Out of all the classes in TFC, engineers are in some ways the trickiest to play; that’s probably why new players tend to avoid them like the plague, or a friendly engy trying to fix their armor. =) The menus, lack of health and armor, and “weak” (hah!) weapons tend to discourage players who are unaware of their potential. As far as sheer variety of abilities, nobody else comes close, which can add to the hesitation some people have in playing engineers. But if you know what you’re doing and have a good sense of what it takes to put up an organized defense (or offense in a few situations), engineers can be powerful allies and a lot of fun to play!

-= The Engineer Class in a Deathmatch =-

The engineer is generally a weak class in a straight deathmatch. Ignoring help from sentries and teammates, play him somewhat like you might play a scout on defense and use hit and run tactics if the area can accommodate them, or somewhat suicidal close attacks if it can’t. The only differences between a scout and an engy are the special abilities, speed, weapons carried and 5 (!) health. Scouts are the only class that have less health than you, and you’re even equal on armor! For this reason, don’t try to take on a healthy soldier one on one in a straight deathmatch unless really necessary, your team can afford it and you gain something by it, or you generally know what you’re doing. =) Your EMPs, handgrenades, and shotty can make you a halfway decent weapons platform in a pinch, but remember you’re still basically a slower scout with slightly better combat weapons. This is why a lot of the time I rely on suicide EMP runs to do my damage rather than attempting to deathmatch a heavier class and losing, or by luring opponents into the range of my sentry. Your main position should be in the rear, so that you’re hopefully not taking on healthy and fully armed opponents. Your job is to finish off anybody coming by your position and generally not up front getting in the first hits. You can’t take very much damage before dying, so remember you’re not a soldier when that HWG comes lumbering in. =)

-= How to Beat an Engy =-

Remember that while engineers have weak health and armor, their weapons are actually somewhat powerful and some of them, like me, have a death wish and won’t hesitate to kill themselves to send you back to respawn. I always love it when an enemy medic runs up and infects me thinking that he’s actually harming me. They ALWAYS learn about a second later that infecting an engy with a death wish is a BAD idea. =)

Also remember that their EMPs are quite powerful in a lot of cases so discard early and often, just in case you pick up an extra bag somewhere along the line. Trust me, it’ll make your life last significantly longer. =) When I’m not going on kamikaze runs I usually just circle the opponent while priming an EMP and trying to get in as many shotty hits as I can while I’m waiting to gib them with the grenade. Since engineers are relatively fast, I often live quite a bit longer than I have any right to considering that I’m taking on several opponents two or three times bigger than I am.

To beat an engy, stay away from them if possible and attack from long distance if you can inflict enough damage fast enough. An alternative is to get close to them and blast them quickly with an explosive weapon such as the rocket or grenade launcher and then back off to avoid the inevitable grenade. Essentially, to beat an engy the best thing you can do is to put yourself in a position where it’s difficult for them to EMP you. Be cautious, because a good engy will surprise you: I’ve killed people camping our attic in the Well with a through-the-floor EMP many times, so don’t assume you’re automatically safe if you’re high up or in an otherwise somewhat inaccessible location. Also make sure that your opponent isn’t luring you into the range of their dispenser or sentry!

-= Weapons =-

[emp] [guns] [wrench]

- EMP Grenades -

First, let’s look at the engy’s personal weapons, the guns and grenades. I’ll cover grenades first, since I consider them my primary weapons. Engineers carry what most of us who have been on the receiving end would no doubt consider one of the most powerful weapons there is: the EMP grenade. It deserves a special consideration by itself. It has a good sized radius; can penetrate walls, ceilings, and floors (allowing for surprise kills); can detonate pipebomb traps; and turns any backpacks in the area of effect into mini handgrenades. It can detonate a fully loaded level 3 sentry with one shot; something only the sniper rifle and a MIRV or a well placed nail grenade can do as well. It also takes out fully loaded HWGs or demos quite effectively, which is quite a feat in itself; however, since it’s dependent on the enemy’s ammo, you’re better off saving them for the heavier loaded classes and using handgrenades on the lighter, faster ones. Also be aware that if the enemy is wise to your tactics they’ll make it a point to discard and to not load up on any heavy explosive grenades, which makes your EMPs relatively useless. It can take 3 or more EMPs to kill a HWG when they’re not carrying explosives, which is far too many when that HWG happens to be riddling you with bullets.

On grenade jumping: Yes, it’s possible, but in almost all cases, don’t bother. Handgrenades will launch you up really high, but will kill you if you don’t do it perfectly and will leave you at 4-7 health, no armor if you do execute it perfectly. And that’s assuming you’re maxed out to begin with and take no damage from landing. EMPs will give you about ½ to 2/3 the boost at a much smaller cost in health/armor, but you have to be carrying a full load of rockets (30) and frankly, I can think of much better uses for EMPs.

I’ve found 4 EMPs disappear all too quickly already, so use good judgment. In my opinion, one of the best tactics is to prime an EMP, hold onto it, and run towards a cluster of opponents. Almost no matter what they do, they’re going to go up in flames; if they kill you before it goes off, you drop it and it immediately explodes, and if you live, you just get better grenade placement. In fact, if you discard your explosive ammo first, you often survive while your opponents don’t! I’ve annoyed many players with this one, most of my clanmates included. *grin* I’ve found this tactic to be extremely damaging to the enemy offense, as it costs your team only one weak defender (you, and sometimes you don’t even die), who will respawn relatively close to where you died, in exchange for at least one enemy. Even if you only kill one, you are slightly ahead because the time for you to respawn, resupply and go on defense is less than the time for an enemy to do the same and make it back to your base. Obviously this doesn’t apply when you’re the sole defender and there’s more than one opponent on offense, however. While your life is essentially expendable, make sure you use it wisely: Don’t kill yourself to take out one opponent while two others are making their way to your flag room.

