The Basics of Being an Engineer in Mann Vs Machine

Lately I have been playing Mann vs Machine and have seen more than a few Engi’s that don’t seem to have a clue on what they are supposed to be doing. Maybe I will get lucky and an Engi new to MvsM will read this before playing.

The Engineer in Mann vs Machine has three different things they are supposed to be doing. The first of these is providing Raw Firepower. The Sentry is easily one of the most powerful weapons a Team can have and a team that does not have a Sentry is going to have a rough time of it. Next is providing Resupply with the Dispenser. Providing Health and Ammunition to the other players is necessary for a Team’s success as there is usually not enough Health and Ammo pickups to keep a Team going and even if there is the Team members have to leave the fight to go get them. Lastly is Fast Transport. The Teleporter gets a player to the front line in a few seconds rather than half a minute or more it would take by running. This can prove critical in a battle. More on how to provide these three things further on.

Primary Weapons

For the Primary Weapon you have basically two general choices to make. You can choose something that gives you firepower, or something that helps support your buildings. First firepower.

The basic Shotgun, Widowmaker, Pomson 6000 and Panic Attack can protect the player and kill robot spies. If you want to go that way, it’s really up to you and you style of play on what weapon you want to use.

The Frontier Justice is a special case. While it can give a player a lot of critical hits to an Engi, in order to do so you have to lose your Sentry. And losing your Sentry is a Bad Thing in most cases. So this weapon is to be avoided unless you anticipate losing you Sentry frequently. But if you are losing you Sentry frequently, you are probably not doing your job as an Engi very well.

To provide support for your buildings you need the Rescue Ranger. Many, maybe even most good Engis use this as their primary. Why? Because you can repair a Building without having to be near it. An Engi can be 30 feet away and repair a Building just by shooting it. What’s more an Engi can MOVE a building at the cost of 100 metal. You see your Building is going to be destroyed, you can grab it and get it to safety. All these abilities do have a cost in that the Rescue Ranger does less damage and more limited ammunition. But for many Engis this tradeoff is more than worth it.

Secondary Weapon

There are three general types of Secondary Weapons to choose from. Firepower, Control and Defense.

For added firepower you can choose one of the flavors of Pistol. (Pistol, Lugermorph or C.A.P.P.E.R) This can give you a little extra firepower when you need it. Frankly though, not many Engis seem to use the pistol in MvsM.

Control. If you want to control your Sentry directly you can use the Wrangle or the Giger Counter. The only difference between these is how they look. A Wrangler gives the ability to remotely control the Sentry and that means you can chose what you want to shoot and what to shoot it with. The Engi is not restricted by range, the rate of fire is doubled and the Sentry has a shield that absorbs 66% of the damage inflicted on it. The down side is that you cannot resupply the Sentry while you are controlling it. It can be very easy to burn through all you ammunition and end up helpless if you are not careful. Also when you release the Sentry from direct control, it’s down for three seconds. But still, this added and directed firepower can be very helpful if facing a Tank and some of the Giant Robots.

Lastly is Protection and for this you need the Short Circuit. With the Short Circuit you can destroy enemy rockets and grenades. This can be really useful in keeping both you and your Sentry in one piece. Frankly, I have never really gotten the Short Circuit to work very well, but other people may have more luck (Or better skills) than I.

Melee

Choosing your Melee weapon is the most important weapon choice a player makes because it’s the Melee weapon that the Engi will make the most use of. An Engi uses it build and repair his buildings and the different melee weapons give different abilities. Most Engies will stick with the standard Wrench or one of the cosmetic variants. Some will use the Jag. The Jag builds more quickly, but repairs more slowly so it’s a tradeoff. The quicker repair rate of the normal Wrench will sometimes keep a building in one piece when it would have been destroyed if a Jag had been used. But if the building is destroyed the Jag can build a new one faster. The Southern Hospitality makes you more vulnerable to fire and that can be a problem if there are Pryo Robots around.

The Eureka Effect is pretty much a bad idea. While it is cool to be able to teleport, the build speed is 50% slower and you get 20% less metal from the Dispenser and pickups. If you want to get back to the spawn quickly, use a two way Teleporter. That’s what they are there for.

