 Eco Sentry |
Technician: Engineer | Tier 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Basic (2 pt): The cost of deploying a sentry gun is reduced by 5%. | ||
| Ace (4 pt): Your sentry guns gain 150% increased health. | ||
Mechanics[]
Eco Sentry basic is rather straight-forward: the ammunition cost of deploying a sentry gun is reduced from 25% of your ammo (the default 30% cost will have been reduced to 25% by Third Law basic before Eco Sentry can be accessed) to 20% of your ammo. It also shifts the minimum ammo needed to deploy a sentry gun from 25% of your maximum ammo to 20% of your maximum ammo.
Note that due to oddities in the coding for ammo removal when a sentry gun is deployed, the ammo cost of deploying a sentry gun is 20% of your current maximum ammo rather than total maximum ammo. It still prevents placement if you have less than 20% of your total maximum ammo on hand, however. This does not affect how much ammo is held by the sentry gun.
Eco Sentry aced is a flat bonus to the health of your sentry guns, multiplying the default 10,000 health to a more durable 25,000.
Strategy[]
Eco Sentry is effectively a quality-of-life upgrade for sentry gun users, rather than an upgrade centered on the effectiveness of the gun itself, such as Sentry Targeting Package. It is most useful when sentry guns are used as a distraction rather than a legitimate method of dealing damage - deploying them in the open and on the fly to attract fire while the user completes an exposed objective or makes a mad dash for cover, rather than carefully deploying them to take out as many cops as possible.
If making a build dedicated to maxing out the effectiveness of sentry guns as damage dealers, Eco Sentry may not be worth the investment - the 5% reduction in cost can be dealt with easily enough with ammo-efficient weaponry, and good placement in combination with the shield provided by Third Law aced can make a sentry gun virtually untouchable in most scenarios, making the health bonus a moot point.
Trivia[]
- Eco Sentry is one of few skills that is completely outstripped by a cheaper skill in its own tree - in this case Third Law, which has the same basic effect as Eco Sentry, but offers a bulletproof shield when aced instead of Eco Sentry's 150% health boost. The shield is arguably superior since it increases the longevity of a sentry gun by more than 150% with only a fraction of the skill point cost.
