Avs

First, I'd like to start off with some basic engineering SOPs for those of you who aren't too familiar with engineer tactics yet. I will also include the most advanced stuff you can do, so even if you know what I am talking about, you might learn something! I will keep all engineering setups to 2 Fort however, because otherwise this ginormous post is only going to get bigger. Mind you, this is NOT a DOTA guide, nor do I want to spend a week creating a guide with all the awesome pictures and stuff with nice colors…unless you want it in PDF form. Then it’s a synch!

About the topic quote, yes its not grammatically correct, but neither is this sentence. It's a quote from some engineer that they found on a note pinned to a wall of the Konkan Railway bridge.

Weapons:

1 - Shotgun: This 6 shot, medium long (30 feet) ranged gun is your basic defensive offensive weapon. Powerful enough to kill any class with direct hits, flexible enough to keep off spies, scouts and other classes that aim to take you down. You must understand, this is the gun you use to SUPPORT your turret. Thats right, no turret defense is impregnable, unless you have a SG (sentry gun) for every weak spot the previous SG has (SGs covering SGs, which means your team will need more than 2 engineers). Your skill as a engineer comes from shooting that shotgun first. You being alive means nobody else gets past you, its that simple when you are baby sitting your defense. Never ever rely on your turret. You must use yourself to make up for those weak spots in your turret defense. (Read further below for more detail on how to do this on 2Fort).

2 - Pistol: Why do you have 200 bullets? Its simple, this gun allows you to shoot whatever the hell you please that moves! Be it your teammates, that scout running across the middle bridge on 2Fort (you need to shoot fast because they will enter shotgun range within 3 seconds of crossing their battlements), or its most important use, other engineer's turrets. Other than that its your backup. If someone isnt dead after you shoot it with 6 shotgun blasts, its going to be 12 feet under once you pop them with that pistol. The pistol isnt a weak pea shooter either, it deals as much damage as a well placed shotgun shell, if you manage to hit a majority of the shots (it just lacks firing speed ratio to power). 12 bullets takes out a Level 1 sentry, a couple clips a level 3 SG.

3 - Wrench: Besides that this builds you shizzels and giggles, this baby takes out spies like a charm. Here is how it works. If a spy is disguised and under no pressure, and walks up to your face, your wrench will crush his balls in one hit by dealing triple damage. If the spy is under pressure (has been hit recently, etc), your wrench will deal normal damage as if the spy was not disguised. Any wrench hit to the back of a spy will kill him instantly. Of course, any good spies will either steer clear of you or take you out in a number of other methods which are hard to avoid. Those times you will need to whip out “Sebastian” your trusty shotgun.


Buildings:
Lets face it, these builds are essential to any game. Be it defense or offense, (particularly offense), buildings can make or break a team. If you want to learn about offensive engineering, ask me in game sometime, but that is map specific and will take some time to explain how it works. The short gist however, is push up with buildings, constantly move teleporters up, and shoot some baddies.
I will start with the teleporters first, then dispenser, and then sentry gun last as the SG is probably the building that gets the most attention.

Teleporter Entrance: One of the first things to do always is to get the teleporter up. Why? You are right outside the resupply point, you might as well take 5 seconds to drop one down and refill your ammo right back up. If those 5 seconds are too much for you, you can always pick up ammo/metal from the respawns as you run to the setup points. Make sure your teammates don’t shoot off their guns and pick those up however.

Teleporter Exit: You have two choices for this. Either place it around some obscure corner up at the front lines, or back a few seconds where it might be safe from rockets and grenades that are being thrown around. The idea here is to get the exit up as fast as possible. It doesn’t matter whether the CP is 5 seconds away, each second counts for your team. You can also place the exit in flanking positions or other positions that might be more useful for your team. More often than not you will be replacing the exit as your team progresses. This can happen simply when your team starts gaining ground. An example would be in dustbowl, where the CPs can be tough to get. Always be moving the exit up as far and safe as possible. Always move the exit (by blowing it up and redeploying) after it has JUST been used to minimize downtime.

Dispenser: Dispensers are great tools for resupplying demomen and heavies. They also remove fire from people who have been hit by a pyro, and can even block doorways and entrances. More about blocking below. The dispenser should be placed in a safe place as well, as in 1 minute it can supply you with 600 metal fully when at max storage in one go. Typically I will place it near the exit of the teleporter, or closer to the front lines where demo men and heavies are in need of such resupplies. Dispensers are also great blockers, so placing them on a ramp leading up to a teleporter exit helps immensely in keeping spies and others from disrupting your control of the battle field. After all, this brings us to the sentry gun, the one stop shop in killing things that move (besides knifing, and sniping). Like the teleporter exit, dispensers are constantly built and moved up as the fight goes. Rarely should they be placed in the back, as this means people have to fall back which gives up valuable ground. Courage plays a big role in how well people perform.