An even WORSE idea then the Eureka Effect is the Gunslinger. The main reason is such a bad idea is that the Gunslinger only gives the Engi a Mini Turret to fight with. And while the Mini can be effective against other players, in Mann vs Machines it is totally and utterly inadequate for the job it needs to do. For instance the Mini-Turret only does 21% of the damage done by a normal Turret. The additional 25 Health Points an Engi gets is in no way worth the massive loss of firepower. I have seen people kicked because they refused to use a full sized Turret. (And yes, I voted to kick them. People do not care how “cool” you think you look if you are causing the Team to lose a battle!) The Gunslinger should NEVER be used in MvsM. Period.

After choosing the load out, next is choosing placement of the buildings. But first I want to introduce a term, the Front Line. The Front Line is the farthest forward the players can go and where the robots enter the map. The reason you put everything forward is because if the Engi loses his Sentry and Dispenser, they will have time to build a new ones farther back creating a new line of defense. It is ALWAYS best to meet the robot invasion as far forward as possible. The father the robots get into a map the closer they are to delivering a bomb. Also some robots such as the Tank and some of the Giant Robots have so much Health you cannot destroy them unless they are being constantly attacked the entire path to the Hatch.

The Teleporter Entrance: It is to be placed an equal distant between the Upgrade Station exits and where it is easy to find. Hiding the entrance wastes everyone’s time because your fellow players have to search for it or run and extra distance to get to it. Sometimes those seconds count. Hiding the entrance does not really help its survivability either. If the robots are at the hatch they are probably not going to be shooting at a teleporter entrance and you are not having to teleport people to the Front Line.

Teleporter Exit: These should be near the Front Lines, but at the same time out of the direct path of the robots when they attack. It takes a little practice to do this. You don’t want to put the tele exit too far back because it takes time to get to the Front Lines, but you also don’t put it too far forward where it can be easily destroyed. A rule of thumb is that you put it a little ways behind you Sentry. Having the Tele near the Sentry means that you can also pick up your Sentry and teleport back to the spawn quickly. This can be a lifesaver sometimes.

Sentry Placement: This is HIGHLY important. You need the Sentry on the Front Line and where it can fire on the robots shortly after they enter the map. But you do not want to put the Sentry in a location where it will fire on the Robots before they enter the map if you can avoid it. Until the robots cross the line they are invulnerable and it just wastes ammo.

If you are going to directly control the Sentry, you can place it farther back. In fact put as far back as you can and still have the ability to target effectively. Sentries ideally should be placed in a location where the Engi has some cover. That way if the Sentry is heavily damaged or destroyed the Engi can withdraw to safety and repair/build. This also keeps the Engi from getting killed by enemy Snipers.

Something else to consider is the Field of Fire. You want it so only a limited number of ranged enemies will be able fire on the Sentry at any given time. If there are 20 robot Soldiers attacking it’s better to put the Sentry a short way back from a corner. That way, only one or two robot Soldiers will be able to fire on the Sentry at the same time as the clear the corner. This way they will be destroyed piecemeal rather than giving all the robots the opportunity to all shoot at Sentry at once. Now if there are 30 robot Scouts charging at the Sentry, putting it where it has the longest line of sight on the robots will be a good idea. You need to kill as many of the fast moving Scouts as you can as quickly as you can.

Sentry placement should complement the other members of the team. While the Turret can do a massive amount of damage, it cannot dodge and redeploying it during a fight can be dangerous. So you need other players to help defend it and in turn, it helps defend them. A Sentry combining its firepower with just one other player is much more effective than the Sentry and the player fighting separately. And remember you can pick up and move your Sentry if you have to. Just be careful when you do it.

And one last thing about Sentry. Don’t put a Sentry in the path of a Tank. I have seen Engis put their Sentry right in a Tank’s path and the Tank just runs over and destroys it. The best place to put a Sentry when facing a Tank is alongside the path of the Tank. That way it will be able to fire on it as it approaches and as it moves (slowly) away.

