My experience as an Engineer/AMS driver

[gonnagetyou]

I've been playing the role of combat engineer-AMS driver for awhile. In the process I've come to apprecite just how important the AMS is when assaulting a base. The closer you can park it next to the fight the quicker your team mates get back into the action. The most important factors when using the AMS is location and surprise. Look for natural areas of cover and low depressions in the terrain. You can drive the AMS into some really bizarre areas from which the enemy won't expect you to. Natural bowl shaped depressions or right between the slopes of a couple of hills are my favorite spots. The reasons are because:

1. It's out of line of sight from the enemy.

2. If you feel the need to deploy defenses like Spitfires, motion sensors and mines you can do so on the surrounding slopes. This way the enemy doesn't see your defenses until it's too late. They are forced to come within range in order to take them out.

3. The enemy can't see you leave the cloaking field unless they are right on top of you.

The biggest problem you'll have keeping your AMS location secret will be your own team mates. People too often travel in a straight line directly from the AMS to the battle. For the love of god people don't do this. Run somewhere of to the side before going to the fight. If you don't you're just saying "Hey, over here! Look where I came from for the tenth time!"

I often see enemy cloakers back tracking my team mates in order to discover the location of my well placed AMS. So if you see me running at you and it looks like I'm shooting at you I'm not. You probably just had a cloaker run past you and I'm trying to protect all my hard work.

The one thing I hate the most are team mates hacking my AMS. If your in my squad that's another thing, but if not keep your grubby paws of my AMS. I put it there for a reason and I'll be the one to move it unless you ask me for permission.
I've only had this happen once so far and I caught the guy in the act, but it deffinantly pissed me off.

Enemy Reavers are you're second biggest problem. I haven't quite come up with a solution to that one yet. Those missiles will pound you into the dust in no time and the good Reaver pilots are always on the look out for a deployed AMS. There just isn't much you can do against Reavers even with several troops packing AA weapons. You either need other Reavers or Mosquitoes covering you or just pray you don't get seen. If your position is compromised bug out and find a new spot when you can.

Spitfires:
Place these out of the line of sight of enemies. They are easily taken out and their best use is for ambushes. I like to place them behind rocks or trees along the path of enemy units. That way they aren't seen until the last minute. Hopefully doing some damage. Just below the top of a hill is also a good spot.

Motion Sensors:
As with Spitefires conceal them the best you can. That light on top is a nice giveway for the enemy to home in on.

Mines:
I like to mine roads and bridges. Mine the enterance to bases and doors. I mine avenues of approach that I see being used a lot. If I'm especially sneaky I'll mine the enemies side of rocks and trees. It's nice seeing some poor guy jump behind some cover only to step on a mine.

As far as wepons go, I don't have any certification for the big guns yet. I typically carry the Punisher with Rocklets. The rocklets are good for providing support to my team mates and for taking out enemy Spitefires and Motion Sensors from a distance. I also try and repair friendly vehicles whenever they stay still enough to allow me to. As a Vanu player, I would like to eventully have acces to the Lasher, so I'm saving up for the Heavy Assault cert.

Well hope some people find this interesting. I'm no expert at the game yet, but I'm having a lot of fun. If you see me running around and need an aspiring kick ass engineer in your squad give me a yell. I usually join the first squad that asks.

[Happy lil Elf]

Good advice Since I can't really do sizable indoor/close quarter battles I'm thinking this is my next goal. I think I'll dump special assault for Anti Vehicle (since shooting Decimators at ranges and air targets is..well...useless) then pick up AMS and Combat Engineering.

[Destroyeron]

Sounds like you've got some nice ideas and tactics.

[Winja]

You can hack vehicles within your own empire!!!


That's gonna be abused alot. Prehaps the Devs could make it so empires can't freindly hack.

[Deadlock]

[Vash]

You cant actually hack friendly vehicles, it's just the little lock sometimes gets reset after a patch or something, making it available to your entire empire.
Just gotta get in the habit of checking the vehicle window, that's all

Anyways, great post, I love the AMS!
I just wish I could cert in a vanguard or a reaver or something without having the fear of losing my AMS if I dont get back to it in time.

[Deadlock]

yeah, ams should have their own unique lifespan... i dunno what exactly but enough that whoever drove it there would have the freedom to leave it and persue other things if they thought it safe enough

[Hellsfire123]

Curious, with the new patch i dont see motion sensors to much. Are they still required for the spitfires to work, or are they just on auto pwnage now?

And has anyone noticed that the AMS has the combined armor of like 7 vanguards? It takes me so long to kill them, even using Lancer.

Im thinking of getting the Adv Eng for the ACE, but i dont like the idea of carring around more useless crap in my inventory. Do you think its worth it? Im normally in reinforced with a Lancer and a pulsar. I did try it when we were all still BR 20, but i didnt get kills or exp from it so i never bothered to try again.

[gonnagetyou]

I've got a few more ideas rattling around my head that I thought I would share.

You do get BEPs for anyone your Spitfires and mines kill. You don't need motion sensors deployed in order for the Spitfires to work either. The motion sensors are primarily useful against cloakers. You see their name in red just above where they are and you're Spitfires well shoot at them if they move.