The more enemies you take out, the greater the advantage. For this reason, ALWAYS prime your EMPs before you anticipate having to throw them. You will likely never encounter me without an EMP primed unless I’m building. Or you’re on my team, and even that’s not a guarantee. ;) Don’t forget that you have a gun while you’re waiting to throw that grenade!

< 2 IMPORTANT SIDE NOTES DIRECTED TO EVERYBODY! >

FIRST: I suppose this is a good place to put it as any: Be considerate of your defending teammates and their territory, especially the engys. If we have friendly fire on, please do your best to avoid me if possible. I’m a little too trigger happy for your health. *maniacal grin* Seriously though, if you come into an area I’ve told everyone I’m defending with no warning and I gib you, (and I will try to warn everyone once I have a set territory) please don’t scream and yell at me, because my first priority is to eliminate any enemies that come into my area, and I quite literally shoot first and ask questions later. Feel free to berate me if I happen to nail you with a stray grenade elsewhere or after having warned me, but if I have a certain territory I’m defending, please don’t come running in unexpectedly and act surprised when I act a little aggressively, it takes a split second to recognize color and I have the ever-present spy menace to worry about anyway. To avoid this, try to let me know beforehand you’re coming in, but if you have to come in without warning, shoot the wall to show me you’re not a spy and I’ll try my best to make sure the EMP I just primed doesn’t turn you into a Fourth of July fireworks display. =) You can come in, but please let me know first!

SECOND: Also, and THIS may upset some of you, but I stick by my position… Engineers, try to grab the grenade packs before anybody else can snag them. They need them more than anybody else, with the possible exception of spies, or conc jumping scouts/medics, who I would say have roughly equal claim to them, everything else being equal. It always annoys me a little when I come back to resupply and see demos or snipers, straight out of respawn, grab a grenade pack they DON’T need before I can get it, usually simply out of habit. Sometimes I see a soldier waiting in that spot so he can get his one extra nail grenade. Those things have really long respawn times, as I’m sure you’ve all noticed. I have no problem at all if you are coming back from a fight and need it, but please don’t deny the rest of us the chance to get a reload we actually NEED! My MAIN weapons are my EMPs, and without them I’m at a serious disadvantage and can’t put up a decent defense. Thank you. *ahem* Okay, back to the rest of the guide…

- Guns -

On to the basic guns. You have only two basic guns, the railgun and your shotty. The railgun sucks. Period. In every imaginable way. It does only 20 damage per hit, which is a mere 2 higher than the wrench and the same as a single barrel shotgun; it’s relatively slow to fire as well and has slow moving shots; on top of that they’re even easily traceable. The only thing missing is a slow reload! I only use it for long-range sniping of enemy sentries, dispensers, distant oblivious HWGs, or other stationary targets, that’s it. =) Oh, and on public servers or when training I use it like a laser pointer. “Build it HERE.” =) If I’m out of ammo for my shotty and low on grenades (which almost NEVER happens), I just kamikaze with an EMP instead of trying to circle an opponent with that stupid gun. Bottom line, don’t bother. However, to at least partially offset this, the double shotgun is actually kinda nice, it has decent damage close up and is a hitscan weapon, which means that its shot travel time is instantaneous; just point and shoot, no lead time. It often takes down scouts with two hits at close range, other engys in about three, and that’s only if you aim for the body as we often have a tendency to do early on. Head shots actually start to get nasty. Only about 2/3 of the pellets need to connect with a scout’s head to kill them. *grin* It also has 8 shots per reload, which is often more than I need; I’ve either killed or been killed by my opponent by then. You can even fire when reloading, which is helpful. All in all, not a bad weapon.

- Wrench -

The wrench, A.K.A. the spanner…Umm…not much of a melee weapon, but then again, only the medkit and the knife are worthwhile close range weapons. Its only real use is to repair armor and bring up menus in my opinion; however, I will give you this quote from UKFN: “The spanner is also a useful spy detection weapon - with a teammate it will give them armor or do nothing at all, with a spy, they'll scream and if you're lucky you’ll spanner murder them. If a Spy doesn't want to blow his cover he has to avoid your attack and he'll back away from you as you approach waving your spanner - that’s a sure sign that he's a spy or a llama. Either way, shoot him.” Actually, please take the time to educate the newbie if he doesn’t turn out to be a spy! =) I happen to think that if you happen to go repair someone’s armor and they turn out to be an enemy spy, the damage is just icing on the cake, your little wrench is no match for their big sharp knife. Back off and switch to your shotty instead, and start priming a handgrenade for good measure. Anyhow, in case you haven’t figured it out by now, the ammo count when you have the wrench selected is the amount of metal you have; you get metal from ammo packs and armor. It takes 1 metal unit to patch up 5 armor units, and is usually done in 25 armor point batches for every time you whack your teammate. If you see a teammate calling medic, they may very well be calling specifically for you; even if they aren’t, go ahead and patch up their armor anyway unless they’re infected (duh!) or you need the metal for a sentry or dispenser, which takes priority. Always patch up a teammate after you shoot them if you’re checking for spies, otherwise they’ll get irritated, and for good reason.