Sentry Gun – That’s right, it gets its own section because far too many players screw this one up.

Sentry Gun: As any in-house tester knows, the sentry gun was designed to stop, kill, all targets that are in plain sight and range. It however cannot deal with people who peek in and out of cover or targets out of its range and sight. This makes the sentry gun probably the best weakest defense ever. That being said, you as an engineer, will use “Sebastian” the shotgun to make up for these deficiencies. Yes, this is a 360 degree turret, but it has major problems. Read below if you think you got what it takes to be a real man, I mean engineer. The ladies love smart guys anyways.

Upgrades: Level 1, pea shooter turret that kills light and medium classes if they stay within range. Dies to snipers in 1 hit, rockets, explosives, etc in one hit. Level 2, dual turrets, double fire rate, double hp, and the tripod becomes raised for higher vantage point. This is important, the more upgrades the taller it is. FACTOR this into placement, so that for example, at Level 3, Triple fire rate + rockets + triple HP, its turrets stick just above some sort of cover and is least exposed. Abuse these new bits of knowledge or get rocked by people. Other engineers can upgrade your turret, a single level 3 turret is worth more than 3 level 1 turrets. HELP each other out, or get out of here girly man.

Placement: Notice the 45 degree angle in white lines? This is its maximum efficiency killing zone area thingy. They are a big hint in how to place a sentry gun. Notice the red field? That’s its maximum range (See 2Fort thread on placement to see screenshots and learn more!). You MUST combine these 2, or your sentry is a piece of crap. Even a 10 year old girl could run it over with her barbies. Now, the white 45 degree lines represent its best response times, therefore if you are covering 2 choke points, the lines need to match up for max efficiency. Otherwise, any veteran player can take it out without being hit. These white lines also represent the max viewing angle. Sure the turret can spin 360, but it takes time. TIME the turret doesn’t have to respond. See the 2Fort thread? You know how you can cover the wooden stair room (also known as courtyard) and the battlements with a turret right between the 2 areas? Any scout can run past that turret at full speed because that turret has to TURN, because you angle the turret at the courtyard. The turret also fires at the closest target, which means, it can be distracted. Therefore your turret must be placed in such a way that it absolutely makes the best use of the 45 degree markings, and at maximum range. The reason for maximum range (which is not always true in all cases, but certainly true enough for the majority of situations), is to minimize damage from bullets at a distance, and increase time between explosive damage so that you can repair. Putting a turret right around a corner allows bank shots to hit it, area damage to affect it, and a heavy that might just walk up to it and mow it down with its chain gun. Therefore, please combine these 2 ideas when you place your sentry. Range + Angle makes a happy turret.

Blocking: As you may not have known, SGs (turrets/sentry gun) and dispensers block paths. Putting them to the side in a narrow corridor will usually allow walking space. However in the middle of that path or in the middle of a normal sized doorway and we have a block. You must crouch+jump over the SG or Dispenser to get over it. Your team does not have to. The enemy does. This blocks scouts, and spies, and everything else. Unfortunately for you, it only takes a few shots of anything to kill a dispenser or sentry gun. Use blocking sparingly. It is NOT smart to use dispensers to block areas if your team can use it more elsewhere. You think a scout is your biggest problem? Wrong. Consider the 2 fort examples please.

Repairing: Repairing a sentry gun against multiple targets is near impossible without another engineer. Against single targets however you have a chance, as long as you don’t run out of metal. To prevent this you’re ONLY option is to build a Dispenser SG combo, where the dispenser sits behind the SG, and you behind that SG as well to protect yourself from explosives. Any loss in time during repairs means a GG’d turret. Direct hits will cost you about 40 metal depending if the sentry gun needs ammo or not. Obviously that will mean you can only take 5 rockets or so before your gun is in trouble. That’s not many at all! Having a dispenser will give you that EDGE when you need to hold the line with your sentry. Note, experienced players may aim for you instead of the sentry, if this is the case, give them a face full of tungsten. Why this is more preferable than other types of setups like using dispensers to block areas. A well placed turret or 2 engineer combo will stop all scouts. It doesn’t matter if you need to block anything, you force their team to come at you with a real offensive team. In this case, you need to be able to repair as fast as possible, and having the sentry defend the dispenser, and you, makes this possible. Note, this is usually meant for defensive builds. Offensive builds vary.

Defensive Engineering – Defending CPs, chokes. As simple as pie.

The idea here is to baby sit your gear. You worry about the occasional spy, and heavy classes that might come your way. You built your turret to cover a CP or some important choke to force traffic another direction. Whatever you did, babysitting is now your new objective. Keep the teleport up, keep the spies down, and keep that belt of death fed into that sentry gun. Always be checking for spies, don’t leave your stuff unattended.