On the subject of MOTION SENSORS:
It pays to look at the map and make sure you have overlapping sensor fields when deploying them. Don't get them too close together and yet not to far either. Don't leave any gaps for cloakers to slip thru.
Yesterday I set up a nice chain of motion sensors between two hills that I was sure the enemy was using. Sure enough I was able to pick up all the NC cloakers trying to get thru. I managed to kill quite a few of them this way. When placing them sometimes you can't help but put them in the open. When you get the chance, definately hide them behind trees, rocks or anything that prevents them from being noticed until too late. I've even seen them attached to walls.

MINES:
In one of my other posts I mentioned how I set up an effective ambush by by staggering about 15 of them along a bridge. Mines are perfect for natural choke points in the terrain that the enemy uses. Bridges are the easiest and most logical focal point but you can just as easily apply this to any terrain that funnels the enemy movement.

Laying mines out into a large area like some large minefield from WWI or II doesn't work as well. Most troops can easily avoid them by going around.

Any spare mines you have should be placed near doors or around natural cover that the enemy may try and hide behind.

I think mines are most effective against vehicles. If you could place them a little tighter they would be much more harmful to infantry than they are.

SPITFIRES:
I've seen a lot of people ring their deployed AMS with Spitefires for protection. I've done this a lot myself. However, I've come to realise that this simply helps give away the position. Spitefires are notorious for firing at enemy aircraft even when the aircraft is out of their range. Four Spitefires all lighting up at the same time spewing fire into the sky create a lot of attention which is exactly what you don't need when trying to keep your position secret. It's much better to take the Spitefire to the enemy and place it along avenues of approach or in ambush.

Another problem with spitefires is their habit of going off even before the enemy is directly in their line of fire. A well concealed Spitefire will often go off and try to shoot thru anything you hide it behind as long as the enemy is close enough. This severally hampers the surprise factor and makes it much easier for the enemy to take them out.

I try to use Spitefires in pairs and set them up so that they cover one another. This way you get overlapping fields of fire and if the enemy tries to take one out there's a good chance he may get hit by the other one while they're doing so.

When actually fighting I try to replace every destroyed Spitefire or mine as quickly as possible. I call it gardening. You don't want to plant an effective defense only to sit back and watch the enemy destroy it. I've been known to run into enemy fire just so I can replace a destroyed Spitefire.

One of my favorite tricks is to draw enemy infantry over a hill side after me and immediately deploy a Spitefire. As they come over the ridge looking for me not only do the get me shooting at them but they get a dose of Spitefire radiation.

BOOMERS:
I haven't had much success with Boomers yet. I mostly use them for demolition or when inside protecting a stairwell or hallway. Unfortunately, it's all to easy to catch friendlies in the blast in the narrow confines and up close combat that take place inside bases and towers. Sometimes it's your only choice when you got 3 pissed off MAXs charging down the hall.

Welll, I'm sure I'll come up with more things to mention.

If anyone else has ideas please contribute.

[BUGGER]

hehheh, I am deadly with mines!

In T2, the gen room or flag room will be mined up to hell, I mean put a foot somewhere and 1 mine will go off, then another and s on. Its like hell man, then ya sachel a spot in the room/flag bay, its fun to watch everybody go flying!



Once I play PS, I'm gona get a engineer cert call for an invite, then go out and mine a command room in the enemy base. it'll be like my first time actually participating in a hack as a mine deployer along with boomers laying arond. Ahh I can see it all now. Feel my mines!





Other than that i'll be transporting peeps and/or acting as Mr. Grunt.

[gonnagetyou]

Unfortunately mines can only be placed outside at the moment. Otherwise, yea I'd be mining the inside of a base pretty heavily also.

[MilitantB0B]

Originally posted by BUGGER33
Once I play PS, I'm gona get a engineer cert call for an invite, then go out and mine a command room in the enemy base. it'll be like my first time actually participating in a hack as a mine deployer along with boomers laying arond. Ahh I can see it all now. Feel my mines!

Man, I wish it worked like that. Unfortuantly, the only mines you can place indoors are the remotley detonated ones (boomers) What you can do, is just place mines outisde of every door to the inside of the base, half the times they just pack into that doorway and take alot of damage. I just sit back, laugh for a second, and lay down a spitfire behind them to finnish off the wounded and get my cloaked butt out of there!!

[gonnagetyou]

Ahhh! Just thought of something I hadn't mention about Spitefires.

You can't place them inside a building, but you can place them on the balconies of the base. I've started to use the top down approach when placing them inside a base. I start on the highest balconies I can get to and place them near the edge of the railing. This gets them up higher where they are harder to take out and anyone doing a drop over the base is met with some fire on the way down. It also gives them a better chance of hitting aircraft trying to swoop over the walls.

I've seen cloakers using Mosquitoes to get directly over a base and then bailing, so be sure to put some motion sensors up there with them. Actually you should use plenty of motion sensors for base defense. I don't think people are using them enough. Any edge you can provide against cloakers is worth the effort.

Something totally unrelated that I noticed while playing last night was that all the bunkers outside the entrance to bases have an underground tunnel connecting them. Others probably knew this already, but I found it interesting. It would be cool if the Devs would add an equipment terminal down there. It would make those bunkers much more effective and desirable for base defence.

That tunnel also makes a great place to hide if you need to. I can see where someone might hide down there waiting for the enemy to leave thinking the base is secure. Then you pop out and rehack the base after they leave. Keep an eye on this one folks. It might be useful to start checking those tunnels before you leave.