For some reason or other, I always end up playing an engy for at least part of the game. It's usually safe, it's cheap, and it's an extremely effective way to support the team. The only problem is, you have to be a little paranoid of Black Hand stealths and snipers while running around in base. I've gotten somewhat experienced at this, so I want to share a few tricks and experiences, feel free to contribute an engy/counter-engy tactic. But this isn't the place to rant about running over 4 engineers at once in a Mammoth, find another place where it matters.

A couple of basic rules for the current noobs and future technician elites:

Always repair at the building's MCT.
Never leave an unmanned vehicle, especially if you're on GDI.
If there's buildings taking damage or beacons being planted, check it out ASAP.
And never leave a part of your base uncovered. Use mines to remedy this.

I've gotten several kills with the pistol alone, and my Golden Rule of Engineeringtm is to always load my pistol before anything else. When a Black Hand or opposing engy rushes the base, all I have to do is whip out the pistol and shoot them in the head. The thing that seperates good engies from great engies is if they can hold their own with a pistol. I've shot many an unsuspecting rusher this way, they expect you to be easily frightened off and weak, so I try to send them for the quick and dirty ticket back home. Just go for the jugular and that suprised Black Hand beacon planter should go down pretty fast. If they're any good except as a rusher they'll fight back and you may not have a chance, but you can hurt them and the tables are usually against them living long, if they're in your base anyway. Make a racket and reinforcements should arrive. On a side note, rather than running around as an engy-tool monkey all the time I carry a pistol ready, it's quite simple to damage or kill an oncoming soldier with a few headshots. Repairs can wait sometimes, and you should do all you can to defend and rack up points... I've gotten so many, "WTF!"s from that.

Also, always pay attention to the building damage indicators. If you see a building with 3/4 health or that's just 'Under Attack', it could be a stray shell or an enemy planter. Never assume, but always check it out and follow your instincts and engy-intuition. I've done that many of times and helped save a building, or gotten busy and assumed it's nothing the soldiers couldn't handle... and been wrong. Ka-Boom. And if you've got 3 guys fixing up a building that's being shelled, always check out the other ones, as that often seems to be a coincidental diversion, and no engies are around to stop 3 blocks of timed C4 on the other side of the base. If it's bad in one place, it's gonna get worse somewhere else.

Thirdly, never leave a part of the base uncovered or unsurveyed for long. Put a few mines behind the doors or in the tunnels to stop rushers dead in their tracks. This goes hand in hand with part2, but you can prevent it even happening. If you want, put some mines in any tunnels or side entrances to get even more rushers, but you won't have as many mines to guard the buildings. It's risky... I always try to put mines behind the doorways in groups of three or four, which kills the Engineers and Black Hands quickly. Many times in the last couple of games, a humvee revealed a Hotwire which made straight for the power plant... and got blown up soon as the doors opened. However, this doesn't stop people from planting Nuke or IC beacons outside the buildings, where they can hide better. I wish the programmers would change it so beacons outside the buildings only heavily damage them to 25-30\%, but the rushers wouldn't have it that way...

Also, if you go on the offensive with vehicles and infantry, your repair gun is your only real asset to the assault. Just use vehicles and terrain for cover to avoid snipers and repair behind cover, and dodge all infantry you can. Look inconspicuous and you will live much longer. You also have a crucial role. You can prevent the halfway-rush syndrome that is more crippling to the attack than a Mammoth tank... When people get their nice expensive Stealth Tank damaged, for some reason they turn back around, blocking the oncoming invasion as well, and head back for base because their fricking paint got scratched. If you have repairs on the field, they'll last much longer and won't have to go all the way back home to be total pussies.
You also have a variety of explosives to finish off structures or vehicles that the wusses might not finish otherwise. Maybe they'll actually consider blowing up the buildings and overruning the remaining weaklings. But if it fails and you're being overrun, provided none of the aforementioned wimps give you a ride home, you'd better be fast and good with a pistol if you wanna make the trip back home. Just remember to weigh your choices and choose the course of action wisely, one engy could be the death of them...

Maps that are good for engies:
Without Power Plant, with base defenses.
With few side entrances, defendable side entrances, or highly visible approaches. No back ways around.
Maps with compact base layout, espcecially with base defenses mixed in, and high-traffic zones for the soldiers.

