Combat Engineer Guide

General Guides
1

The Engineer is Engihere

This guide will go over the basics of being a combat engineer, your responsibilities, and some tips on what you can do to assist the front and overall operation

Your Tools

When you wake from Cryo, head to your equipment room. There are a few things you will NEED to get, and my recommendations.

The following are what you will need.

  • Tools
  • Weapon
  • High-Capacity battery
  • APC Board
  • Sentry of your choice
  • Materials

Now, for my recommendations of how to carry all of this equipment.

  1. Tools: Personally, I recommend not taking the tool belt, and for one main reason. You are a COMBAT Engineer. Instead, use either Black or Brown webbing as they have five slots. Those five slots will hold your Blowtorch, Wrench, Wirecutters, Multitool, and Crowbar. As for your screwdriver, you can equip it on your ear slot. This leaves your belt open for an ammo rig of your choice.

  2. Materials: USE A CONSTRUCTION POUCH! It can hold three full stacks of materials, which is plenty. As for how to get those materials? I will take the full stack of metal from the vendor, then the thirty plasteel. I will then use points to get twenty additional plasteel in order to make a full stack. This will also leave enough points for other things, which I will discuss later. For your third stack of materials, scrap barrels in Maints, or dismantle things on the colony.

  3. Weapon: This is up to personal preference. Use whatever you like.

  4. Battery/Boards: Take an engineer kit from the tool vendor in your prep room. It can store several things including C4, Breaching Charges, APC/Airlock boards, Batteries, and more.

  5. Sentry: Personal preference.

  6. Remaining Vendor Points: If you are following what I do, and have bought an additional twenty plasteel, you will have enough points for the following. A Sentry upgrade kit, two breaching charges, and two C4. My reasoning for taking these will be discussed later.

Now that you have your equipment, what do you do?

Depending on what squad you are in, you may be tasked with different things, from building the FOB or repairing Communications, to restoring power or just going to the front. Here are some tips on how to do each of these effectively.

  1. FOB: Communicate with the other engineers tasked to the FOB. Discuss what you are going to build and where. Remember, you need to secure the entire LZ in a relatively short amount of time. Try and build two-wide plasteel folding cades. They can be linked together with a crowbar as well so that they will both open and close together.

  2. Power: Depending on the map, colony generators will be in different locations. Look for the yellow areas on different Maps. Generators are usually in those areas. Now as for how to get them functional, it is extremely easy. First you will need to use your welder on them, this is the longest step. After you have welded them, you will need to use wirecutters, and then finally use a wrench. If you can do that, you can repair generators. Just remember to turn them on by clicking on them afterwards.

  3. Communications: Even easier than power. All you have to do in order to repair the communications tower is to weld it a few times, and then activate it. Though take note that it will not work without power.

  4. Frontline Engineer: Take a moment and find where your medics are congregating at. Tell them that you will be building them some cover (They will most likely thank you) and then build some cades around where they are. This will help protect them from backliners, which in turn will help more marines to stay in the fight longer.

Other Duties

As well as those listed above, there are other things that you may need to take care of, both shipside and groundside. These include the following.

  1. Shipside Generators: These basically never run out of fuel, just make sure that they are always on.

  2. Battery banks: They are these blue cylinders (Pictured below). If shipside is not receiving power in some areas, it is either because these are not charging and sending out power, or the APC is broken in that area. For these, just open up the menu and set both sliders all the way to the maximum.
    Screenshot (914)

  3. APC: Probably the most complex thing you’ll have to do as an engineer. But just follow these steps and you’ll be fine.
    For a completely broken APC, follow these steps. Bash open the APC (Hit it with any of your tools) and then open it with a crowbar. Use your crowbar on the floor next to the APC, use your screwdriver on the APC, then use wirecutters on it. then use a crowbar on it. This will remove the broken APC so that you can replace it with a new one. You will need to use two metal to construct an APC frame, once you do that, you can continue with the following steps. Use cable on the APC, use an APC board, Screwdriver, put in a new battery, and then close it with a crowbar. Here is a video to make it easier to understand. Untitled video - Create and share your videos with Clipchamp

Frontline Cades

Despite what most people say, I do believe that frontline cades are vital and can win games. Here are some tips for building frontline cades

  • Use Pre-Existing choke points such as hallways, or caves. This will help to funnel xenos in, and make it easier to fire at them while also protecting yourself.
  • Use stationary guns such as the M56D or an HPR with a bipod. These are both extremely effective at holding down areas because of their high damage output.
  • Don’t over-build! Make small lines that close off flanks. This will help the main push while protecting your flanks!
  • Flares! Using a flare will give a better light source than your armor or rail lights, and CAS flares can also give you an eye in the sky that can tell you if anything is hiding around a corner.
Types of Cades

There are several types of cades that engineers can make. They all serve a different purpose, and have their uses. I will go over the main ones here.

