Engineer

Engineer
Basic Information
Icon
Type	Defensive
Health	125 (185 with overheal)
Speed	100%

The Engineer is a defensive class, whose specialization is in constructing powerful and potent buildings that change the flow of a game. He has 125 health, 100% speed, and 200 metal, which is a currency earned from ammo sources and spent to construct and upgrade buildings. His Sentry Gun is a major threat to any enemy in its sight, instantly killing any class. His Dispenser acts as a constant source of health and ammo, shoring up his teammates and sustaining a forward position. His Teleporter can send his entire team to the front lines, dramatically increasing their response time. And, optionally, his Jump Pads are a more mobile movement option that opens up innovative means of travel. He is subpar in direct combat, but the power, durability, and immediate effect of his buildings means that he dictates the flow of the game around him, acting as the single biggest obstacle to a successful enemy push. When successfully set up and maintained, an Engineer encampment can single-handedly win the game.

His weaknesses are his fragility, extremely slow setup time, predictability, uselessness in mobile assaults, and punishing deaths. The Engineer is a weak class in direct combat, and though his Shotgun deals large amounts of damage, his low health and high kill priority means he will not survive a direct encounter. His buildings take a lot of time to set up, even when given optimal metal, and proactive enemies can spam out known encampment positions to impede the Engineer's progress. Since there are only a few viable Sentry spots per map, he has no real flexibility to change his tactics, meaning he is stuck defending his encampment in the same position each game. Since it's rarely viable to move an entire encampment to a different position, he is terrible in mobile scenarios, including most offensive situations. He is usually stuck hauling a single upgraded building and destroying the other ones. And since the Engineer is the only class that can upgrade and repair his buildings, a single death can lead to the rapid dismantlement of all his hard work, and with it, the chance of victory.

Despite these obvious weaknesses, the capacity of an Engineer to warp the entire game around his encampments makes him the most powerful defensive class in the game. His buildings are priority targets for any enemy to destroy, and the game simply cannot go on if there is a Sentry Gun defending an objective. On offense he is impotent, unless there is a specific spot that the attacking team has difficulty pushing through, in which case he can set up shop there. On defense, he is impossible for a solo player to deal with when properly positioned, and requires a coordinated team effort to destroy entirely. While he is difficult to play optimally, and requires a lot of management of his buildings, the archetypal building spots are easy to pick up as a new player, and does not require sophisticated knowledge of the game's mechanics to be effective. This makes him appealing across a wide variety of skill levels, especially for those who don't mind building an empire, seeing it turn to rubble, and starting all over again.

Bio

Location of Origin: Bee Cave, Texas, USA

Job: Area Denial

Motto: "I like to make things".

This amiable, soft-spoken good ol' boy from tiny Bee Cave, Texas loves barbeque, guns, and higher education. Natural curiosity, ten years as a roughneck in the west Texas oilfields, and eleven hard science PhDs have trained him to design, build and repair a variety of deadly contraptions.

Weapons

Primary

Weapon	Kill icon
Shotgun

Secondary

Weapon	Kill icon
Pistol
Coilgun

Melee

Weapon	Kill icon
Wrench

PDA

Weapon
Construction PDA
Destruction PDA

Tips

As an Engineer…

• …you need metal to build, repair, and upgrade your buildings. Collect fallen weapons to get more metal.
• …you can do more than just maintain your buildings. Use your shotgun and your pistol to assist in fights and to defend your buildings.
• …your pistol has a lot of reserve ammo. Use it to lead enemies towards you and your sentry gun, or go for a more offensive approach.
• …keep an eye out for enemy Spies attaching sappers to your buildings. Use your wrench to remove sappers.
• …you are able to defuse the Dynamite Pack by hitting it with a wrench.
• …use the construction PDA to place sentry guns and other supportive buildings.
• …hit your sentrygun^(sic) with your wrench to upgrade it with metal. Each level adds more health and firepower.
• …sentryguns aren't restricted to just defensive measures. Deploy them quickly in hidden locations in order to aid in an offensive push.
• …build dispensers to provide your teammates with health and ammo. They also generate metal for you to use.
• …build teleporters to help your team reach the front line faster.
• …remember to upgrade your buildings. Level 3 teleporters recharge much faster, allowing your team to keep the pressure on.
• …hit either the entrance or the exit of your teleporter with your wrench in order to repair and upgrade both sides.
• …hit MOUSE2 to rotate building blueprints before you hit MOUSE1 to build. Use this in order to orient teleporters away from walls.
• …fully charged shots from your Coilgun can ricochet off walls and deal more damage.
• …the Coilgun will cause an explosion if you overcharge it. Use it to reach previously inaccessible areas.
• …you can swap out your teleporter in favor of jump pads. Jump pads allow you and your team to reach high places.
• …your jump pads allow your teammates to jump forward with a lot of momentum. Deploy them in places that allow for quick rollouts.

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning
Bulgarian	Инженер	Engineer
Spanish	Engineer	-
English	Engineer	-
French	Engineer	-
German	Engineer	-
Hungarian	Mérnök	Engineer
Italian	Ingegnere	Engineer
Polish	Inżynier	Engineer
Brazilian Portuguese	Engineer	-
Romanian	Engineer	-
Russian	Инженер	Engineer
Turkish	Engineer	-

Trivia

• The Engineer was added to the original Team Fortress mod to appeal to players who lacked tradition skills required to perform well in first-person shooters.
• The Engineer was also added due to the developers of Team Fortress being inspired by the construction mechanics of the real-time strategy game Command & Conquer.
• The Engineer wears his default helmet backwards; however, this is not an uncommon practice among construction workers.
• The Engineer's favorite equation is, in fact, part of the equation that governs character lighting in-game, known as ‘Phong’ on the Valve Developer Community.
• In Team Fortress 2 Classic, Engineer gets another line for his ‘Battle Cry’ voice command where he says ‘Remember the Alamo!’, this voice line was lifted from Prerelease versions of Team Fortress 2 and is a reference to a real life battle cry used during the Texas Revolution.