Maps that are bad for engies:
Anything without base defense.
Anything with a powerplant.
Spread-out bases, bases with many side entrances, bases with large open spaces and approaches, bases with many sniper overlooks, bases with low-traffic zones around many buildings and especially bases that have jutting out buildings that are difficult to cover.

Any map where you end up as GDI without any other good engies , especially without base defense, large open spaces, sniper overlooks, vehicle rushing, and spread out bases. I can't remember that map though, but I hate it!

Also, the Flame Tank is not so much devastating as very annoying. It packs much damage versus buildings, like C&C TD did, but for some reason they're much better against vehicles than infantry, one flame tank can wipe out a mammoth. It's a nuisance for engies cause it can melt through buildings at a good rate and splash damage anyone inside, but it's very low cones of damage and slow speed means it's not a huge threat to infantry, just damaging and a little scary, I guess. It's feasible to put mines and c4 all over it and get rid of it, though it's best taken care of by anti-tank infantry. I honestly wish they would rebalance it and make it the good ol infantry murderer again. BTW, the flamethrowers and chem sprayers do better damage versus vehicles than infantry. I dunno why, it just sucks and they're used for the completely wrong reasons than before.

Engy story:
Once while I first engy'd in the full game, I went with three others in the weapons factory while shells and flames hammered it. Everything was shaking and exploding, we would heal each other once in a while but kept at it for a couple minutes until it subsided. It was quite funny to be inside, it was sheer chaos with the exlosions and all. The life bar would creep down, then up, causing blackouts and sparks to be frequent. That was a good time.

Of course, they also handle all the aforementioned engineering duties as well.

I have played in games where the starting credits are 500+. If someone in GDI is good, he/she would get the Hotwire class and rush for the NOD base. 1 guy took out the NOD power plant before the game was 3min old. The next game, he wiped the Hand of NOD.

In these kinda situations, I would settle for the technician and went planting some prox C4 while the rest are slugging away. Cover the buildings and the tunnels. Usually 1/2 mines in the tunnels & the rest hidden (behind crates, behind walls where they would not spot).

Once done, get a buggy and go for some hjoy-riding!

The one we have already, but another at same cost that did weak against buildings and vehicles but totaly demolished and killed infantry like crazy?

This would be pretty awesome.

not fun.....

I expect when the flying patch comes out with rooftop access it'll make an engys job a lot easier and harder at the same time.

quote:

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Originally posted by nzowl:
All engys should be friendly to their harvester - especially early on when more credits equals bigger toys. Too many times you see a harvester go back out with health in the red.

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- on maps that have no AGT/Obelisk Engineers can rule. Maps like C&C_Islands and few others I've seen Engineer rushes take out a powerplant before the harvester returns to its roost! Sadly, part of the reason this works is because servers have no delay to wait for those with slower computing systems a time to load the map and get ready. So, in the first minute of these games those with the fast systems/connections can dominate.

- however, on maps like the ones I mentioned its critical that technicians (especially GDI) plant proxC4 around the tunnels. Its unbelievable how quickly GDI go under when stealth troops come in with nuke beacons.

Problem is, unless you mine all the possible routes, you always risk someone rushing by so it's important to have good defense, especially anti-vehicle. Too bad the others are hardly ever on the ball...

I've noticed a weird bug, sometimes I'm trying to disarm C4 on the console, and when I switch targets, especially if someone blocks my view, I can't retarget it and the place gets blown to high hell. We nearly lost some buildings twice due to that.

Some more vehicle stuff and tactics-

APCs, in GDI and Nod flavors, are quite nasty. Even if they're not doing a full blown engy-rush, which is rare anyway since coordination is difficult at best, it has enough armor and speed to squish your buddies and resist pistols and ARs almost completely, and specials to a degree. It's difficult to plant c4 on these since they're so manueverable and they're well armored, so your best bet as an engy is to put mines near it and/or seek cover. That machinegun can make minced meat out of you pretty quick. Make sure you have a pistol ready since the enemy will usually be quite nasty, and your often ADD-inflicted 'friendlies' will divert their attention after it's destroyed, and they can slip through the fire.

