Ideas for the engineer update

While bored I was looking around and thinking what the engineer could get for update weapons. The update of course isn't out, and probably won't come out until March or April at my guess.

Well anyways, my ideas for his updates:

Primary Shotgun Replacement: An EMP gun. This would fire out EMP's, which would remove sappers in the area. (Not too huge, but big enough so if all the stuff is next to each other, it would remove the sappers from all) It would also zap players, doing about 30-40 damage instead of the shotgun's usual 60-70.

Secondary Pistol Replacement: I can't think of anything for the pistol to be replaced with.

Wrench Replacement: A wrench (perhaps a hammer) that builds buildings twice as fast, but does much less damage than the normal wrench. Another idea would be to have a wrench that removes sappers in one hit instead of two.

Building Ideas: I don't know about you guys, but I wouldn't be very happy if the engineer didn't get any new buildings to build. My ideas so far are a fire sentry, jump pad/scissor lift, and an electric fence. The fire sentry's level one wouldn't have a very long range, but it would light things in its radius on fire. This could be pretty deadly to spies. The level two would have an increased range. The level three would have two flareguns, which wouldn't be accurate, but maybe get hits 50% of the time, giving a very long range half the time. The jump pad or scissorlift would allow classes to get up to higher areas easily. I'd say that it should lift roughly a bit higher than a rocket jump, something slightly higher than the first walls outside of the spawn at orange that the stairs go to. (I believe jump pads were in TFC, as well.) And the last, and my favorite, is the electric fence. Not an actual fence, the way it would work would the engineer would place down an electric generator, and then two nodes down. One node would have to be within a certain short-medium distance from the generator, and it would arc electricity to the other one, making a fence. Scouts could double jump over, disguised spies could go through. This would have a limited range, and as you update the generator, it would increase the range. The only way to destroy it would be to destroy the generator, so an uber, spies, or a well placed long range rocket or sticky would be necessary to destroy it. Also, I think that the fence would replace the dispenser (generator) and the teleporter (both nodes).

Those are just my ideas, feel free to add more.

I was thinking that the pistol replacement could remove sappers but do no damage to players. I like the idea of a stationary pyro, maybe something where you could build two, or three, but only upgrade them once, or not at all. For a dispenser, it could be something like a one-use weapon, maybe a really powerful version of whatever class picks it up's primary. For example, ab Engi sets up his Dispenser2. A solly runs up does something, clicks, jumps, presses 4, IDK, and gets a dark red/blue rocket launcher as a 4th weapon, or maybe replacing his primary. It has four shots, say, that are instant kills if you hit someone directly, or maybe guaranteed crits. After he fires those four, the weapon dissapears, and he has his normal launcher again. Maybe the Dispenser2 is one-use, idk... It could function like the kritzkrieg... As for the wrench, there should be a replacement that builds slower but lets teammates upgrade, even if they're not engis... Have you ever noticed, that when whacking a friendly building with your melee weapon (as any other class) it makes the upgrading noise?

Yeah, but thats because the upgrading noise is the sound the game makes when you melee a wall as well. I like most of those except the new dispenser... I think the dispenser is fine as it is, it doesn't need an alternate one.

well yeah, but if you whack a lvl 3 building as engi, or if you have no metal, then it makes the higher-pitched dinging sound, which I have come to recognise as a "what you're doing is useless" sound.

I posed a suggestion for Engineer unlocks in a topic on ubercharged.net's forum, which I will copypaste here.

Lord Zurkov wrote:I posed a suggestion for an engineer unlock in a topic on MantaEngie's forum, which I will copypaste here:

Lord Zurkov wrote:Recently, I had an epiphany – I know what the Engineer's Unique Taunt should be.
Bear with me, I want to explain the premise first.


The Engineer is a defensive class designed in such a way that he takes time to reach his full potential. Thus, the Engineer is only strong enough to warrant a Killtaunt when he has a fully upgraded Sentrygun.

