Engineer Guide
The engineer is a tough cookie to play, but can be worth it in a vehicle heavy environment. Armed with an SMG and an anti-tank weapon, you're pretty specialised. The role of an engineer is twofold: Kill their vehicles and keep ours alive. It's often thankless, and you'll spend every other round at the bottom of the scoreboard, but there's nothing more satisfying than destroying a tank or heli. Listen for me singing to enemy tanks on TS.
Infantry Combat
Unfortunately the most common enemy you'll face is infantry. This is not good for engineers, as your SMG is a poor match for everyone else's weapons. Even up close it will take an entire magazine to bring an opponent down, while an assault rifle or LMG equipped enemy will kill you in a fraction of the time.
The only remedy to this is to hit them in the head. Otherwise they'll turn around and kill you even as you hose them with tiny, ineffective bullets. Despite claims of inaccuracy, it's quite possible to get headshots from a reasonable distance with any of the SMGs. Keep bursts as short as possible to stay on target, and keep tapping at their head. Hopefully you'll drop them before they spot you and bag you. Alternatively knife the fuckers - it's quicker and easier to run up to a nearby enemy and stab them than it is to spray away at their chest.
I've found all the SMGs to be much of a muchness really. The AK74U is my weapon of choice as it has reasonable accuracy and stopping power, and with an ACOG is moderately useful. When better general weapons become available, by all means take them instead.
Vehicle Combat
Engineers come into their own against vehicles. The AT weapons they carry won't take most things out in one shot, but hit them a few times and you'll be racking up some big points. A typical vehicle kill with damage bonus, two crew deaths, double kill etc will net around 200 points. Most can also be combinet with tag darts for extra damage and auto-guidance. You don't have to have fired the darts either, everyone gets the bonus.
* Armour
Armour will be the hardest target to destroy, but most drivers aren't aware enough to spot you so you can duck in and out of cover while you reload for multiple hits. The diagrams below show how well armoured different areas of vehicle are.
- * Red = Heavy armour
* Amber = Medium armour
* Green = Light armour
Note that while MBTs and IFVs have different armour toughness, they don't differ much by which team you're on. Situations will differ slightly depending on what specialisations the vehicle crew are using, and which weapon you are using, but as a rule of thumb you will do 33% damage to a red area, 50% damage to an amber area, and 66% damage on a green area. Also worth noting is that hitting at oblique angles will reduce your damage, and it's generally better to hit the front head on than the side at a sharp angle.
Tests conducted on the underside of the vehicles showed MBTs to take 50% and IFVs to take 33%. Thanks to Mr Johnson for helping spam rockets at tanks for half an hour to gather the data.
* Light Vehicles
Armoured cars are easier to kill. They take less hits and bite back less, as they can't put splash damage on your cover. For some reason I've noticed they stand still and let you put a rocket through their window or door too. This will probably change as people learn not to stay still.
Quads and jetskis will die in one hit, but hitting them in the first place is tricky as they're fast and people tend to bail out of them as soon as they get a sniff of enemy action.
* Rofflecopters
Enemy helicopters can be a pain in the arse, but once you've got the hang of leading them and compensating for drop, they're actually not that hard to hit. They have a tendency to hover, letting you plug them with a rocket, and don't take too much to kill. It's worth taking a shot at helicopters whenever you can unless you know you'll be coming across an enemy ground vehicle. Chances are you'll die with a full compliment of rockets anyway, and it's good target practice. If you do hit them you'll wet your pants with glee.
Weapons
All of the projectile AT weapons have a certain trajectory to compensate for, and learning them is important. As you'll see, progression isn't necessarily linear as some weapons are more useful than others in different curcumstances. All are pretty accurate though, unlike the crazy fireworks of COD.
* Dart Pistol
While this is a general unlock, it's worth mentioning here as it is engineers who benefit. The dart pistol does no damage, but tags enemy vehicles with a laser designator. Engineers with compatible weapons (RPG and CG) can then lock onto the tag. Note that you need to wait for the target indicator to stop flashing and display a range before firing.
* RPG-7
The default weapon is useful at all ranks. It does quite high damage, and has reasonable splash damage against infantry targets. One thing to note with the RPG-7 is that it aims slightly high so as to drop on targets. Until you learn to compensate for this expect some rounds to go high.
* Carl Gustav
This large recoilless rifle packs a lighter punch than the RPG, but has a larger explosion. This makes it more effective against infantry, especially taking out repairing engineers when hitting armour. It feels to me to have slightly less drop than the RPG-7, so could be considered more accurate.
* M136 AT4
This is a guided rocket system which does high damage against vehicles but is useless against infantry. It doesn't use dart tags, but it doesn't need them as you guide it yourself. This gives you a better chance of hitting a soft spot and doing even more damage. It also makes hitting moving targets a lot easier (helicopters beware!). Before you throw away your RPG though, bear in mind that in order to guide your rocket in you have to stand there in plain view of the target, although it will keep going in a straight line if you leave it. Sometime's it's better to fire and forget so you can hide.
* AT Mine
The AT mine is useful for maps where the enemy vehicles are channeled through particular routes. They have the advantage of allowing you to dump them and get out of line of sight of the vehicle, but there's never any guarantee of something actually coming their way. The problem I find with mines, and the reason I never take them, is that they disappear after a while and so you can't just scatter them about.
* Repair Tool
Used on friendly vehicles to restore their health. Repairing enough points on a vehicle will bag you 20 points, more if it's a squad member, but beware of splash damage from explosives hitting it or, as several enemy engineers have found out from me, people knifing you while you're not paying attention. Repair tools also damage enemy tanks, should you get close enough to start unscrewing the bolts on them. For bonus fun, try killing someone with your repair tool. Rumour has it that getting a repair tool headshot kill will give you an achievement called 'The Dentist' in the future. Doesn't now though, I tried it.