Offensive Engineering – Up front, in your face, and making a difference.

The idea here is building on the fly. You setup camp and move it as fast as your offense can push. You make sure your sentry prevents them from losing lots of ground, and you make sure your dispenser keeps that extra couple guys alive way up front. That teleport allows you to direct troops to attack from one position or simply reinforce faster. Build on the run, and assist teammates. Here, protecting your sentry is super important.

Protecting your miniature city – Use the shotgun, your pistol, and your head.

The turret has limited range, but now that you are taking that into account, all you have to do is shotgun people who do angling. Angling is a technique where they hit targets from around corners at minimal exposure. Some games call it leaning, in this case, people can hit your turret no matter how well you place it, from some angle, be it direct hits or stick bomb placement. It’s up to you to get out there and shotgun those people so they are forced to either fight your sentry (or therefore expose themselves like normal) or get shotgunned. It’s that simple. Protect what protects you and you will succeed.

That’s it! Now you’ve got in text, what it takes to play like a good engineer. All you have to do now is go out and practice. There are much more cool things you can do, like how to push with a sentry, but this varies on maps, and becomes map specific. If you want to know, I can show you, but until then Id rather wait until out of Beta to see if any map changes will be made. I reckon that sentry gun ammo may be changed however.

Go over and check out the 2Fort thread for some screenshots on placement and basics.

WaffleHousChef

Also, if you need to put your object in a corner or another hard to reach place you can right click when you have the build template up to rotate your item 90 degrees. Two quick right clicks and it is facing toward you now.

This is good for putting TP exits in a certain corner and have your friends pop out facing away from the corner instead of into it and totally unaware of their surroundings. The facing arrow on the TP entrance and exit is currently straight up so you have to memorize how many right clicks as to which way the exit is facing.

This can also be used to place a turret in confined spaces. Right click to shift your turret 90 or 180 degrees then line it up smack in the corner. Not always the best option to use for rocket splash, but it's there if you need it.

TheFeniX

Avs, excellent write-up. I hope to see more. Write-ups like this will be greatly appreciated when TF2 goes "mainstream" and we get our own tactics forum.

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Relmar

Just got done with a round of engineering.

Sirusblk

It's important to note that the shotgun working with a lvl2 turret even at medium range can take down a heavy before either you or your turret go down.

The anti turret is of course the soldier for a front approach or the spy for a sneaky approach.

Just thought I'd put that in. I was spanking Incurable earlier today

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NCman

This one goes out to those screaming at the lowly Engineer for turrets / teleporters / dispensers: Help us help you!

First off, remember that during the setup phase, the engineer only has enough time and metal to do a few things. There isn't enough metal or time to get a full teleporter loop, a dispenser, and an L3 turret up before the round starts. This is where the other engineers can help each other out - if you see there's a teleporter entrance up right outside of spawn, don't build another one just yet - get forward and start your sentry gun. I can build an exit when I get up there, and help get your gun upgraded / get mine up. If we survive for awhile, THEN you can build your teleporter. Two right off the bat are usually overkill - remember, nobody has died yet.

Then - think what your first priority often is as the offensive team. It's to lay waste to the enemy's turrets that are blocking your path, right? Well, remember this on defense - the enemy offense is going to be doing just that. We may have a turret guarding the CP - or several of them - but the enemy is always trying to take those down. All too often, people see a few turrets near the CP, then rush off for their own little private wars ignoring the soldier, sniper, demo or spy that's constantly killing off the engineers and their valuable stuff - and worse yet, mostly ignore the CP. Who gets yelled at when the lone scout caps? The Engineer for not having a turret Guess you missed the messages about us defending the CP 9 times prior to that, but such is life.

We try to rebuild our stuff, really we do - but it's somewhat difficult when it's constantly under fire, and we keep dying. We do need help - shoot the guys shooting at our stuff when you can. You'll have your dispensers and teleporters more often this way. None of it is going to last forever, of course, and nobody should expect it to - but the longer, the better.

Also, I hear lots of complaints about turret locations. Sure, it's not where you'd put them, but there might be a reason for it. We've either had success with a turret in that same spot during other rounds, we've been pwned repeatedly by a turret in that location when on offense, or sometimes the Engineer has 4 health, can't get to a health pack anytime soon, and figures a turret in a crappy location may kill an enemy or two before he respawns and can put one in a better spot. A turret may also be farther back from the "front lines" than you'd like, but maybe we tried to put one up there with you 3-4 times before and it got blown up the instant we set it down. That tends to make us want to build it a bit further back where we have a chance to get it past L1 at least.

