HANDS ON GUIDE

Defence #3 - Engineer

Engineer: 125 HP

The Engineer is best used to support the team with health, ammo, and lashings of Sentry turret fire. He can hold his own against any of the other classes, as long as his aim is to survive and not to wade into the fray in hope of a killing spree. As an Engineer your primary concern is to stay alive, and keep your equipment armed and functional.

Deploy

Sentry Turret – construction cost 130 metal

The Sentry is an engineer’s most effective offensive weapon. It must be deployed on a clear area, but the area need not be level. This means you can place it on ramps or roofs. As you run about with the Sentry deploy tool active you’ll either see a blueprint with a red cross, signifying a blocked area, or you’ll see a ghost of the turret, and a large arc showing you the new turret’s potential line of fire. Turrets can turn and fire behind themselves, but they react fastest and prefer targets in front of them. The trick is to position the arc so that it covers an entire area. Try not to leave gaps where a Sniper or Soldier can stand out of the turrets range, firing repeatedly upon it.

When initially deployed a turret is incredibly vulnerable. It cannot fire until it’s fully constructed. A single rocket or grenade will turn it into a pile of sparking shrapnel, so you must be very careful not to place it in open view of the enemy. Turrets have three stages of construction, and each of the upgrades costs 200 metal. The gun only carries a finite amount of ammo, and hitting it with the wrench will rearm, repair, and upgrade the gun. If your turret is firing, the first hit of the wrench will rearm or repair it, so often 200 metal will not be enough to upgrade in one sitting. Keeping your metal supply topped up is a pressing concern for an Engineer as your structures will be easily destroyed if you don’t have metal to repair them with.

In its basic stage a Sentry is powerful enough to kill a Scout or an unwary Soldier. It will take a couple of rockets to kill at this stage. The next stage adds Chain Guns, which will mow down any enemy that runs out of cover. It takes three or four rockets to kill it at this stage. The third and final upgrade adds Rocket Launchers which fire four at a time, and create significant splash damage. An upgraded sentry is difficult to kill when unattended. When it has an Engineer by its side to repair it, it’s nearly indestructible.

The turret’s weakness is that it takes about half a second to lock a target and start firing. When a turret acquires a target it emits a loud beep, then moves its guns into position and starts firing. It will stay locked onto the first target until the enemy is dead or out of range. It will then start the targeting process again if any enemies are in range. Targeting time, and obsession with a single target give the enemy an opportunity to attack the gun while taking minimal damage. When this happens the engineer has to decide between defending the sentry with Shotgun and Pistol, or to keep clanking away with the wrench.

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