Remove chapter headings in Rmarkdown for PDF reports - pdf

Question

I am aware that there are already an infinite number of entries here about the YAML header in rmarkdown. However, I have not yet been able to find an answer to the following question:
I need:
a PDF
a title page
the table of contents starting on the second page
a page numbering starting at the table of contents
numbered sections
no automatic chapter numbering
I would like to do this without LateX code, bookdown or the import of any text files.
Except for the last point, this seems to work with documentclass: report. Unfortunately I can't get rid of the chapters. Is there no pure rmarkdown YAML header solution for this?
---
title: The Force
subtitle: May it be with you
author: "Obi-Wan Kenobi"
date: "`r Sys.Date()`"
output:
pdf_document:
toc: yes
toc_depth: 3
number_sections: true
documentclass: report
---
# Introduction
## Sub
### SubSub
# Methods
## Sub
### SubSub

Answer 1

We can use this answer from Tex-StackExchange to do this.
---
title: The Force
subtitle: May it be with you
author: "Obi-Wan Kenobi"
date: "`r Sys.Date()`"
output:
pdf_document:
toc: yes
toc_depth: 3
number_sections: true
documentclass: report
header-includes:
- \usepackage{titlesec}
- \titleformat{\chapter}{\normalfont\LARGE\bfseries}{\thechapter}{1em}{}
- \titlespacing*{\chapter}{0pt}{3.5ex plus 1ex minus .2ex}{2.3ex plus .2ex}
---
# Introduction
## Sub
### SubSub
# Methods
## Sub
### SubSub

Answer 2

If your only reason to use the report class is the page break before the table of contents, you could easily add it to the default class article:
---
title: The Force
subtitle: May it be with you
author: "Obi-Wan Kenobi"
date: "`r Sys.Date()`"
output:
pdf_document:
keep_tex: true
toc: yes
toc_depth: 3
number_sections: true
header-includes:
- \pretocmd{\tableofcontents}{\clearpage}{}{}
- \apptocmd{\tableofcontents}{\clearpage}{}{}
---
# Introduction
## Sub
### SubSub
# Methods
## Sub
### SubSub