Coffey’s guide to effective deployment:

Now that 8 of you are missing from FAILING YOUR TESTS, I hope I can assume that the REST of you have a few brain cells each. It is time for you to put the basics you have learnt into practice. ANYONE KILLING THEMSELVES OR A CLASSMATE WILL FAIL. For those of you who are smart-alec enough to realise that I am not on the “no-kill” list for failure, I have MANY friends amongst the base medics. Not only will you FAIL, but you may find yourself with 7 noses on your next Cellular Restructure!

This section is just some basic tactics dealing with your Pet AI. the Engineer is the one current class in the game that can make VERY good use of their pets. However, first you need to be aware of a couple game mechanics:

Crouching: Crouching is not only an offensive posture but a defensive one as well. Crouching reduces the amount of incoming weapons fire but you MUST be careful. Melee attacks (such as the bane favourite “Kick to the head”) receive a damage bonus when striking a crouching target.

Cover: Getting into cover reduces the amount of incoming damage. Cover can be anything from a bunker, sandbag wall, battlefield debris, a rock and even the crest of a hill.

Enemy AI: It is important to understand how the enemy AI works so you can institute some control in certain situations. Some things you do will solicit certain reactions from the enemy. Eg: A bane crouching in cover when you have no LoS. You can move in and get LoS and kill it. However, when using Turrets especially, this will not work because Turrets cannot advance to get LoS. If you withdraw or move so the bane has no LoS to you it will move and try to find a firing position. Retreating in the appropriate direction will make the Bane leave cover to follow you smack dab into the firing line of your Turrets.

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An Engineer Fears No Class

Anything else I will deal with on a case-by-case basis.

ALL RIGHT, as I told you, turrets are NOT the most intelligent creation known to man. They operate on a rudimentary system and although they are stupid they are PREDICTABLE so this means you can use it to your advantage.

When you deploy a turret it will behave in a specific way. It essentially puts anything that attacks you or it into it’s aggro list and assigns an order of importance. They will tend to pick out certain specific kinds of creatures in order. Knowing this order allows you to predict what they are going to kill or leave alone till later and you can see what’s going to be a danger. As I mentioned earlier, Shield Drones are VERY low on a Turret’s priority list and therefore killing these yourself is a good idea.

The next thing to realize about this is that how you deploy your turrets matters. Placing turrets in a single stack will tend to have them all pick on the same target at once for fast reduction in enemy numbers or heavy hitting power on Mobs like Stalkers, Kael and other generally more robust enemies.

However, if you deploy your turrets in a spaced out line or spread out pattern different things will enter their aggro lists at different times. This will tend to make your Turrets pick out different targets until very few enemies remain. This is a useful tactic for drawing aggro to your turrets instead of yourself or killing multiple weaker enemies such as Ticks or Lightbenders and the like.

Keep an eye on what your turrets attack. Things like Striders and Bane Turrets are very high on their priority list. If you are using spread patterns this may result in one or 2 of your turrets attacking the tough mob and the rest will attack something else. 2 Turrets are not likely to take out a Strider before it teaches you a lesson you will not forget. You will either need to turn on the strider yourself and kill it to make the Turrets change target OR, the cheat’s way, use Hack on it. This makes it your ally and no longer a valid target. It is a good idea to re-deploy your turrets in a single stack before Hack wears off because it will HATE you when it gets it's faculties back. Hate is a kind of aggro that essentially makes it favour you over any other target in it's aggro list.

Turrets will also pick on something they cannot see if it is at the top of their aggro list. They will sit there like idiots waiting for it to emerge from cover and just not fire until something causes a change in their aggro list. Thus, as I stated above, you need to know how to draw these enemies out of cover or in rough terrain use a spread pattern on your turrets so another turret will kill it from a different angle.

Your Bots are NOT such stupid creatures and mobile to boot. They will NOT act the same as turrets. Doing less damage than turrets a Bot’s main strength is it’s much longer duration and ability to relocate with you across the battlefield. However, it is JUST AS IMPORTANT TO LEARN HOW TO CONTROL IT. If you don’t use them properly, you might as well not use them at ALL.

Bots behave much differently to Turrets. First, they are NOT autonomous like a turret is and pay attention to what you are doing. Moving will cause them to follow and they will also prefer your current target over their aggro list. If you are not shooting, they will however act autonomously as turrets do.

The best way to get the full effect out of a Bot is to find a firing position in cover crouch and begin shooting. Moving will cause your bot to break off it’s attack and return to your side MOST of the time. This means lost attacks and a reduction in effectiveness.

Bots generally have about the same range as a Polarity Gun. If you fire any further away than this the Bot will leave your side to close in on the enemy for a better firing solution and more damage. It will also attempt to find cover and move so it has a clear LoS to an enemy in cover. With the first 2 bots this is generally not an issue. They are Attack pets and thus it’s the best thing for them to do. However the last 3 Bots have defensive measures which have a limited range. These Bots will still move away from you to find a better firing solution causing you to lose the healing effect or no longer be under the shield.

If you fire at a close target in no cover the bot will also acquire this target and return to your side. Likewise firing at a distant target will cause it to acquire that target and want to advance to optimal range. Moving will also cause it to return to you.

You must also spend some time without a bot. As with a lot of skills their Duration is shorter than their recharge time. Don’t use your bot just because you can but instead wait until it’s power is needed.

Spider Mines: I hate these for a number of reasons. It is almost impossible to predict what they will attack, often ignoring a fat, juicy group in favour of a lone target you couldn't care less about at the present time. They are also rediculously expensive. The only place I ever found these useful was at CP's or in cramped quarters like caves or passages in Instances. They CAN work and work well. However, 99 times out of 100 something ELSE will work better and cheaper.

Trap: Again, wasn't my cup of tea. In conjunction with Spider Mines it was possible to set very devastating traps but I always found the points and money better spent elsewhere.

Note: There is currently a quest loot bug concerning pets. Unique quest-loot items, I'm pretty sure, are being assigned to pets, particularly turrets. I have had trouble with Instance keycards and other unique drops, persistent playfield unique drops such as a boss's head (Goliath in particular) and a greatly reduced frequency of cycled drops (Mox Hearts sticks in my head in Marshes north of Falcon Hold). Some quest drops cycle through the party. One will drop for each person in turn rather than the same mob dropping one for everyone. Using 4 turrets the Mox Hearts (a cycling quest-drop) were dropping one in 5. One for me and one for each of my turrets.

However, if I thrash Goliath within an inch of his life and lead him away from the turrets and wait for them to time out, his head drops 100% instead of the seemingly never using turrets (I didn't kill him 5 times to see if I was still in the list, I timed the turrets out on the 3rd when I realised what was going on, left the head and did it again to see if I could reproduce the result).

Be wary of this and be particular to kill quest bosses with personal weapons instead of pets. A pain I know, but better than having to repeat an instance because you didn't get the final boss's loot drop to complete the quest with.