  1. Metal Barricade: The most basic, and most abundant type of barricade. They can be made with four metal sheets, and can have barbed wire placed on them if you use an additional sheet of metal. These are great for covering large areas that need to be secured, such as the FOB, Communications, or Power. Further, they can be upgraded into the following.
  • Reinforced Barricade: Uses two metal to upgrade, and allows for the barricade to take significantly more physical damage from bullets and slashes alike.
  • Biohazard Cades: Great at protecting from acid, but is significantly less resistant to physical damage.
  • Anti-Explosion Barricade: is useful if your barricades are subject to significant gunfire or explosions! (Useful in HvH)

  1. Metal Folding Barricade: Builds a metal barricade that can be opened and closed, allowing personnel to move in and out from a fortified area. Costs six metal sheets to build.

  2. Plasteel Barricade: Similar to the metal folding barricade, but can take more damage, and they can be linked to other Plasteel barricades to make multiple open up at once.

Walls

Walls can be useful in a variety of scenarios ranging from building them as a survivor, to using them to block of an area of the FOB.

  1. Girders: The most basic type of wall. They are easily destroyed, but are the basis for building any other type of wall. Cost of two metal sheets per girder.

  2. Wall: Your standard wall. After placing a girder, add five metal sheets, use a screwdriver, and then weld it to finish. These don’t have much health, but can be effective at keeping things out.

  3. Reinforced Wall: A substantially improved normal wall. It provides better protection but at the cost of more materials and being more difficult to build. In order to build a reinforced wall, add five plasteel sheets to a girder, then add two metal rods. use a screwdriver, and then weld it to finish it off.

Other Buildings

For anything else that you may need to build, use the following page on the wiki. It provides guides on how to build anything you will ever need! Guide to Construction - CM-SS13

Conclusion

This is yet another installment in what I will now be calling the “Guides given by some fucking idiot”. If it helps, good. If not, well too bad. Either way, I hope you at least enjoyed it somewhat! Now get out there, and build some stuff!

6 Likes
2

cool guide but in my opinion the only way to go is to bring 16x C4 and blow every single wall in the map

3

Pretty solid, I’d say consider adding an overview of some stuff like the different sentry types and their various pros and cons. Doesn’t need to be comprehensive or pass judgement on what the best is, but at least something to work with. Still, good overview of the main points of the role.

1 Like
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ok guide, but as a comtech main you forgot one thing in the list of the APC repair, the last step is to weld the broken apc, that will give you one metal. from what i saw in your video you just placed a new apc over the old broken one, it works, but it also wastes metal when it comes to repairing the thing.
another thing to mention, metal folding cades are extremely fragile, they tend to be the weak points in all defenses, always use plasteel cades if possible.

5

for sentries, I go with this formula, do I want to hold a long area, if so use a sniper sentry, do I want to hold off a small area but deal extremely high damage, use the basic flamer turret, do I want to be using sentries in the frontlines, use the overclocked shock turret, placing them near medics will grantee that they will be left alone, and any poor fucks that go near them will be basically stunlocked and heavily slowed down if they try to retreat.

Some other things to note, both upgrades for the flamer sentry are IMO terrible, the plasma sentry is a FF machine, I have never once seen it used in a location without it setting a poor marine on fire when a warrior pounced them, the flame is extremely weak, being put out instantly, and frankly, it isn’t worth the points, same goes for the mini flamer turret, its flame is severely nerfed from the basic flame sentry, being either welding fuel flame or napalm, I don’t remember, all I do know is that it is a lot weaker than the basic flamer sentry which has the blue fire from the pyro spec.

as for the basic sentry, the shotgun one I have only really seen it useful in HVH around corners. as the xenos frankly can just tank one or 2 hits without much issue, plus the inaccuracy of the shotgun is another issue. the sniper sentry used to have a much longer range, but now only has 10 tiles of range, granted that’s a ton, but keep it in mind that it may not be as strong as you remember it being.

and last, the shock turrets, these bad boys are generally almost never used due to the fact that they dont actually deal damage, just stun, and frankly, thats a turn off for most people, but the overclocked sentry is another story, the other shock turrets will just slow the xenos down for a bit, not very impactful, however, the overclocked one will straight up stun a xeno for a second or 2, only ones I’ve seen that are only slowed down are T3’s and the queen, which fair enough she’s a massive bitch, but the best part about the shock turrets is the fact that they are omnidirectional. they can shoot in all directions, this is very useful for keeping an area completely safe from the harassment of runners and lurkers, the downside of these turrets are ofcourse its lack of damage, but also, it will shock any turrets placed in its range, unlike others that can be placed 3 tiles apart from each other, the shock turret will shock all turrets near it. that’s why they are quite often used alone, usually in the defense of comms or with corpsmen.

the flags are rarely used and frankly, I’ve only used them when I accidentally spawn them and don’t wanna bother an admin for a refund. the buffs they give out IMO aren’t really worth it compared to what the other sentries bring to the table but i may be completely wrong about it, if someone wants to shed some light on this part it would be greatly appreciated

6

I think some further elaboration on frontline cading itself could be useful, given that yes, frontline cades CAN be useful, but a lot of engineers tend to make the worst possible designs that end up killing a lot of marines. I think being extra clear on what makes a “good” frontline Cade would be nice
E.g. engineers making a frontline cadeline with only 1 door in the middle, trapping marines in a literal gas chamber as the boilers obliterate everyone after a queen push.

7

Overclocked Tesla sentry also disables xenos abilities. if a queen runs into it and can’t screech in front of the entire marine frontline its over