Spy Sappin' Mah Sentry? Nah...

[PizzaSHARK!]

Spy Sappin' Mah Sentry? Nah...
A Guide to Playing Engineer


Introduction

The Engineer is one of the more popular classes in TF2, and also makes an excellent starting class for new players, particularly if they don't have a lot of prior experience in first-person shooters due to the class' heavy use of indirect fire support and utility for the team.


Note
Also note that QuickLightning has written a slightly outdated beginner's guide to the Engineer, and it can be found here.


Class Overview

Engineers are invaluable in a defensive role, and with experience, can also provide an attacking team much needed support on their way to the next capture point. Engineers, along with Demomen, are all about area denial - an upgraded and manned sentry gun will effectively prevent all but a determined enemy presence from entering the area, and when combined with the teleporters and dispensers also available to the class, allow an experienced Engineer to defend an area from enemy attacks as well as provide his teammates a method of rapidly getting to the front lines along with keeping them healed and loaded up to keep that crucial forward momentum going.

The Engineer is the only available class that has the ability to build stuff (the game calls em buildings, though they don't seem big enough to be called buildings), and as a result is fairly weak in direct combat. Armed with only a normal Shotgun, Pistol, and Wrench and sporting a paltry 125 HP, the Engineer is dogmeat for just about every other class in direct combat, about equal to a Medic in terms of a direct fight - pretty weak. On the other hand, a well-positioned and supported sentry gun will completely shut down Pyros and Scouts, and makes life hell for everyone else, except maybe Demomen.

The Shotgun is your primary weapon (default key "1"), and functions just like the Pyro's, the Soldier's, and the Heavy's. It's a mostly close range weapon with a moderate bullet spread, and does about 80 damage at close range, and about 30 at medium range. It's pretty much worthless beyond those ranges. You can carry 6 shells in the chamber and another 36 in reserve.

The Pistol is your sidearm (default key "2") and functions just like the Scout's. It's a semi-automatic pistol with a pretty decent rate of fire and decent accuracy, and does about 10-25 per shot at short and medium ranges. Due to a fairly steep damage dropoff for attacking at longer ranges (all weapons suffer from this), the Pistol is best used at a medium range, where your Shotgun loses a lot of its punch. The Pistol has 12 rounds in its magazine and you can carry a whopping 200 in reserve.

The Wrench is your melee weapon (default key "3") and... well, it's a melee weapon. You swing it somewhat slowly for a pretty decent amount of damage (about 70-90), and it doubles as your repair and upgrade tool. Swing your wrench at your building's (or a friendly Engineer's!) to repair them if they're damaged and to upgrade them if they're not. Each swing will restore about 60% of a building's health and consuming an amount of metal proportional to the amount repaired, or will consume 25 metal to upgrade the building. You can carry 200 metal at any one time, and the amount you're carrying is represented by a small wrench icon just below your weapon's ammunition on your HUD. You can get more metal by picking up dropped weapons (+100); small, gray ammo crates (+41); medium, brown ammo crates (+100 or +200 for an Engineer's Wrench or Toolbox); or large, brown ammo crates (+200). Returning to spawn and visiting the supply cabinet will also give you 200 metal.

Now, unlike every other class except the Spy, the Engineer also has the Build tool (default key "4") and the Destroy tool (default key "5"). These are the tools you use to... build... and destroy... the stuff you can build (or destroy.) When selected, the Build tool will bring up a menu of the buildings you're allowed to build - Sentry Gun (130 metal), Dispenser (100 metal), Teleporter Entrance (125 metal), or Teleporter Exit (125 metal.) You're only allowed one of each at any one time, and once placed, they cannot be moved - this is where the Destroy tool comes into play. When selected, the Destroy tool will list all of your currently placed buildings (whether they're finished building or not), and will allow you to destroy them from anywhere on the map, allowing you to place a new whatever you just blew up. When destroyed, the buildings will explode into several little bits and pieces of scrap metal, which can then be picked up and used in the creation or upgrade of new buildings (each piece is worth around 10 to 15 metal.) To select a building from the menu, press the corresponding key. The Build tool will then give you the building of your choice in a wireframe, allowing you to place it where you want it to be. You can rotate it by pressing alt-fire (default key "RMB") and place it with the fire key (default key "LMB").

