I'm having difficulty getting my engineers to increase their engineer skill. Any good methods of improving it? Should I just carry lots of lockpicks and attempt to pick locks even if I know I can't do it successfully? Any other ideas? Helpful hints maybe?

Lockpicks are much more valuable than grenades/mines/trap disarming devices. Just grab some grenades off the enemy and start trapping every window & door you see.

set & disarm mines!

On a camping screen you should be able to booby trap the chest with a grenade, then disarm it and recover the grenade.

it does chew threw the mine probes though, so make sure you have a few spares.

I almost never used the mine probes
If there's something trapped I just shoot it and let it blow up

Not always a good idea....

There is a LEAST one misison where setting off a mine sets off a chain reaction that ends the mission, and the game!

I believe I've disarmed a number of mines but I don't think i've ever recovered the mine... does it just lay it on the ground? or do they just stick it in their inventory?... perhaps I just never noticed...

It puts it in your inv IF you have enough space for it.
The only mission that you can't set off a chain reaction is the factory where you can't kill civilians

They usually either just fall to the ground, or end up in the chest you are opening.

I've never found mines, only ever grenades. But that makes sense, as it's grenades you use to booby trap things in the first place.

I find it also increases a bit every level, but nothing much to get excited about mebbe.

The engineering skill doesn't seem too helpful though, most doors I can shoot down and that's basically it? My engineer ended up being a soldier towards the end.

Pretty much the only things you'll use lockpick on is the steel doors and lockers. Those won't blow up even with a heavy HE grenade. You could always carry around a rocket launcher though, those will blow up steel doors That's pretty much the only use I've found for rocket launchers actually...The accuracy's too low to be of much use otherwise.

ive found a mine or two
the look like a block of wood
useless in my opinion
the only use i could think of would be multiplayer to piss people off

Unless you're playing normal difficulty it's nearly impossible for the enemy to set off any traps/mines you've set. It'll probably waste your time setting it and being careful you don't step on it yourself.

That's not what I've found, but I tend to use them to cover my back. I'll set up booby traps on doors that are in other directions so if any enemy come through I get some warning, or they don't dare.

I also use chains of mines in a similar fashion... and if the enemy seems to have detected my trap I blow up one and usually take out th elot and enemy with it.

I found traps to be more effective when you leave the door/window open Instead of hoping they don't see it and set it off, wait until they try to pass through the window/door, then set it off yourself by shooting at it. :lol:
Also quite useful for demolition Sometimes I'm too lazy to risk my guys going upstairs to get at the enemy so I set traps and mines all around the first floor walls and set them off. After the chain explosion everything comes crashing down and the enemies die :twisted:

Why do you want to train an engineer in the first place???

In my first campaign in normal level, I tried hard to give my engineer every opportunities to train up his engineer skills. Due to Master Engineer ability bug, he still can't use the best equipment in the end of the game (I managed to get his skill close to 70).

On my second impossible campain, I had only a scout and a sniper. When I went to a mission has to have an engineer, I just recruited one then. My characters are at level 13, and the roster gives me level 10 engineers. Guess what their engineer skills at? 98!

So don't waste your time on this. Cut this guy loose from your team; it's not worth it. If you have to have a 6 pack, just get another sniper or soldier!

it depends on your style of playing s2, for myself i must say that the engineer is great. in the beginning most of his mines and boobies are discovered, but this isnt important, cause ive trapped (with some luck) all possible entrances to the specific building. so the enmies stays freightened in his home. later in the game, with an improved skill (+demolition bonus) he places mines+booby traps at tactical postions.

when an enemy hits the spot, he and the house's front is gone, and my sniper is really happy about this "shooting range". if the enemy is not eager opening the door, im using my scout to get them out (letting him run around near the entrance). if nothing of this works, finally my sniper uses his silented rifled to blow the booby up(and son, in most cases, also the mine).

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training your engineer with disarming/placing mines is kind of boring, because placing/disarming mines triggeres to turnbased combat.

if you start in germany(and perhaps in hannover), keep an eye for the prison-random-encounter, there a lot of closed doors.

by the way, im using the getitem code to give my engineer enough lockpicks, whcih cannot considered as cheating (in my oppinion its really strange, that your army can supply tons of ammunition, but only a very small number of lockpick and mine-disarming devices).

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as stated in the nival forum, it is not a bug, that the pools-soldier have such high attributes. in fact, they gained excatly the same amount of attribute-points as your "regular" levelled soldiers hats gotten to reach the approbiate level. but while your soldiers gained their levels based on a lot of trained skills, the pool-soldiers got the point on their primary-skills.

for example, if youve got a welltrained engineer at lvl 10, with a hide of 60-70 points, and use a setxplevel 10, you will see, that the hide -skill has been decreased.

ahahha boobies

Enginer are useless but can be fun.
But so are all other exept snipers.
Snipers do everithing better than soldier.
4 snipers, 1 scout, 1 whatever, that is it.

:roll:

My latest campain is 2 snipers and a soldier. The custom sniper (10 int, 8 dex, 2 str) is awesome at hiding and shooting. I picked the soldier with 7 str so he's pretty decent at chucking grenades.

All in all, this three-man-group works very well... the snipers sneak up and spot, the soldier runs in and chucks a couple grenades, then everyone switched so SMGs/HMGs and mops up

1 scout, 3 int, 10 dex