I want to know what engineers are supposed to be good at, because so far it feels like this:
- Watch allies die in front of you in 3 seconds, with no way to save them because your healing abilities barely repaired 20% of their shields.
- Repair someones hull to full with your Eclipse cannon, just to see them be obliterated by a barrage of rapid boson fire in 1/10th the time.
- Tape down the LMB and aim in the general direction of an allied Destroyer while you go grab a drink and have lunch, they’ll still be damaged on return.
- Constantly have interceptors and fighters effortlessly sitting on your xxxx and taking no damage because you shoot once every 4 seconds and overheat after 3 shots.
- Fire at said interceptor or fighter for 10 seconds while they close on you, hit most shots, and they still have 50% of their shields left when they’re too close to deal with.
- Watch your combat drones repair 200hps instead of shooting the tackler hugging your xxxx and dealing 15,000 DPS.
- Die in the middle of 10 allies from said tackler and watch it escape
- Switch to mines and watch interceptors plow through it like it isn’t even there
- Enjoy being an easy and priority target for every LRF on the enemy team.
- Enjoy being out-ranged, out-tanked, and out-damaged by everything.
- Activate your shield repair module and watch it repair half the damage of a single positron shot.
- Equip 2 shared coolers and supercooled charges, just to get anything even close to decent characteristics on the Eclipse.
- Deploy barriers that only inhibit yourself, your team, and make a tempting target for anyone with torpedoes. Watch it get destroyed in 3 seconds.
- Fire off two combat drones, watch them get shot down in 2 seconds, enjoy waiting 120 seconds for new ones.
So, if there’s some role this ship has that isn’t just patching up little baby scratches that only occur on prolonged long-range standoffs, or dealing with the odd interceptor or fighter who is trying to be a hero and rush into the middle of all your teammates, let me know.
Been playing Engineer since the very beginning, btw. It’s always a disappointing experience, but healing/repair/building roles interest me.
If you go for singular targets=brokk, whole team=octopus. I believe you can sort out the details after deciding on one of those 2, if not both.
I guess that Engi is not an “1 is enough to do all the work” class. Beeing an Engi means not that you can “outheal” the incoming dmg directly. Everything is over time + you need at least 3 or maybe even 4 engies at the same time + the team would need to stay together until an certain point to recieve the buff.
I for myself make it mostly so that i stay out of combat in most situations if it is possible by simply sitting behind an object but within of the range to have a big chunk of the group in my “bubbels”. From all modules of the Engi i always use the autonomus stations (shield and hull), the nanite cloud and the massshield generator. I might not earn much points over that way but it´s for me the “best option” in terms of PvP cus i´m a terrible dog fighter anyways while i can sit relative easy in my engi and watch the syn grow. Most rounds i end then just with 200-400 points (depending on the match and how “smart” the team plays and if i need to defend myself from time to time) efficency but i don´t really have understood this value anyways lol.
The drones are kinda useless in PvP imo and only serve as a quick decoy then a real weapon. I mostly use unguided torp and either hope for an luck hit, use it against objects so that the blast radius can do something or by throwing it at the object i hide when an close combat is ongoing (these things can be a big surprise for most interceptors cus they die and you live if you can use it soon enough otherwise an nice “out of the grave” kill).
The Eclipse Cannon… well you can smack me for that but i don´t use it on the engi cus the overheat time is way to short so that the healing isn´t really noticable at all. It might have an good firerate but cus you can mostly just fire for 3-4 seconds (without big passive modules) you can´t really deliver anything and dessies… well they have way to much hp so that you really don´t notice anything cus again they will recieve more dmg then you can heal out in this short time.
10 minutes ago, ORCA1911 said:
If you go for singular targets=brokk, whole team=octopus. I believe you can sort out the details after deciding on one of those 2, if not both.
Well… i guess to compare these two you 1st need to have them. Cus i don´t have the one or another (can´t say if the OP has them) i can only talk about the “vanilla” engi here and how i fly it.