The Sentry Gun is the most expensive building available to you at 130 metal, but it also builds pretty quickly (about 10 seconds.) Once placed and positioned, the Sentry Gun will automatically engage any targets that enter its effective attack range (about 40 yards or so), prioritizing the closest targets first. The Sentry Gun does pretty solid damage (about 20-40 a shot) and possesses powerful impact force on its shots, allowing it to knock people out of the way or into the firezone of another Sentry Gun. It seems to have about 125 HP at Level 1, 150 HP at Level 2, and 175 at Level 3, and fires faster and harder with each upgrade level. It gains twin miniguns (firing about three times as fast) at Level 2, and further upgrades these miniguns (firing even faster, around four times as fast as Level 1) and adds a rocket launcher pack at for even more damage and impact force. Sentry Guns do not possess infinite ammo, however, and need to be refilled periodically by whacking them with your Wrench, which takes a teeny amount of metal (typically less than 20.)

Sentry Guns are excellent at denying areas (especially hallways) to enemy teams, but they're very vulnerable without an Engineer around to keep them repaired and teammates to keep stickymines off of them. Spies can disable and destroy them in short order with the Electro-Sapper (disables it and does about 20% damage per second unless removed), and Demomen are typically able to destroy them from a safe distance by either lobbing stickymines or grenades from above or below the gun, or from out of its range. Unaided Sentry Guns are also pretty easily destroyed by an Ubercharged Pyro, Soldier, Demoman, or Heavy. Additionally, Sentry Guns have a fairly slow turn speed at close range, allowing skilled Pyros to dance around it, destroying it while remaining largely unhurt. For this reason, proper Sentry Gun placement is important; see the next section for more information about this.

The Dispenser is the cheapest building available to you, costing only 100 metal, but it takes a pretty significant 20 seconds or so to build, meaning it's best built early so that it'll be ready around the same time your Sentry Gun is ready. The Dispenser is arguably the Engineer's most important building - especially in arena mode - in that it heals and resupplies your teammates automatically, and it also provides you with a limitless source of metal, meaning you won't have to leave your gun behind in order to go grab an ammo crate for more metal.

Dispensers have three upgrade levels, with each level increasing its HP (again, it seems to have 125/150/175), the rate at which it restocks its supplies, and the rate at which it heals wounds. It can provide 40 metal (or ammo) per "chunk" at Level 1, 50 at Level 2, and 60 at Level 3.

The Dispenser is an invaluable tool for you and your team, allowing you to rapidly heal up and rearm without having to go chase a Medic or stand around waiting for medkits and ammo crates, which allows your team to keep its forward momentum in attack and defense roles. It's even more important in arena mode, where Medics are targeted faster than ever before, and where medkits are scarce (or not there at all.) The Dispenser on its own is totally defenseless, meaning it's best to place it out of sight unless you can count on someone being there to protect it at all times. It's often wise to place it a short distance from your sentry gun so that an enemy push can't kill both your gun and dispenser at the same time. More on this in the next section.

The Teleporter Entrance and Exit each cost 125 metal to build, and provide your team with a method of rapidly moving around the map. The teleporters build in about 15 seconds, and appear to follow the same HP scheme as the other two buildings (125/150/175.) Each upgrade level increases the rate at which the teleporter recharges, to the point where there's only a couple seconds' delay at Level 3. Generally speaking, you should drop your Teleporter Entrance right outside of spawn, run back in to refill your metal, and then continue on your way.

Teleporters are tied with dispensers for most important building, because a Level 3 teleporter can easily be hidden in a small corner or alcove where the enemy isn't likely to find it, allowing your team to rapidly warp in to the front lines (or behind the enemy's front lines), allowing you to keep that critical forward momentum flowing. Teleporters are also an excellent means of getting back to your buildings if you happened to get your head blown off or your kidneys gouged out. Generally speaking, it's best to build your teleporter a moderate distance away from the rest of your buildings, because as long as your teleporter is still there, your team can still get from spawn to the front lines very quickly, you included. Care should be taken after freshly teleporting, because the team-colored teleporter trail is a dead giveaway that there's a teleporter close by, and many players will spend time actively hunting it. Teleporters should typically be upgraded either immediately after building the dispenser and sentry gun (if you're planning on digging in) or before everything else (if you're planning on planting a ninja teleport in secrecy.)


Your Wrench and How to Swing It

With luck, the previous section has given you the necessary crash course on what your buildings do and how to use them; this section will detail all the sneaky, dirty tricks you can do with those buildings to make you every bit as aggravating as that Scout or Demospammer.


