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Engineer
| Health
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Low
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80
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| Armour
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Low
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50 (50%)
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| Speed
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Medium
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300u/s
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| Power
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Medium
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| Role
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Defense
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If you fancy yourself a tinkerer and builder, the engineer may be for you. The personality of a disgruntled construction worker combined with a genius intellect does wonders in the world of Fortress. The engineer fortifies his base with sentry guns and supplies other defenders with ammunition via dispensers. Sentry guns are automatic turrets that can be upgraded to three different levels, each progressively more powerful than the last. It takes a bit to lock on to an enemy, but once it happens the enemy is certainly in for a world of pain (if not death).
Besides his buildable structures, the engineer has a modest repertoire of weapons including the railgun, super shotgun, and EMP grenades. The railgun is the engineer's own unique invention: a heavily modified pistol that shoots magnetically charged slugs. The result is a powerful ricocheting weapon that ignores enemy armor. The super shotgun is your standard shoot 'n kill weapon. It packs a reliable punch and is useful in a variety of situations. The engineer's EMP grenade releases a pulse that detonates ammunition on enemies and on the ground, creating powerful explosions that can bring down many classes extremely fast.
The precise nature of an engineer's work requires him to not be protected by much more than a hardhat. Too much armor gets in the way and makes building things more difficult than they should be. Thus, the engineer dies much easier than all classes but the Scout. But who needs armor when you have a giant automatic gun cutting down your enemies for you?
Basic Strategy
Special Abilities
Sentry Gun
The Engineer can build sentry guns, automatic turrets that shoot enemy players and cloaked enemy spies. It takes 130 cells to build a sentry gun and another 130 each time when upgrading to levels 2 and 3. A level 1 sentry gun is a basic, weak contraption that shoots shells at about the rate of a semi-automatic pistol. Level 2 introduces machine guns and a faster tracking speed, making the gun far more deadly. Level 3 gives the ultimate addition: a rocket launcher.
In order to repair or upgrade your sentry gun, you must have cells and hit the gun with your wrench. Sentry Guns are strong structures, but an untended one can be easily killed by the enemy, as they do have blind spots. You can change the direction that your sentry gun aims by bringing up the radial right-click menu and selecting "Aim Sentry Gun." It will point your gun in the direction you are currently aiming.
Dispenser
The Engineer can also build dispensers. A dispenser mainly serves as a field ammunition/armor repository for the Engineer and his fellow defenders (or maybe attackers?). Standing next to a dispenser will replenish your ammo and armor, assuming it has enough resources. Although a dispenser automatically fills itself slowly, and will also eat any bags that are tossed or dropped near it. The Engineer can fill it up much quicker by depositing his own ammo and cells by hitting it with his wrench. Be wary though, enemy players can use your dispenser. However, this works in your favor because you receive a warning when this happens. A full (or almost full) dispenser also serves as a good weapon. Detonating a dispenser unleashes a large, powerful explosion that will kill or severely injure enemy players. Dispensers can also "eat" ammo backpacks near it, so encourage your allies to throw their unused ammo at your dispenser, especially if you just built it.
Repair
The Engineer can repair his sentry guns, dispensers, and teammates' armor. By whacking any of those targets with your wrench, you will restore their structural integrity. Players receive armor when an engineer "repairs" them.
Special Ammo Discard
When discarding ammo (default "X"), the Engineer discards a little of all ammunition types (cells, shells, and rockets), regardless of whether the ammunition is needed for his weapons.
Weapons
This baby makes everything possible. Use it to upgrade and repair your structures.
Pew pew, laser gun. You can charge it up by holding down the fire button. If you charge it up for 3.333 seconds, it will produce 40 cells, but won't fire. The projectile bounces off surfaces (getting more powerful with each bounce) and ignores armor. You can use a charged up blast to jump higher; just point down, then fire and jump at the same time.
Great against a Spy trying to mess up your sentry or if you feel the need to go Rambo into the enemy's base. This is generally your main weapon at close ranges.
Grenades
The basic grenade: A lot of damage, large blast radius. The frag grenade is useful for taking out sentry guns, insta-killing scouts or other weak opponents, and general destruction.
When it blows up, it will blow up the shotgun shells, rockets, and cells of everyone in its range. Does huge damage to classes that carry a lot of high-energy ammunition, such as Pyros.
Additional Strategy and Tips
Offensive Engineer
- Build sentries in or very near the enemy base to cause annoyance, but don't expect them to last long.
- A dispenser can help your teammates, though it can also be used by the enemy: detonate it if enemies get close.
Defensive Engineer
- You are a defense master! Always have a sentry up in your base, even if you're away, just having the sentry up can help your team drastically. Remember to place it strategically; Spies and Medics love to stay out of your sentry's range and nailgun it, try blasting them with your railgun or shotgun, perhaps toss an EMP to scare them off or kill them.
- Watch for Demomen and HWGuys with their MIRVs trying to get your SG. If they drop one next to your sentry, it is as good as dead, don't try to whack it because then you'll be dead too! Soldiers can also be a pain due to a well-placed nail grenade or volley of rockets easily destroying your gun.
- A dispenser placed on the flag or security button can be used in the same way as a demoman's pipe trap: detonate it if enemies get too close, a well-stocked dispenser will instantly kill a scout.
- Remember that you can repair your teammate's armor, so if you see somebody in need, do the nice thing and smack them with your wrench.
Playing Against an Engineer
- The Engineer has little armour and will die to two rockets, or a few Super Shotgun shots.
- As any class apart from Engineer, pressing "X" after you spawn will discard unneeded ammo. This will cause you to take less damage from EMPs.
- Watch out for the Engineer's dispenser on the flag. Its explosion packs a punch, and has a large radius.
- The Engineer is defenseless for the time it takes him to construct his gun. Try to capitalise on this.
- The Sentry Gun can only deal with one target at a time, and doesn't turn all that quickly. Multiple players will overwhelm it if it isn't supported by the Engineer's teammates.
- There are many ways in which a Sentry Gun can be taken down.
- As a Scout or Medic, fire the Nailgun at it from one of its blind spots, or try to sneak up on it and circle-strafe.
- As a Soldier, a few rockets or a nail grenade will easily destroy a Sentry.
- A Demoman's MIRV grenade will inevitably destroy a Sentry if it explodes anywhere near it.
- A Spy can attempt to sabotage a Sentry if the Engineer is absent. This will cause it to fire on its own team.
- If an Engineer's gun is out in the open, a Sniper can destroy it with a fully charged shot.
- Sentries can't dodge, so even standard frag grenades are deadly to them.
Further reading
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