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I figure it's time for a well-deserved rant about a well-deserved subject.



I typically play the standard infantry on BF2. I've practiced for years and years and if I do say so myself, I'm the best at it. I can outfight nearly every other class because I am quick to draw and accurate with my blaster rifle. I can even get vehicles sometimes (though it usually involves riding on top of one and harassing it until the driver comes out). It's really fun, and a rewarding experience when I'm able to stay alive the whole map but causing total destruction as a reg.

And then there's this guy. This one class.

You have all the awards. You make a turn. You see an Engineer. He sees you, fires his shotgun and BOOPyou'redead!

It's my considered opinion that engineers are really broken and players never use them the way they were designed. Instead of a support unit, they're one-man armies. Come across an enemy? Shotgun to the face, one-shot kill. A tiny bit further away/more than one? Throw a detpack and detonate it in midair. Got hurt fighting this guy? No matter, I'll just heal myself and continue fighting him.

Does anyone else really...hate, the engineer class? What ways could they have made it better?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6OtFKNDPUc

But seriously, yeah. I hate the Engineer as well. The only time I use the Engineer class is when there's a mine that I need to defuse or a vehicle to hack. Ugh, the health/ammo dispenser is so stupid and pointless and just creates unbalance... Personally, I usually go with a sniper, trooper, Clone Commander, Imperial Officer, Magnaguard, or Bothan. HAHA, Bothans. They are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much fun to wreak havoc with online! It's hilarious how Rocketeers and Snipers always seem to believe that their main rifle/bazooka is their only ordnance-shooting/launching weapon; the pistol is REALLY good if you're able to score headshots ; it's even easier with the commando pistol!

How to Defeat a Rocketeer:

1: Let them fire a rocket at you impulsively.

2: Kill them while they're reloading.

3: ???

4: PROFIT!

But at least Rocket troopers are actually useful without being invulnerable. Engineers just ruin the fun.

Well, im sure not everyone would think its the best way to fix the engy, but in my mod I gave him a semiauto rifle, fusion cutter, a couple basic nades, and a second "fusion cutter" that heals units slowly.
This way in terms of combat he's able to fight about like a trooper, and his engineer traits of healing and repair are there, but the healing won't help much in an instant in the middle of a close up hectic dual.

I fix the engy in different ways in my mods. In TCW, he's given a heavy rifle. However, in Battlefront 3, I fix the shotgun so it's not so overpowered and remove the health/ammo dispenser(which is split up for and given to two classes, the Medic and the Heavy Weapons Specialist respectively). The dets are swapped with mines. Also dets and mines are nerfed against troopers, they're only for vehicles and other hard targets.

I set it up that way in BF3 because I want the mod to still feel like Battlefront.

I usually remove the engineer and the rocketeer and mix them together to some sort of support trooper with rocketlauncher and fusioncutter, and sometimes various grenades (or mines) and a blaster carbine as well. Health is medium while the unit's speed is lower than standart.
No shotguns, health/ammo dispenser and detpacks. Just the cutter remains. And it can damage doids.

[TFA]Padawan_Fighter wrote: It's my considered opinion that engineers are really broken and players never use them the way they were designed.

I actually do use this unit online to provide teammates with health/ammo. Otherwise, you are totally correct; this unit is the one man army of battlefront. For the TFU modification, the shotgun and detpack are removed, and his weapons are more team oriented.

Marth8880 wrote: ..or Bothan. HAHA, Bothans. They are SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much fun to wreak havoc with online!

This.

I don't always play online, but when I do, I prefer killing the engineers.

Stay cool my friends.

i usually don't find engineers to be much of a problem actually, if i am using sniper i just shoot them in the head and they are dead. if i'm using the trooper i aim for the head and try to shoot them before i get hurt. As long as you aren't too close to an engineer their shotgun is pretty weak and their dets won't reach you. i usually just stay back a medium distance and shoot at them, if they try to get cover and heal i rush them while they are distracted by healing and usually find they throw health and ammo at me instead of a det pack.

in my mods though i usually tend not to have an engineer. at least in the way that stock bf2 has. i have people with fusion cutters like a support trooper with fusion cutter, chaingun, health/ammo dispenser, auto turrets, and a shield dispenser, along with healing and attack buffs so that it can support people, i also lowered it's health to 250 so having the unit be a one man army won't work for long.

my other unit with a fusion cutter is my builder which is used for fort building mainly, wall dispenser, auto turrets, mines, zapper turrets, shield dispenser, and a shotgun like weapon called the blast cannon, it fires 10 grenades [impact detonation] at a target but if you aim it near yourself you usually end up dead.

Personally, I have never really found a problem with the shotgun. To me, it's just the opposite of a sniper. Getting mad over a close range shotgun kill is like getting angry from a headshot with a sniper-rifle. In fact, the two deaths both take skill from the killer. A sniper needs to hit you with a bullet from a far distance within a small time frame. An engineer has to run up to you dodging your bullets as you blast him at close range (or he'll sneak up behind you) Let's break this down:

Sniper:

Pro - Safer from the target than the target is from them (typically).

Cons - Small timeframe to eliminate target, and the aim must be dead on.

Shotgun:

Pro - Wider timeframe to kill target. High quality aim is not required.

Cons - Must be close to target in order to kill him. Both units are at risk.