The Cockblock

- After playing Engineer for a few rounds, you'll have probably noticed something about your buildings - all of your teammates can pass through them with ease, while you can't. While this can be a source of annoyance (building in the vents on ctf_turbine, for example), it's often a boon for you, allowing you to ninja-teleport your way to locations typically only accessible via a Scout's double jump, a Soldier's rocketjump, or a Demoman's minejump. You can jump and drop a teleporter exit onto ledges normally out of reach, allowing you to teleport up there and begin building (the ledge in the lower tunnels outside of the intelligence rooms in ctf_turbine are an excellent example of this.) Moreover, you can build a dispenser, hop on top of it, and then jump and place a teleporter exit, which you might call the dispenserjump

- Finally, enemy players cannot move through your buildings, which is often a dead giveaway for enemy Spies. If you see a teammate hopping around on your buildings, or looking at you across from one, shoot his ass - it's a Spy! Finally, you can place buildings in doorways and hallways as a means of slowing down approaching enemies (and alternatively giving your team a bit of warning when they inevitably destroy whatever you left in their way.)

- No, I'm not going to show you where all the sneaky, dirty places to build stuff are - half the fun of playing Engineer is finding and exploiting those places for yourself.


Sentry Gun Placement

- As mentioned in the previous section, sentry guns have the annoying issue of being very vulnerable to attacks outside of their firezone (either out of range, below them, or above them), and also fairly suck at tracking targets at very close range due to a slow turn speed. This can be remedied by smart gun placement and support from teammates.

- If you're building in a hallway, don't build your gun near corners! A Pyro can easily run around the corner, quickly dart out of your gun's firing arc, and circlestrafe around it to kill you (and possibly the gun as well.) Likewise, a Demoman can lob grenades or stickymines around the corner, and a Soldier can use the proximity damage of his rockets to destroy the gun. When building in hallways, you should ideally build the gun about halfway down - this gives it sufficient distance from the corners to make it hard to cheese it down, yet leaves it close enough to those corners that enemies rounding the corners will likely not have time to escape.

- If you're working with another Engineer on your team, don't build your buildings close together! Your enemies should never be able to swoop in and wreck both your shit, leaving the point mostly defenseless. Build your sentry guns so that their firezones cross, covering each other. Ideally, one will be built slightly above or below the other, making it difficult for Demomen to lob stickies at the other from safety. Your sentry should cover the other Engineer's, and vice-versa.

- If Spies or Demomen are giving you problems, speak up! Ask Pyros to start spychecking ruthlessly, and have a Sniper or Scout swing by and ventilate the offending Demoman. Your job is to get your shit up and use it to support your team; your team's job is to cover your ass while you're building and keep them off of it once it's built. If someone ain't doing their job, speak up!

- When your gun is under attack, duck behind it and make sure it's between you and the incoming fire. This will reduce the damage you'll take while repairing it (you will take a few hits if they're spamming explosives at it or it's a Pyro), and it also prevents a Sniper from decapitating you if the gun is Level 3.

- If your gun is hopelessly lost (Demoman is spamming stickies at it and there's no one around to scare him off, or you've got an uber rushing it with no one to stop it), run away! Let your gun die, but keep yourself alive. If your gun's gone, you can simply go right back over and rebuild it after the offending party has been dealt with; if you're dead, that means your team has to wait another 10-20 seconds before you can return to rebuild, giving your enemy a window of opportunity your team may not be able to afford.

- A sentry gun does not have to be upgraded to be effective, and this is especially important in arena mode, where teams must remain mobile and ammo crates are often scarce (and often watched by Snipers.) Simply building a Level 1 gun to watch your back to deny a hallway to the enemy team can make all the difference, and doesn't cost much in time or metal.


Dispenser Placement

- Like I mentioned previously, your dispenser is best placed a short distance from your sentry gun; ideally, it's far enough away that stickies won't be able to get both your gun and dispenser at the same time, yet close enough that you can quickly dart over to it to refill your metal and then get right back to fixing your gun while it's under fire. On the other hand, some folks prefer to place their dispenser directly behind or beside them, so that they can continually be healed and resupplied while camping behind their gun. While this makes it possible to keep your gun up under some heavy fire, it has the drawback of making your dispenser very vulnerable, making it fairly easy for a Demoman to get you, your gun, and your dispenser all at once.

- As previously mentioned, you can use your own dispenser as a boost to get to high ledges that you'd normally not be able to reach. Because of the build time on a dispenser, though, this works best during the setup time at the beginning of attack-defend maps.