Ok, so I’ll try to deal with a few of your points. Firstly, unless you own the brokk, which is a dedicated healer, you have to fly your engineer as a combat ship. Make use of the other special modules it has. A few points:
- Use a repair station to heal one ally by a lot of points
- Choose what ship types you are going to eclipse repair wisely. For example only eclipse repair empire or fed ships (or alien), or maybe a jeri ship that’s got very low hull and might die from gravi hole or something. Eclipsing other engies can also be very strong in an “engie ball”. Don’t bother eclipse healing destroyers. You will have very little effect on their huge HP pool so it’s not worth it. If they don’t have their own repair drones then they rely on not taking too much fire using the shields.
- Choose who you eclipse repair wisely. Don’t bother eclipse repairing that guy that’s suiciding all the time because you won’t save him. You could try eclipse repairing a gunship that has just dived in and is trying to get back for example. He has several modules to help him survive, and you can increase his chances of making it back alive.
- Eclipse can heal multiple allies at the same time, so try to fire at groups.
- The static barrier is very effective at creating cover and diverting some of the enemy fire in empire engie. Just don’t sit right behind it or you will get torped. Drop barrier, reverse a bit, fire out of it by strafing
- Eclipse is very good at hitting fast ships and forcing them off. It also has good range.
- As your personal defense against ceptors, use EM torps in something called “facetorping”. You basically hug a rock and then when he gets close, you torp the rock. You have a high HP pool so will likely survive it , they won’t survive unless they have emergency barrier and even then they’ll be forced off (you can also equip emergency barrier…). Tip: you can also create your own rocks, I’ll let you figure that one out 
- Try flying with a squadmate. They can cover you when you need it and will be grateful for heals so they can keep fighting.
- Energy converter is absolutely amazing against a gunship diving on you. All damage they do to you basically reverts back onto them, increasing exponentially. They die before they even know it, unless they combat reboot on time.
- Warp gate can be great for moving around on the map, for example in beacon games. It’s hard to use though and I don’t bother, myself.
All this was assuming you are asking about empire engies. Federation engies are quite different and more difficult to fly properly. My favourite is the adaptive one that you pretty much fly as a fighter class ship.
1 hour ago, Weylin29651 said:
Been playing Engineer since the very beginning, btw. It’s always a disappointing experience, but healing/repair/building roles interest me.
You should really get a brokk then. I know it’s semi-premium, but it’s worth every penny or farming time for someone that enjoys flying healers. It’s actually the only engineer that is a dedicated healer (so much so that it barely does any damage to enemies). If you make it have high energy regen and volume, you can perma heal someone 1000 hull and shield HP per second, which is a LOT. I’ve kept fighters alive that were being dived on by multiple thar’gas! I just bought it two weeks ago and I’ve been flying it loads.
I’ve also been playing engineer since the beginning. Styx is actually second highest on my free synergy transfer list ^^ It’s hard to get top scores with it, but it is definitely possible!
Few screenies I’ve uploaded in the past ”)
8 minutes ago, Vesperion said:
The Eclipse Cannon… well you can smack me for that but i don´t use it on the engi cus the overheat time is way to short so that the healing isn´t really noticable at all. It might have an good firerate but cus you can mostly just fire for 3-4 seconds (without big passive modules) you can´t really deliver anything and dessies… well they have way to much hp so that you really don´t notice anything cus again they will recieve more dmg then you can heal out in this short time.
Shared cooler/super cooled charges will solve that probelm for you!
Engis are only good for single-target support really. Even the Brokk. I always set up mine like actual irl gunships and use superior firepower to take on enemies. Drop a barrier then fire a torp at it for quick close-range kills/to repel intys. Also good to activate counterattack laser before your torp explodes to one-shot the target. That’s two Module slots used. The other two are up to you. I just have energy and hull mainly bc I play Styx a lot but still.
Tl;dr: Use torps, barriers, and counterattack beam for easy kills. Tank resist and not volume. Keep moving. Use HB for ultimate gunship engineer.