Engineer is not, to me, an Arena job. An Engineer’s job is to support teammates and manipulate the battlefield to the advantage of the team/disadvantage of the enemy.

This means a variety of things.

– repair capability

– re-arm capability

– passive area denial

– active area denial

– information processing and distribution

– information denial/counter information

Now lets break these down.

1: Repair Capability.

Currently filled by the Repair Shed- however, I cannot see this staying in-game except as a permanent upgrade to the Base, possibly in the form of a ‘black pit’ garage or underground entrance with a canned animation- go into area, press ‘yes’, M.A.V. is taken out of your control and out of your sight for a few seconds (perhaps based on damage and ammo capacity), then comes back out fully repaired and rearmed- costs taken from your winnings/pool.

But replacing that on a MAV-mounted scale, I see two other archetypes. The Deploy and the ‘Weapon’. The Deploy would be, essentially, a Repair Pad- working like the Shed currently does, but slower and without either re-arm or the protection of the walls- you walk on top of it and after about a second it starts repairing everything. The ‘weapon’ would be a repair arm melee weapon that reverses damage to targeted parts, much like the Welder in Space Engineers. This would be the combat medic tool that the ‘battle engineer’ would use to repair on the fly. There would be variants of each, of course, with different repair speeds, ‘ammo’ counts and the like.

2: Re-Armament

This is giving back ammo. Much like the Repair, it is currently covered by the Shed- but in-game I see this as being much more limited. Either have NO MAV-mountable re-arm module, or make it an ‘ammo dump’ deployable. The only possibility for a weapon version would be a grenade-like ‘package delivery’ which would just be silly. The ‘ammo dump’ would have a certain amount of each type of ammo in it- when that ammo is used up, it’s used up. It would also be a 1 and done deployable, like the current Shed.

3: Passive Area Denial

Currently covered by the Wall. Now many others have said what they think Walls should be, and they’re all right. However, I’ll still give my opinion, because nyah. This is basically anything that passively slows or blocks the enemy- tank trap deploys, caltrops, ice-spreaders to reduce friction on surfaces, and of course Walls. Walls, I could see, as being 1 and Done deploys, but decently large, capable of clipping terrain above their targeted point, with a Foundation that goes down far enough that you don’t have ‘floating masonry’, and either indestructable or with health comparable to that of a Base Building. They would need to be very, very heavy, though- enough that even a super-dedicated Engineer with the heaviest legs and bare minimum energy and pit requirements couldn’t carry enough to completely surround/block off their base. But these could be used for advanced setup- blocking off certain paths, creating defensive bullwarks for Defenders to hide behind, etc.- they would also have a significant setup time. Basically, they’d be the Engineer adding terrain to their advantage. There could also be walls meant as rapid ‘ohcrap’ deploys, which would be super light, but there’d be a bunch of them per deploy- a sort of panic button active defense part. Tank Traps, well, just change their shape a bit and the current Wall Deploy could work for that. Most of these parts would be rather heavy and very, very energy intensive.

4: Active Area Denial

Currently done by Turrets and Mines. This is area denial that is meant to discourage the enemy from going someplace due to damage, rather than actually preventing their movement. Honestly, aside from having more variety in the types of turrets and mines, you’ve got this. More mines, more turrets, done. Oh, and let us put turrets on top of heavy Earthworks wall deploys, yeh?

5: Information Processing and Distribution

Aka, Comms. Currently done by ComSys and ComSysDeploys. Again, you’ve basically got this aside from variety, ideas given above- the only additions I’d want would be vision modules like Friend or Foe makers, rangefinders, nightvision and explosives-sight, and map-modifiers like rangefinders, seismic sensors and map marking. Some of these modules would be useful for front-lines folks as well, balanced for that, and some would be essentially cockpit add-ons- I still wanna show my ideas for “Computer” systems like the Chips from CH- many of these would fit better as ‘chipsets’ modifying the ‘pit as opposed to discreet physical modules. Flares would also count, here.

6: Information Denial

AkA Netwar, aka Information Warfare. This one is currently done only by the plumes of dust left by rocket impacts. This is basically attacking the enemy’s ability to gather and act on their own IPD. Things like CommSys jammers and enemy CommSysDeploy targeters, stealth modules (whether sound or visual- though these are a little more Scoutish), systems that can show ‘ghost blips’ in enemy CommSys areas, all the way down to basic smokescreens. Basically, anything that screws with the enemy’s ability to trust their own senses.

A lot of these overlap with the Scout- as it should be, since Scouts are essentally mini-supports that rely on eyes and experience rather than equipment. There’s things here (walls, repairs) that synergize well with Defenders, and with Artillery (rangefinders, CommSystems, Re-arm systems, maybe). There’s very little that synergizes with Snipers or Attackers, unless you run a ‘front-lines’ lightly-equipped engineers with, say, repair arms and ammo dumps.

The big thing is that the Engineer, in combat, is about prior setup- whether that’s long-term base construction and terrain manipulation or setting up ambushes on the fly. They are not a reactionary class, but a proactive class.