- Dispensers will automatically heal enemy Spies, making it fairly obvious when there's a cloaked Spy in the area. If you see and hear your Dispenser start healing someone that apparently isn't there, get your back to a wall and start shooting!

- Standing on top of your dispenser when not under attack can make it almost impossible for Spies to backstab you, especially if your dispenser is up against a wall.

- Like with sentry guns, it's often best to build a Level 1 dispenser in a relatively secluded area in arena mode games and forget about it. Ideally it will be placed somewhere a little out of the way, but close enough that your teammates can take advantage of it. Because of the mobile nature of arena mode, you're often going to want to destroy the old one and put up a new one, which makes upgrading counterproductive.


Teleporter Placement

- Teleporters are fairly simple to place. You should generally drop your entrance right outside spawn, in clear view for your teammates to easily see and reach. It can help to place it behind a wall or ledge to make it harder for enemy Spies and Scouts (who often cruise by spawn on some maps) to notice, but it should generally be in plain view for teammates.

- When placing your exit, make sure it's not facing a wall! New Engineers constantly do this, and it can be very disorienting to take the teleport and find yourself facing a wall. You can change the direction the exit is facing by using alt-fire while placing the building. The direction your teammates will be facing when they take the teleport is indicated by the arrow on the blueprint below the wireframe.

- Teleporter exits are best placed just behind or just ahead of the front lines and in areas that are infrequently trafficked. Nothing sucks more than to have to go risk getting your head ripped off because someone found your exit and you've gotta go drop a new one.

- Remember that you can place buildings while jumping, allowing you to place exits on top of ledges to allow you and other classes without special jumps to reach areas they normally may not be able to. It's very fun to have Heavies teleported onto a high ledge, where the enemy will not be expecting them. This kind of teleporter placement is also extremely useful for getting Pyros into solid ambush positions. Be creative!

- When playing Engineer on the attacking team, your teleporter should be the first thing you drop and the first thing you upgrade, even over your sentry gun and dispenser. As an Engineer on the attacking team, you're there for your teleporter more than anything else - get it up, get it upgraded, and keep it safe so that your team can rapidly get to the front lines and keep pressure up on the defending team.

- The teleporter functions as a single building as far as upgrades are concerned - upgrading either the entrance or the exit will upgrade both buildings, and when one is the destroyed, the other is knocked back down to Level 1.


Engineering is a Team Sport

There'll often be times that you'll have more than one Engineer on a team, especially while defending, and you should check a few things before proceeding.

- How many Engineers are there already, and what role is your team on? If your team is the attacking team on an attack-defend map, it's extremely unlikely that you need more than a single Engineer. The team will generally need no more than two Engineers on regular capture point maps like cp_well and cp_badlands - one to keep your team pressuring the next point and one to protect the previous point.

- If there are more Engineers than your team needs and you were the last to go Engineer, you should switch to a class the team needs. But before you do, ask the other Engineers if they need help getting built up! If nothing else, upgrade their teleporter entrances for them so they don't need to worry about it.

- In general, it's much better to have a single Level 3 sentry on a point than two Level 1 sentries. If the other Engineer(s) are getting built up, use your metal to help them upgrade their equipment, and then upgrade everyone's teleporters when you return to spawn for more metal. This really helps your team, and it also reduces competition for those crucial ammo crates during the setup time.

- If you're attacking on an attack-defense map, stop to think if your team really needs an Engineer for the first point. In most cases, this will be a resounding "hell no" - maybe you should play Medic for the extra ubercharge until your team takes that first point. For some maps, however, having an Engineer right off the bat can be very helpful, especially for those maps where the enemy team can invade your spawn area - a Level 3 sentry gun will stop them cold... or at least force them to use an uber.

- Communicate with your team! Ask them where your dispenser will be the most use to them (don't hog it all to yourself!) Ask them where they want your sentry gun's firezone to cover. Ask them about enemy Spies, Snipers, Pyros, and ubercharges. Communication is key to success as an Engineer.

- If you expect an enemy ubercharge, ask your team to help you stay alive. If it's going to be a Pyro, see if you can get a Heavy to stand in the way or a friendly Pyro to shove them away with the airblast. If it's a Demoman, a Pyro can shove stickies away from your equipment, or shove the Demoman out of range. See if your team's Scouts, Snipers, and Spies can't assassinate the enemy Medics, preventing them from efficiently building ubers. Sentry guns are great at controlling an area, but are still very vulnerable without support from your team.