Dispenser Placement: There seem to be two schools of thought on Dispenser placement. One is that it should be near the Engi and his Sentry. This way the Dispenser can supply the Engi with metal and keep him healed up. This is important since the kills the Sentry gets does not heal the Engi as with the combat classes. The second school of thought places the Dispenser in a location suited to supply and heal up the combat classes thus making them more effective. However this likely puts the Dispenser some distance away from the Engi and his Turret. In cases like this, the Turret is usually near a location that has Health and Ammunition Pickups (unless the Engi has Health and Metal Regeneration which are expensive). To keep the Dispenser from being destroyed it can be repaired by using the Rescue Ranger. Now, this strategy requires a little more skill to pull off, but if you have a good team it can be very effective.

How an Engi upgrades is very important. A bad set of Upgrades can greatly reduce an Engi's effectiveness and cause problems for the rest of the Team. On the First Wave it is probably best to Upgrade Wrench Speed at least once and put the rest into Dispenser Range. This will allow you to keep the Dispenser a little farther form the Sentry and make it easier for the rest of the team to use it. Of course Upgrading the Wrench Speed means that you can repair and construct your Buildings more quickly. After the first round you should have a lot more money to work with. Make the Teleporter Two Way, Max out the Dispenser’s Range, increase Wrench Speed, Building Health and Sentry Firing Speed, roughly in this order.

One thing to pay attention too is what is attacking next. If a Tank is next, don’t bother with increasing Building’s Health, increase Sentry Firing Speed instead. If you have some extra funds and think it’s going to be a tough fight where you will lose your Buildings, investing in a Building Upgrade for your Canteen may be a good idea.

One Upgrade you really should NOT get unless you have a ton of extra money is the Disposable Sentry. This really is a poor upgrade. For the cost of the Disposable Sentry you could Upgrade you Building’s Health by a level AND still have 100 dollars left over. The Disposable Sentry does not do much damage, cannot be repaired. There are a lot better ways to spend your money.

Threats

The Sentry Buster
These robots are one the Engi’s two biggest problems. They run up quickly to a Sentry and blow themselves up, destroying the Sentry and anyone that happens to be nearby. Which often happens to be the Engineer. On occasion, the Team MIGHT be able to destroy the Sentry Buster before it gets to the Sentry, but don't count on it. Most of the time the Team has other problems to deal with. So either you abandon the Sentry and let it be destroyed or you can play “Tag” with the Sentry Buster.

To play Tag with a Sentry Buster you pick up your Sentry and run towards it and touch it. This activates the sequence for the Sentry Buster to explode. Of course after touching the Sentry Buster you run like hell to get away from the explosion. If you can, try to trick the Sentry Buster away from the rest of the Team and your Dispenser. A variant of this is allowing the Sentry Buster to get right up to the Sentry and then snatch it away with the Rescue Ranger. You can even let the Sentry Buster get right up to the Sentry and THEN pick up the Sentry to run. However this is harder to do and the Engi will have trouble getting out of range of the explosion. When you are carrying the Turret make sure there are no Robots shooting at you if you can. It does no good to try to save your Sentry and getting killed by a Robot Scout as not only are you dead, the Sentry has been destroyed as well.

Spies!
The other major problem for the Engi is the Robot Spy. These can appear anywhere on the map were a player is not looking. This means behind the Front Lines and behind the Team. A main target of the Robot Spies is the Engi who they will backstab and then sap the Sentry and Dispenser. (They don’t seem to target Teleporters often.) To prevent be stabbed in back *immediately* turn around and put you back to a wall or towards the other members of your Team when the announcement that the Spies have arrived. (Best would be a wall though.) If the Spy cannot backstab the Engi, than it will try to Sap the Sentry and then the Dispenser. If you have upgraded the Building’s Health than you have some time before the Building is destroyed. Use that time to kill the Spy and then you can go remove the Sapper and start to repair.

Of course it’s best if the Spy never got a Sapper on the Building to start with. When the Spies show up the next member of you Team that you see will likely be a Spy, so start shooting. Now if the Spy does kill the Engi that is not the end of your Buildings. Upgraded Buildings can take some time to be destroyed and there is a realistic chance that the Engi can respawn and get back to his Buildings before they are destroyed. This is another reason to keep the Teleporter fairly near the Buildings.