Well this bit's the simple one. An engineer crossed with a bat. It has some basic engineering capabilities, like being able to build objects, though also has some bat abilities, like a strong "bite", borderline echo location and uhh some excuse for a primary weapon ability that I can't think of

The Bat-gineer is only really found in darker places, like inside buildings and at night, building on maps that last a long time. Because of this the most common places for them are actually Doublecross and Turbine since CTF maps often last ages and the dark, often enclosed areas they find comfortable.

They will often simply build a sentry and a dispenser before wandering around their base, looking for the other team so it can attack them. It will often try ambushes or tricking them into the sentry's range since the bat-gineer alone is frail and almost entirely melee-restricted, meaning most fair fights will lead to a flattened-out bat.

However, just because they don't have range doesn't mean that are defenceless. They, of course, have a sentry (often a lv. 3 set up somewhere near their dispenser) as well as a short-ranged low-damage burst attack and a powerful melee that can deal just over 100 damage per swing when combined with the bleed damage.

They tend to stay away from light, open areas since it affects their vision and detection skills, leaving them as little more than sitting ducks to most foes.

Have you ever wanted to be a bat with several PHDs in engineering and all things sciency? No? Well to bad then since that is what this guide (this part in particular) is about!

The main rules of the bat-gineer are as follows:
1. Name yourself Bat-gineer or something bat-like (Not necessary but it's a good heads-up to your team that their engie is using a gimmick)
2. No primary weapons (Do bats have shotguns? No.)
3. You can only use the Short curcuit's alt-fire (Can bats fire electrical streams of death? No.)
4. The only weapons you can have are the Short circuit (As your spy-stopping, projectile-malfunctioning sonar) and the Southern hospitality (Main weapon, good for spy stopping as well, also deals high damage overall)

Stick with these rules and you'll become the best bat-gineer your team of gibuses on turbine will have ever seen! (Also probably the only bat-gineer they will have ever seen)

As discussed, the only two weapons you may use are the Short Curcuit and the Southern Hospitality.

Short Curcuit
The rule with this weapon is that you may only use the Alt-fire. The alt-fire will act like a sort of super-sonar, revealing to you invisible spies, prematurely triggering dead ringers, causing projectiles to malfuntion and become ineffective and also for finishing off weakened foes who would prefer not to be shaken up further by a screech from a giant bat dude.

Southern Hospitality
Your main weapon overall. This thing deals a solid 65 smack to anybody hit plus a few seconds of bleed damage that makes the damage get to just over 100 in a single smack. It can be good for ambushing foes, allowing you to hit most of them a few times for them to die later from bleeding. Your bites are suprisingly effective considering that means that overall 1 bite does more damage than a non-crit back scratcher hit. The lack of crits can be annoying but relying on crits isn't suggested. Finally, the 20% fire vulnerability is because, well, you're a bat. You hate light. As well as the fact that bat vs flamethrower seems a bit obvious in the ways of who would win.

Now since you're a bat who probably doesn't want to initiate unnecessary fights it is suggested to either ignore the friendlies entirely or to just hang out with them a bit (pun intended). Initiating fights with them, especially hoovies, will either end up with you getting shredded as the best outcome or the worst being a new enemy to face that you wouldn't have had otherwise.

Which of the two things you do is up to you. Just don't attack the friendlies since that's a death wish.

Now this is probably the most customisable part of Bat-gineer's loadout. There is a single rule with this part of the loadout which is that you have to wear the "Lil' Bitey" when playing as the bat-gineer since it's the only real bat hat you can get.

Everything else you equip is up to you. You may want to go and make a batman-inspired set, you may want to just go pyrovision goggles + mercenary badge if you want to, or maybe you could just use your normal set with the lil' bitey as just a small addition.

So this part is quite rare since finding another Bat-gineer is hard to do since ~5 exist currently. However, this is what you do if you find another Bat-gineer:

An Ally Bat-gineer:
Firstly congrats, you just did something that is, in theory, harder to do than find a golden wrench as long as this encounter was not pre-coordinated and it was pure luck.

Since you're both Bat-gineers you might want to stick together, helping each other with buildings (though not building next to eachother, that's not fun or useful). And helping eachother with flanks and ambushes to take out annoying foes like Heavies, Soldiers, Demomen and Medics. One could short curcuit near the sentry to keep it safe while the other melees from behind or you could just both go short curcuit and spam the foes to death by rushing them, though this doesn't work for pyros, demoknights or heavies as well.

An Enemy Bat-gineer:
Once again; what are the chances in that happening? Pretty slim I must say if it was completely random and was not planned at all.

Despite being enemies Red and Blu Bat-gineers usually get along, talking with voice commands before both going their own seperate ways. This is because Bat-gineers are aware they are almost extinct and cannot affort to lose more of them.

Well thanks for putting up with me again. If you enjoyed this then why not go and check out the other things in this little series of sub-class guides.

http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1103762348

I have no idea what the next one could be... maybe the Pyro pan or something but Idk yet

Anyways, thanks for reading a see you next time!