I was thinking about potential Engineer unlocks when I thought of an alternative teleporter – with this particular variant of teleporter, there would be no entrance, only a "teleporter beacon" for an exit. He would be able to teleport himself to the beacon at any time using a remote after a short delay (most likely a "taunt" a la Bonk! Atomic Punch to avoid Engineers storming the frontlines and teleporting away instantly when low on health) with a longer cooldown than the normal teleporter.
I figured the beacon would be un-sappable (but rather weak) to give Spies something extra to worry about when sapping an unguarded sentry, specifically the sudden and potentially unexpected return of the wandering Engi.

Now, after I thought of this teleporter alternative, I realized that THIS was THE ANSWER. THIS would give the Engineer EXACTLY the sort of Unique Taunt he deserves – he should be able to optionally teleport enemies to his teleporter beacon (and, potentially, his Level 3 Sentry).
The taunt could work like the Heavy's Showdown taunt, except with a sudden teleport instead of an instant-kill (and possibly with a slightly longer range to allow you to "snipe" unwary foes at moderate distances).
You could give the Engineer an assist for any kills as a result of the teleport (I.E.: teleporting an enemy into the middle of a squad of teammates), and a unique kill if the Engineer's sentry kills the teleportee within a certain amount of time after their involuntary departure (basically, record it as a taunt-kill).
I figure that it could also be used to teleport teammates the same way, since it could be very versatile while filling a different role than the normal teleporter, and its griefing abilities would be greatly hindered by the wind-up time and the recharge delay.

I also thought that an interesting unlock for his dispenser would be one that allows him to carry a miniature version on his back – for the sake of balance, it would be half as good as a normal dispenser (½ hitpoints, double the cost, erection cannot be rushed [lol innuendo], ½ metal/health/ammo dispensing speed [although probably normal dispensing range], ½ max metal, ½ metal generation, et cetera). It would prevent backstabs as long as it remains intact, but could be sapped or destroyed normally.

It could not be upgraded, and it would not be able to be repaired by another engineer. I figured that the best way to repair it was to have a long-ass animation (it could optionally be loud as well) where be removes it from his back, removes sappers (if present), and repairs it to full hitpoints. During this animation, the Mini'spenser would stop its normal functions, he would lose his backstab immunity, and would generally be insanely vulnerable.

The Mini'spenser would pose equal or less threat to Spies than the Razorback (since it doesn't disarm a Spy who attempts to destroy it), and any Spy could pose a Mini'spenser-equipped engineer a dilemma – save his Mini'spenser at the risk of life and limb (it has less health, so engineers would have very little time to get themselves to safety in time to remove the sapper) or lose his metal reservoir and his backstab immunity.


Whada ya'll think?

Wow! What a bunch of creative ideas you all have. We should somehow send this to Valve .

I was wondering what will happen with the game after the engie update? Will they start a new cycle of updates where they will start with the Pyro, Medic and Heavy again? Or will we get TF3? I never played TFC so i don't know how did developed that into TF2.

TFC took +10 years to turn into TF2 as we know it. But yeah, I wonder myself what will happen after all the classes have been updated. I guess they would rebalance the classes, add some more functions like trading (for the love of god, do it!), add new maps every now and then, do some bugfixes and I guess that would be it for TF2.

For engi updates, the teleporterthing sounds really cool altough I see myself sapping a dispencer and seeing which direction the engi faces when using it.
Let him rebuild, wait till he's gone, sap his gear and face his back when he comes out of his teleporter :p
BACKSTAB! That would be frustrating n.n

I forgot, we talked about having the engi being able to build a dispenser on a heavy's back when we were playing the other day as well. IDK how well that'd do, though.

hyce777 wrote:I forgot, we talked about having the engi being able to build a dispenser on a heavy's back when we were playing the other day as well. IDK how well that'd do, though.

Spy sappin' mai Heavy!

I read it. I think i would find myself too vulnerable as engineer. But it would be fun to test this out though. Hard to say without doing it. Take a lot of imagination...

Hopefully Valve will pickup your idea

Eraserhead wrote:I read it. I think i would find myself too vulnerable as engineer. But it would be fun to test this out though. Hard to say without doing it. Take a lot of imagination...

Hopefully Valve will pickup your idea

Comment on the Steam forums thread. Until more people post, I'll have to keep bumping it.