo Crate, IPS, Sentry Gun)

Deployables that have a multiple count are linked via owner. If you steal someone's recon kit you can deploy your own APMs and RDX, but can't retrieve the original recon's. Your APMs and RDX will also not vanish if the original owner of the kit redeploys theirs, but you cannot exceed the maximum number of deployables per person. That means deploying mines from an engineer's kit will not count towards their maximum, but will count towards yours. Picking up a second kit and deploying more mines will cause your original mines to self destruct if you go over the 5 mine maximum.


In short. If your deployable usually vanishes or self destructs when you die (mines, RDX, PDS-1) then they are linked primarily to the player and you have a maximum number you can have in the field. If your deployable tends to persist after your death until you deploy a new one (IPS, Sentry Gun, Ammo Crate, Health Crate) then they will persist until someone drops another one from the kit used by either picking it up or respawning with the kit.


This, of course, creates something else thats important. If you kill an assult and take their kit, you should immediately deploy their med crate to self destruct any they deployed earlier with it. This will provide a healing resource to your team (hopfully) or at least deny one from your opponent. The same is true for ammo crates. You can also destroy IPS or Sentry guns by simply redeploying them from the kit that originally deployed them and turn the resource over to your team.

On the flip side it is also beneficial for a respawning person to redeploy any persistant deployables they had left ASAP to destroy and reacquire your kit resources. An ammo or health crate will regenerate on its own and the IPS or Sentry Gun can always be picked up again. Doing that will counter the benefits of kit poaching and neglecting to do it just gives the enemy the advantage. Seriously...its just plain embarrassing to get killed by your own sentry gun because you forgot to reacquire it.