- If you're having problems with Spies, get your team's Pyros to spycheck everyone everywhere. All it takes it one puff of flame to light up the Spy, making him dogmeat for anyone that wants a bite.


Direct Combat

- Direct combat isn't the Engineer's forte, so you should generally try and avoid it when possible. It's generally better to retreat and stay alive than to run in and get yourself killed - if they kill you and there are no other Engineers around to help, your stuff can be dismantled in short order, especially if there's a Spy around to sap it first.

- If you're in a situation where direct combat is unavoidable, know what you're going up against. If it's a Scout or Pyro - classes are powerful in close quarters - keep your distance and plink them with the Pistol. The same goes for Soldiers - a rocket at your feet will ruin your day. Against Demomen, Snipers, and other classes that don't fare so well up close, it's best to pull out your Shotgun and stay close. Unlike pretty much every other class, the Engineer doesn't really have any gimmicks (self-healing, burn damage, super speed, explosives, etc) to help him in a direct confrontation, which is why it's generally better to try and avoid them in the first place.

- Use your Wrench! Because Engineers tend to live long lives and rack up some significant damage through their sentry guns, their crit chance is usually going to be fairly high, and a Wrench crit will drop unbuffed Scouts, Spies, Snipers, Engineers, and Medics in one swing and leave Pyros and Demomen hurting. Don't underestimate the power of a heavy steel wrench.


---


Yes, this is going to be an article, but it needs some work. I'm going to need someone to take some screenshots for me, preferably someone running at a high resolution and maxed settings - I could take the screenshots myself, but I run at 800x600 with minimum settings, which means everything looks ugly as hell. An article needs sexy screenshots, not ugly ones.

I'll probably break out FRAPS and make a couple of short clips to showcase some of the trickier stuff ("dispenserjumping", sentry gun placement.) Youtube video quality is terrible to begin with, so I doubt my ugly settings will be noticeable.

Formatting could probably use some work as well. Ideally, it'll be as pretty as Ewok's Medic articles, but I'm not sure what would work best for that - I'm guessing OpenOffice's Write application. I wrote this at work in Notepad :P

Content could also use some work. I pulled some numbers out of my ass (sentry gun HP) and they may be incorrect. If anyone has other input to add, be my guest. This is Texas Teamplayers after all

There's also a half-finished Pyro guide in the works. I get bored here at work and I finally managed to get myself banned from various webcomic forums I was trolling as a means of killing time (so many weird people on forums like those), so I mostly just write guides for stuff since reading for too long makes me sleepy. And sleeping at work is a good way to get fired. And getting fired now would be bad.

Anyway.

[Oradi]

Holy crap. Informative post of the day here. :9

[DOMINATOR]

eh i think an offensive engineer article would be better. most people know or can figure out engineer easily.
offensive engi specifically on PL maps can be huge. like dropping lvl1s in flanks. using the cart to get metal (dont even bother building dispensers)
lvl1 with shotty is one of the most deadly surprise attacks, especially if you space yourself from the lvl1 so they cant kill ya both at once.

[Adsartha]

Added to my list!

If you don't get any here, I would throw out a request for screenshots as a separate thread in this forum.

Also, a note, if you want all of what you listed as the introduction to go into the intro box in the article editor (it's the flavor text that shows up on the home page when an article is published)... well, it won't work. 50-100 words, no coding (that means no italics, no bold, no links...). Just FYI.

Looks good, though.

[QuickLightning]

Though, as you mentioned, one of the first articles published at TTP was basically this...

http://www.texasteamplayers.com/index.php?page=97

You could just add this to the previously submitted article.

[Tick]

I'll still sap your sentries. :2

[Panic]

- Standing on top of your dispenser when not under attack can make it almost impossible for Spies to backstab you, especially if your dispenser is up against a wall.

unless that spy is moi

hehehe, I should put together a spy tutorial

[Arreo]

Moved to the article forum.

[PizzaSHARK!]

- Standing on top of your dispenser when not under attack can make it almost impossible for Spies to backstab you, especially if your dispenser is up against a wall.

unless that spy is moi

hehehe, I should put together a spy tutorial

You've found the hard way what happens when you bug me too much when I'm Engineer ;P

[Birdinator]

I would offer to take screenshots for you (I run TF2 at 1920x1200 res and I'm pretty sure high quality but maybe medium for all the other texture and video settings) but I have very little time in the next week to do it; if you can't find someone else and you see me around/online on the servers or on the forums I'll do it though