Humvees and buggies are particularly nasty since 99\% of the time, there's a determined engy that's gonna make a suicide run for your defenses or power. It's difficult to stop them quickly, but if you've got mines or rockets damaging it the base defenses could stop them in time. It usually seems like they slip past, though, so the defensive engy will need to check the terminal pronto. If you're going on the offense, this is a very feasible plan, especially if there's little defenders at their base, since it's fairly cheap and highly damaging. Getting in can be tough, and the timed c4 may not be able to go off. Risky, but requires virtually no team coordination and it's virtually an instant-mvp if no one is doing that already.

For the defensive engy, Mammoth tanks and MRLSs are the worst opponents IMHO. They can dish out damage quickly and slip away when threatened. The MRLS is awful since it hits extremely hard, and can lob rockets around corners and do saturation attacking to ground areas. It seems like i can damage them with even my pistol, though, so they're not too tough to tackle if you've got much in the way of an active defense. Left alone, I've devastated a Nod base solo driving one of these, especially with no mean obelisks around.

The Mammoth pulls through simply because it has so much armor it can take anything and keep ticking... So long as it's backed up. An engy on the offense would do well to get behind one of these, since they're practically mobile walls to hide behind and they will appreciate the repairs, making them very very difficult to destroy. If facing these, avoid getting withing missile range at all costs. Plant mines and c4 if you want but be careful, and they can practically soak up explosions anyway. Hope for the best.

Harvesters are crucial to defend and easy to hit. If you're an advanced engy, plant c4 mines on them and timed c4. If they drive near an enemy, kaboom! the timed c4 can weaken them quite a bit, but you have to get them on the way up, which is very risky but effective, since no one would expect that kind of attack. Likewise, it's difficult to protect them since they like to go on a sightseeing tour of the front lines before doing the whole tiberium-gathering thing. The least (and the most) you can do is repair it each time it actually gets back in one peice, giving it a much better chance to make a second succesfull foray out and back.

It's quite late now, thanks for submitting your tactics, hopefully we'll all be the wiser for it.

Engineers- We fix the stupid people's mistakes.

Not much to say about Medium and Light Tanks, other than that they're underrated and fun to drive. They're decent all around, but not really common later in the game, but if you see these either avoid them, repair them, or if possible, comandeer them. If you're a good driver, you can go on a strike mission and cause decent damage, but be careful with them and bring them back in one peice and give them to a friendly as a present.

Artillery is quite annoying. Long ranged and good splash damage means you'll often see this in defense and on the offense. I think it's by far the most overused vehicle, but I just work here. Repair these if they're friendly as they're a useful asset and also slow, if they're enemy there's not a whole lot to do since they'll rarely come within minelaying range and they'll avoid getting close enough for you to jog to them and C4 em.

Stealth Tanks are your best friend or your worst enemy, depending on who's behind the wheel. Often somebody will send them up against a Mammoth expecting it to be some kind of heavy tank or something... Well, that extra money isn't spent on armor or weapons, and it's got light armor and medium weaponry. If someone does that, don't bother helping them, unless you can build a wooden box to send them home in, though I don't recall this being taught in engy boot camp. A good player will use it as a mobile ambush, since when used correctly it can get a significant advantage over slower, heavier GDI armor being able to get in a good shot, and sneak away before they can shoot accurately, and planning the next attack getting in closer and a more deadly strike than before. If someone knows how to manage these, help them out as best you can, but don't get to close to them since you'll alert the enemy to your presence if they see you, and you'd look supicious repairing thin air. One of my favorite strategies (and/or least favorite, since I'm wily and I've yet to see other people do it well) is to sneak into the enemy base (provided the defenses are down or distracted) find a quiet spot and run over lines of infantry. Getting squished out of thin air would make any bright player suspicious, so the attack better be a Hit and Run (har, har, har!) Done correctly, that can distract and set back the enemy team in their defesive efforts. Maybe I'm being excessive in an Engy strategies thread, but it's one of my faves and I want to see people utilizing it more effectively and more often. It's not unusual to see 5 people crushed by an unseen enemy in under 30 seconds. (well, unseen to them at the time)

No animals were harmed in the writing of this post... Except that one.

BTW... Bumpety-Bump-Bump

So in conclusion, a tech taught me how to be a team player, and gave me the ability to learn about the bases on the different levels,from where to snipe from to where to plant my c4 and proxies. Goos luck to all you new techs and engies

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Anyways I plan to buy this game once i buy a new computer that can run it but for now I guess I can handle the demo off a friends computer..