How to Play a Battlefield 2142 Engineer

The silo needs to be taken. One missile is all it will take to kill the enemy titan. You're the only one there and you're hiding, hoping nobody will notice as the silo goes neutral. The capture bar is filled half-way when out of nowhere you hear the creaking of a tank coming closer. You stay hidden hoping he simply won't notice you. Without a sound you die.

It takes you a moment to realize what happened. He fired, and as often happens when killed by a tank, you die and never hear it coming.

As an engineer you might have survived. An engineer has the tools to detect, immobilize and destroy enemy vehicles. In this guide I hope to give you a basic understanding of each tool and some tips and techniques for using them to get kills and help your squad and team.

Tools Of The Trade

An engineer with all his weapons and tools unlocked has an arsenal that's fit for most situations. He can hold his own in close and medium range infantry battles. He can stop and kill enemy vehicles either with traps or with long range weapons.

Engineers get a sub-machine gun instead of a hand-gun. Personally I think they should get both but I've learned to live with just the smg. It works well at close range. At medium range you need to bring up the scope and even then you might get unlucky and not manage to kill your target with one clip. You might want to burst your shots, two or three bullets at a time instead of anything longer. At long range, you're in trouble. Assault, support and sniper all have the means to quickly kill you at long range.

The real weapons of an engineer are the ones he uses to take out vehicles. As things currently stand, you really only have two choices: the default Mitchell or Sudnik and the Pilum H-AVR. The third choice, the Saaw 86, is very flawed and does no damage. It is meant as a means of attacking air vehicles, unfortunately it has a terrible arc, takes a long time to reload and you have a limited amount of shots.

The default anti-vehicle weapons give you the ability to control where their projectile goes. Pull up the scope and after you fire, hold the trigger down and track your target. In my opinion, the tracking ability does not make up for the poor damage it does compared to the Pilum.

The Pilum Heavy Anti-Vehicle Rifle is, in my opinion, the best weapon an engineer has. You start each life with 6 shots though so you must make them count unless you have a handy support player or an ammo crate. Instead of tracking a target, it acts as a single shot sniper rifle including a zoom scope. Unfortunately, it's not as accurate as a sniper rifle at long range. Often you'll aim perfectly but the shot will miss.

There are two types of mines: EMP mines and motion mines. EMP mines will stop any vehicle in its tracks for several seconds. They will be unable to turn their turrets, unable to move and unable to target anything.

Motion mines are explosive mines that will track moving vehicles if the vehicle has come within range. Once contacting the vehicle they will explode.

An Engineer Isn't Just For Blowing Things Up!

The engineer has three devices in their arsenal that are not designed for destruction. One, the Dystek repair system, gives the engineer the ability to repair vehicles and base components like radar. He also has the AE defuser, which allows him to defuse/dispose of any explosives he may encounter. Finally, he can also choose the PDS-1 which is a device you can throw and stick on a surface, such as a floor, wall or ceiling. It will then detect any enemy vehicle which enters its detection radius.

How To Use And Abuse Your Weaponry For Victory

Knowing how or when to use your weapons is often the key to successfully destroying the enemy. Now I'm going to give you some tips and ideas which I've put to use when I play.

The Pilum rifle is an awesome weapon on the battlefield but knowing where to place that single shot per clip is very important. It can mean the difference between a tank shrugging your shot off and mowing you down or you destroying it completely and walking away to get another kill.

Jeeps don't really need a weak spot as one hit from the Pilum will usually destroy them. You do not want to stand in front of a jeep in order to fire. I've done this while playing and what usually happens is the server considers you dead before the shot is fired (even though that is not the way it happened) and the jeep continues on it's merry way. It's a good idea to stand behind a wall or barrier of some kind when firing at a jeep coming towards you as they can not go through such things.

APCs and tanks are vulnerable to shots at their rear armor. Often a single shot to the rear will be enough to kill them. I can't count the number of times I've driven a jeep behind a tank, hopped out and shot the Pilum at their rear armor killing them.

Battlewalkers are more difficult. They seem to have two weak spots. One is the underside vents between their legs and the other is on the back of the same area. Any shots to the legs and hips will often do much more damage than a shot to their torso.

All three of these vehicles, battlewalkers, APCs and tanks have short duration shields. It's important to be aware of this and to hold your fire when they're using their shields. It looks like a radiating glow surround the vehicle.

Against air vehicles you will have a tough time until the Saaw 86 is fixed. Since the Pilum's projectiles are slow moving, you must lead your targets and that includes air vehicles. Gunships and air transports have much more maneuverability than a ground vehicle and often your shots will miss no matter how good you think you are.

When an enemy air vehicle is on the ground there is no reason not to take a shot with your Pilum. Aim for jets which should be vertical on the sides of the vehicle. Hitting them it should take no more than two shots to destroy either a gunship or an air transport.

The Pilum can kill a soldier but it's extremely hard to do so at anything greater than extreme short range. You must hit them exactly as there is no splash damage from a Pilum shot.

The Pilum can also kill ground turrets with a single shot, titan turrets with two or three shots, consoles but it takes many shots and support sentry guns (but they are difficult to aim at).

Setting Traps

Mines are extremely useful for setting traps for enemy vehicles. Often, you will have some choke point which you wish to protect and so you will need your mines to do it. Here are some tips.

Combine motion mines with EMP mines to have a better chance of killing the occupants of a jeep. I have actually been in situations where a jeep has cleared all my motion mines out while driving extremely fast. The mines can not catch up to him and he manages to exit the vehicle before getting blown up. To avoid this, you can drop an EMP mine next to the motion mines.

EMP mines need to be driven over but motion mines do not. Exploit this by placing motion mines behind obstacles so that the enemy driver can not see the mines. Vehicle drivers often get over-confident when they don't see mines and will drive right through them.

If you can get on top of a building and there is a vehicle below you, drop your motion mines right on top of them.

Jumping seems to place the mines a few more steps out in front of you which can be useful when you're being shot at and you're almost near an enemy vehicle.

By using mines in conjunction with the Pilum rifle you can trap and kill the enemy.

If you have EMP mines simply wait until an enemy runs over one then use your Pilum rifle to kill them by attacking their weakest areas.

Sometimes you will want to bring along a defuser or a PDS-1 to track vehicles and will need to leave your EMPs behind. You can still use the same technique though. Simply place a motion mine in plain view of a vehicle, when they see the mine they will stop or they might stop when they get close enough and see a mine threat on their screen. Perfect time to shoot them.

Be aware that often when a vehicle has taken a lot of damage or has been EMPed for a long time, the occupants will evacuate the vehicle and try to kill you. This is a good time to pull out your SMG and kill them.

When the enemy evacuates an undamaged vehicle (this does happen, rarely) get in! Run away if you have to, get your bearings and return to the scene and destroy everyone!

I hope that reading my guide has helped you understand what an engineer can do. It is rare for a team to have too many of them and often they are one of the most necessary classes.