You press B while holding ACE box (the undeployed turret) in your hands and it turns into an ammo box which means you can free up your utility slot for explosives or medkits. Oh and also you can do this while the turret is already deployed or deploy the ammo then deploy the turret, one slot two items oooo yeah. And for the cheeky bugger you can equip the ammo box so you can have 2 ammo boxes deployed at the same time.
Best way to use the mana turret is for basically anything that doesn't involve firing it. You can use it for. - Cover - Decoy - Stairs - Repair XP - Choke block - Vehicle obstacle I'm sure theres other uses I cant think of right now, but yea, don't bother trying to fire it, it does okay damage but its aiming is overly sensitive and thus difficult, and being on it makes you a gigantic sniper target due to render distance issues.
When guarding or flipping capture points as an Engy, I'll set up a defensive position with AI mines and deploy the MANA turret conspicuously in the area so that should an enemy approach from predictable path (doorway or stairwell) they see the glowing turret shield, meanwhile I'll kill them from an entirely different location and direction. That glowing shield is so effective at grabbing someone's attention. As mentioned before, enemy turrets are great cover, I've killed so many people by hiding behind them.
I'm actually quite upset that the MANA turret doesn't have medals associated with it. I've got around 150 kills with it since release, and there are situations where I will regularly deploy it. One of the keys to the mana turret is also to have as high flak armour as you can get, as well as double prox mines. Put the prox mines down in places to kill anyone trying to flank you. This means the one effective way of clearing you out is to lob a grenade behind you or to use rockets. With flak, unless they land the grenade right near your feet you'll be fine. If they do land it there be ready to hop off the turret and make it to a safe distance before it explodes. The spots I've found turrets to be extremely effective: - 1st landing on stairs up from vehicle bay in tower. it gives you decent cover from anything but frontal attacks, and a shooting gallary of people coming around blind corners attempting to shoot you. - Air pad on tower pointing at the spawn. Put your prox mines down to get anyone who tries to charge you and enjoy a shooting gallery of unsuspecting people coming out of their spawn. This is only ideal before your team has the top camped obviously. if I'm ever dropping on a tower I'll set this up and get 5-15 kills easily, often being the catalyst in taking the top of the tower. - Off to the side, pointing at the top of the stairs next to the SCU shield gen in techplants. Either run in and setup with prox mines+turret and then compromise the gen, so you have streams of people coming to dislodge you, or setup when you realize attackers will be coming for that gen within the next few minutes.
Found a use for the mana turret the other day.. had an enemy heavy hopping around the turret towers around a tech lab midair aimbotting people so I dropped one on the jumppad landing platform and waited around the corner for the inevitable splat (then knifed my turret to clear the pad again). Other than that I tried it my first day and got weapon locked 3 times from people walking around me then in front of my firing turret and standing there till they died. Hadn't used it since but my friend says he has luck placing one on one side of a rock then running around and shooting the guy that dashed up around to flank it (and give the snipers time to lose interest) then jumping on to fire downrange to get more attention till it overheats and jumping off to surprise another wave of flankers hoping for an easy kill. Rise and repeat. Apparently most snipers wont bother if your not staying on it more than a second or two then getting out of their field of view for the 10 seconds it takes for them to get bored and move on to other targets again.
I was fighting in a biolab by B (the only capture point not in a building) There were a couple of Maxes fighting, so I plopped down my turret and started firing. It took two turret cool downs, or about fifteen seconds to kill a max, then I'm sniped by an infiltrator. Didn't seem that useful to me. I guess if you're fighting in a biolab you could use it to temporarily block doors
Quite frankly, the turret would be doubly as "effective" if they fixed the thing so you could plant it just about anywhere. It's so situational because of all the stated reasons AND the fact that there are never any good places you can plant the thing. Once you find a spot that won't get you sniped or rocketed immediately, chances are the turret can't be placed. Take for example the slopes around the Crown. There are next to NO places you can set a turret up in those areas, even though the ground seems fine with no blockages. /sigh -Quiiliitiila
The MANA turret is fairly in-effective overall. I rarely die to it except for when I rush one and try to flank it frontally. But thats my own dumbself. Othertimes i just shoot the guy in the head and drop him off it. The thing is inaccurate nad not very deadly.
Use it to block your warpgate doors. In all seriousness it's best for suppression from a hill in a big fight. Otherwise it's generally not that useful. A shield would be great aside from griefing, but people do that with normal turrets anyway.
I have found it to be extremely accurate at long ranges, if i do a 2 round burst. I dont always get kills with it, but i usually get people to move from where they were and to stop firing upon me and other squad members from above us. When it comes to snipers, try to judge where they may be hiding, and place it where they wont have a line of fire to you, or deploy it at such a distance that only a select few snipers in the game would be able to hit you with a single shot.
Of course if your going to use it with such short bursts and at long range you might as well just use it as cover and fire with a scoped weapon for greater damage and accuracy. The fact it doesn't run out of ammo is kind of negated by the fact you can deploy your own ammo kits.
Only weapon that a engi could match range wise would be the battle rifle, and in which cases you would have quite a hard time switching between targets, and covering fire across a large cliff side. The turret allows you to quickly sweep a large area back and forth, and the objective isnt to kill with it, but to provide covering fire for troops that are advancing under or up the cliff who would otherwise be easy kills for those on top of the cliff. I will state that i dont use the turret often, but i do find a situation to use it for a few minutes every hour or two.