Another way to help - go engineer yourself. One thing that baffles me somewhat is to get obliterated repeatedly on offense by 4-6 turrets well protected by the other team, only to see when we switch sides and go defense on the same map we only have 1-2 engineers - and people will say "we need more medics!". Uh, what killed US before? It wasn't scouts, and often times wasn't the heavy-med combo lumbering in slowly - it was the turrets! Should everyone go engineer? Of course not. But having more than one or two protecting "B" on Gravel Pit or most CPs on Dustbowl does often stop the enemy cold, or at least makes them take lots of time to get a cap. Note - this one primarily applies to those 2 maps - more than 2 engineers on Hydro, Well, or Granary are often a waste as they leave you without enough offensive players. 2Fort you can use several, but too many usually means you're playing for a stalemate, rather than a win.

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BF2 POE2: NC_Tarheel
Team Fortress 2: |TG| Tarheel

Sirusblk

Also another note for dispensers. I like to put them right near ammo and health pickups. Everyone knows or should know where they are and even if they're taken they're still able to restock and heal. Also most of the time those pickups are already under cover or really really close to ideal cover.

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WaffleHousChef

A note for Engineers that usually only drop a dispenser and turret, but don't worry about dropping Teleport Pads:

For every two times your teleport pads are used you get a point!

So you do get rewarded for helping your team with teleporters. Please take the time to drop your teleports when you get the chance (hopefully in a really great location.)

DirtyLude

I don't know where else to discuss this, but I've seen point farming the teleporter on the TG server and really see this as anti-TG and would fall under a 'you're not helping your team to the fullest extent' rule. An Engineer will build teleporters right next to each other beside his sentry and dispenser and just teleport himself all game. I can't imagine it will happen alot, since points don't really mean alot.

It always bugs me when I see we have 2 engineers on the team and 1 or no teleporters down for moving forward. Also sentries on locked control points drive me nuts.

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The Dirty

Exploding_Silver

As an engineer I've been moving my teleport enterances and exits on the five CP push maps

It occured to me you can have 2 engineers working in unison
First has teleport set up from current spawn point to current CP we hold

The second engineer has their enterance at what will be the next spawn point when we cap the next CP, second engineer goes up with the big push and lays the exit down by the CP, while it is being captured. Hopefully the couterattack is not too quick that the respawning reinforcements can use the teleport. This is a more aggressive and coordinated version of the solo engineer putting their teleport next to the CP being attacked , while the enterance is at current spawn point.

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NCman

On the 5-point capture maps, I tend to wait to see what's going on before setting up a teleporter loop. I'll place the entrance out of the initial spawn since that's easy enough to do, but will wait to place the exit depending on whether we cap the center point or not. If we do, our spawn moves up so that back entrance is useless. If not, then I'll try to build an exit either at our 2nd CP or towards the center CP, depending on the pressure we're getting from the enemy.

Silver has a good idea - Engy #1 drops an entrance at the spawn exit, Engy #2 drops one at the forward spawn, and exits built in appropriate locations. When your spawn moves up again as the team advances, Engy #1 leapfrogs his teleporter loop - and Engy #2's should still be up if the enemy contests the center point again.

I certainly try to avoid having an SG on an uncappable flag, but I'm also leery of blowing up my L3 on the back point of well too quickly. Too often I've seen us take our forward CP only to lose it in about 20 seconds, to be followed by Mr. Scout coming in to cap the rear flag right as I'm trying to build an SG closer to the second point.

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BF2 POE2: NC_Tarheel
Team Fortress 2: |TG| Tarheel

Sirusblk

I go to where they are and see if they have it locked down pretty well. I make sure they're able to at the very least hold it till I get my level 2 turret up. Then I'll sacrifice my last turret to build a forward one.

Also take into account your ammo pickups near by. Make sure they're there and you're stocked up pretty well.

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Lyramion

A Dispenser means Responsibility!


Where you drop honey on the floor - ants will gather. Your fellow teammates will come back to your dispenser like to get ammo and health.

If you build your dispenser in a spot where it is only of much use for your metal purpose you might unwillingly draw the center of the battle closer to your flag.




This is a good example of an "Action Dispenser" as I like to call them:




It is close to the enemy point but semi protected using the corner and the gate. Even more important a Heavy can use it to get additional health and ammo while opening the gate and keeping the whole hallway suppressed. Your dispenser will take damage from random Rocket fire and you need to stay close and wrench it.

But your efforts will pay out. Hurt people will stay at the front instead of running back to the central point. Burning people will find a new home, too. Once your awesome dispenser gathered enough people around you will naturally overwhelm the enemies and take the point.


With people getting better and better at outsmarting Sentry Turrents I put my focus more on supporting our own assaults with health and supplies while leaving back a lonely sentry to buy us time if we should get overwhelmed.

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