However, I DO have a problem with everything else the engineer has. I think a support unit which is capable of healing others is useful (and necessary Medics are present in war) . However, I believe that this could be accomplished through other ways, like a bacta wave. The engineer only heals himself if he is healing others. No more greedy healthpack abusing. I also believe that the det-packs are way too powerful. I think the best way to fix this is to put a delay in between the timeframe of putting a detpack down and being able to pull the trigger. For example, if you had to wait 1.5 seconds once a detpack hit the ground before being able to set it off, things would be more balanced. Unfortunately, this is not the case (but is it possible?). I also think, that as a support unit, the engineer should have the same health as a sniper, but retain typical trooper stamina.

This game has always been laughably broken beyond repair in pvp. It's so bad that I haven't touched it since I first got the game for the xbox waaaaayyyy back when. Mind you, I played Quake and Battlefield a ton when I was younger so it frustrated me to no end the moment I saw rocket launchers being used against infantry and people walking through their own mine explosions without being hurt.

Of course, that's just my opinion. I still love to play it offline. Where the classes are actually used the way they were supposed to be used.

A lot of the problems can be corrected in a mod, although it would have been nice if Friendly Fire settings were better.

I still love playing tricks on online engineers. Like laying a mine, engineer walks through it thinking he's so cool, and his non-engineer teammate walks into the mine and blows them both sky-high.

I lol whenever I see Engineers trying to destroy enemy mines with their detpacks or shotgun. A lot of people who play as it don't seem to know that not only can they not trigger mines, but they can defuse them as well with their fusion cutter.

But yeah, Kinetos is right; the best and easiest method to fix Engineers that doesn't require any custom modifications is to simply switch friendly fire from "off" to "on". Rocketeers can't abuse their mines or rockets (as easily) and Engineers can't abuse their detpacks (as easily). I hate playing with friendly fire off.

The engineer class could be fixed without changing the class entirely by doing two things.

First, Pandemic should have coded the detpack properly so that it can only be set off after it has been placed on a surface for a second or more. Sort of "priming it," if you will. Like how the mines make that "beep boop" sound after you place them. No more midair explosions, and no more quick tosses.

Second, the health/ammo pack needed to be tweaked in terms of its function. I understand the need for a support class to heal and resupply teammates, but the Engineer should not be allowed to use it for his own gain. So either the Engineer should not have been able to pick up the health/ammo packs he drops, or they should have given significantly less health back. Like maybe 25%.

I'm with yuke when it comes to the shotgun. It's just another weapon. And sure, it's more advantageous than some other weapons on certain maps (specifically the close-quarters maps like Tantive or Jabba's), but any weapon in any game is gonna have advantages in certain situations, and if we crucify a weapon for that reason alone, then we might as well just all play with the exact same loadout for everything every time for total and absolute fairness.

Twilight_Warrior wrote:The engineer class could be fixed without changing the class entirely by doing two things.

First, Pandemic should have coded the detpack properly so that it can only be set off after it has been placed on a surface for a second or more. Sort of "priming it," if you will. Like how the mines make that "beep boop" sound after you place them. No more midair explosions, and no more quick tosses.

Second, the health/ammo pack needed to be tweaked in terms of its function. I understand the need for a support class to heal and resupply teammates, but the Engineer should not be allowed to use it for his own gain. So either the Engineer should not have been able to pick up the health/ammo packs he drops, or they should have given significantly less health back. Like maybe 25%.

I'm with yuke when it comes to the shotgun. It's just another weapon. And sure, it's more advantageous than some other weapons on certain maps (specifically the close-quarters maps like Tantive or Jabba's), but any weapon in any game is gonna have advantages in certain situations, and if we crucify a weapon for that reason alone, then we might as well just all play with the exact same loadout for everything every time for total and absolute fairness.

Yeah, priming it. And instead of a health pack, it'd be some sort of Left 4 Dead-styled healing thing (Only the person being healed can still move freely).

The shotgun, though...Whenever I DO use the Engineer, it's ridiculously easy to score headshots and get kills. Doesn't take a whole lot of skill. But what if he was modeled like the Engineer from Team Fortress?

[TFA]Padawan_Fighter wrote:But what if he was modeled like the Engineer from Team Fortress?

Then you'd also need a TF2 style medic to go with him.

And hats.

Whenever I play battlefront, online or off, the shotgun always annoys the crackers out of me. I'll be sitting on Death Star in one of the large rooms with the southern CPs and someone from across the room will kill me with a shotgun, it seems that no matter how far away someone is, they still seem to be able to kill me with a shotgun. The shotgun in principal should be balanced but in usage it's really not.

I often get killed at range by the shotgun as well. It also tends to take me two shots to kill with it, yet somehow I do just as good as a close range sniper...

I eventually am able to kill a full powered up engineer, the person just gets a lot of points off me first. If you roll when I'm spraying sniper shots at you, I'll get you as you're standing back up.

These ideas are all pretty nice, especially the bit about priming detpacks. Shotguns - eh. IRL they're supposed to make it easier to hit targets at medium distance, not be short-range scatterguns, though most games design them that way. I don't usually have too many problems with engineers, it's the anti-vehicle troops using anti-vehicle weapons on infantry that gets me. And also those guys that harrass tank drivers so they can steal their rides.