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OpenTS Manual

Engineer

Whether a soldier restores and captures structures, or which InfantryType a destroyed or sold structure can hand back as an engineer.

Engineer soldier

Specification — Engineer soldier
Applies to
InfantryType
File
rules.ini
Section
[<ObjectType ID>]
Value
boolean
When omitted
no

An engineer that walks into a structure restores an allied one, captures or damages a non-allied one, or repairs a bridge at a bridge repair hut. Engineers, capture and sabotage covers each case, and An engineer over a structure covers the cursor a player sees.

Engineer=yes also turns Infiltrate=yes on after the section is read, so an Infiltrate=no in the same section has no effect. The forced value stays. If a later rules layer writes Engineer=no over the type, the soldier loses the engineer behavior but keeps Infiltrate. It still gets the enter cursor over a non-allied Capturable=yes structure it can reach, still walks in, and is consumed there with no effect.

The flag also changes how the engineer moves and fights:

  • It is given its target as a movement destination, instead of closing to weapon range.
  • It may step into the cell of its target or destination on the guard, area guard and patrol missions. Other soldiers may do so only on the capture, sabotage and enter missions.
  • It does not scan for targets on plain guard. Target selection treats an engineer as a special case throughout.
  • A computer-owned engineer that is damaged on guard or area guard switches to hunt. An idle computer-owned engineer outside a team goes on area guard once its house’s IQ reaches GuardArea.
  • Damage an engineer deals never lights the small fires a structure can catch when it is damaged.

Survivor engineer type

Specification — Survivor engineer type
Applies to
global rules
File
rules.ini
Section
[General]
Value
class
When omitted
none

A structure whose type sets Factory=BuildingType can produce the named InfantryType as a survivor. In the shipped rules that structure is the construction yard. Each survivor such a structure produces has a one-in-four chance of being this type. Every other survivor is the ordinary crew or technician type, and no other structure produces this type.

The roll applies whether the structure is destroyed or sold, with two limits on a sale:

  • A sale hands back at most one engineer, however many survivors leave. Destruction has no such limit.
  • A structure whose type names an UndeploysInto vehicle produces no survivors when sold. The shipped construction yard names one, so selling it returns no engineer.

A structure that has ever changed hands never produces this type for the rest of the match. A captured construction yard therefore never returns an engineer.

See also — capture