Why No Maxim Buff?

Why is it so hard to buff this unit to be a viable suppression platform? Its a terrible unit, its 6 man squad often times makes the unit get stuck trying to run away, the gun gets stuck on retreat while other factions guns teleport to next man, it has a small firing arc, can only suppress/pin one squad at a time, and it costs relatively the same MP as other mgs.

So why must this unit continue to be useless/ called an op unit when in reality its simply not worth building or even stealing. Now more than ever soviets and allies in general need more anti blob options rather than just counter blobing so why not buff the maxim.
While it may sound like crazy why not reduce the squad size of the maxim and for once make it not get stuck on retreat, keep its fire arc small and narrow as usual but increase pack up time to compensate for suppression of multiple units inside the arc.

seriously all factions deserve an early antiblob option

All it needs is an aoe suppression buff. It feel stupid when a blob walks through the arc of fire and only one squad is suppressed.

Official response from JLee:

"Its because we really didnt want the Maxim HMG to be an attack-move and suppress everything unit. Because of its fast setup and teardown, being able to lockdown a bigger area felt like it could be a little scary. I'm not saying excluding the Maxim was the right decision but we wanted to leave the possibility of that issue out for now and see how this improves all other HMG teams and come back to seeing if the Maxim also could use this. "

All problems comes from the riflegrenade. Due to the riflegrenade soviet need 6 man support weapon crews which in turn forces them to not be really powerful or we will see maxim spam everywhere.

All it needs is an aoe suppression buff. It feel stupid when a blob walks through the arc of fire and only one squad is suppressed.

have to agree here bro, had the exprince that 2 Grens approching together and they look like a 8 men squad but only one gets supressed and is able to fire a rifle granade with ease and wipes!

I know the right movement and doge manovers are advised vs. them but sometimes its just kind of stupid.

Just change the increased range with vet for riflenade. Their fixed.

Lol how does that fix anything Poulos, it needs the suppression and not with giving the most ranged grenade in the game a buff. Still easy to flank the Maxim especially in latest version.

Frag nades shouldn't work when suppressed.

Right now, the best way to reduce the effectiveness of rifle nades is to avoid yellow cover with HMGs and, if possible, spread the crew manually with vehicles (push them away).

According to the change-log the maxim got all of the buffs the other hmg got, whit one exception.

All HMGs

We felt blob counter units weren’t performing as well as we wanted and needed a performance boost to deal with Blobs of units better.



    Incremental accuracy multiplier changed to 1.15

    Incremental search radius changed to 10/12.5/15

    Nearby suppression radius changed to 13 (except maxim HMG)

    Min / Max Bursts unified

According to the change-log the maxim got all of the buffs the other hmg got, whit one exception.

All HMGs

We felt blob counter units weren’t performing as well as we wanted and needed a performance boost to deal with Blobs of units better.



    Incremental accuracy multiplier changed to 1.15

    Incremental search radius changed to 10/12.5/15

    Nearby suppression radius changed to 13 (except maxim HMG)

    Min / Max Bursts unified

Cruzz already confirmed that the PM1910 (Maxim) did not receive any changes.

According to the change-log the maxim got all of the buffs the other hmg got, whit one exception.

All HMGs

We felt blob counter units weren’t performing as well as we wanted and needed a performance boost to deal with Blobs of units better.



    Incremental accuracy multiplier changed to 1.15

    Incremental search radius changed to 10/12.5/15

    Nearby suppression radius changed to 13 (except maxim HMG)

    Min / Max Bursts unified

Yes except the suppression radius which is what I'm on about. I even suggested an increase in pack up time if that would make the unit more balanced, its just silly that a blob can walk thru the maxim and only one unit gets suppressed.

-Snip- Maxim did not receive any buffs. Thats so stupid that it even costs the same as an mg42. The mg42 = twice the suppression, damage, and arc but the only downside is it has a 4 man squad and takes like a second or two longer to set up.

Meanwhile the maxim gets charged head on by blob, riflenaded into oblivion, and then dies on retreat due to the gun having to be re-crewed. How is that fair or a l2p issue? =(

Official response from JLee:

"Its because we really didnt want the Maxim HMG to be an attack-move and suppress everything unit. Because of its fast setup and teardown, being able to lockdown a bigger area felt like it could be a little scary. I'm not saying excluding the Maxim was the right decision but we wanted to leave the possibility of that issue out for now and see how this improves all other HMG teams and come back to seeing if the Maxim also could use this. "

They should decide either they want maxim to be decent suppression platform with longer set-up time, but wider arc of fire and decent suppression or aggressive unit with hight damage and single-suppression. Currently it sucks and overshadowed by hmg42 in both. I am outraged by realization how bad it in this patch. Hell, even mg34 are better.

Relic states that the problems come from the set up and tear down time being incredibly fast, not 6 man squads, not riflegrenades, not anything else. And they're dang right.
Suppressing one or two squads is far enough with the Maxim. The Maxim, if it was a more effective suppression platform, would be able to deny large areas of space with its insane mobility and longevity, as Relic stated.
Therefore, the buff should be something other than suppressing ability, if necessary.
How about making the weapon crew entities standing around waiting to hop on the MG not hot garbage? That way, the damage is spread out more, and not directly attached to the Maxim. This counters rifle grenades and flanking to some extend in itself, since the entities can turn around and fire anywhere, and, the damage being more spread out, the rifle nades might want to thing twice about targeting the main DPS dealer.
But, at that point there's less micro that the Germans can do to counter it, which makes me a sad. Then again, there was little micro they could do other than rifle nade and rush while the crew is changing anyways, or the standard flank maneuver.

Relic states that the problems come from the set up and tear down time being incredibly fast, not 6 man squads, not riflegrenades, not anything else. And they're dang right.

Well, that didn't stopped kubel from being incredibly mobile, self spotting and effective at aoe suppression.
Sets up faster, tears down faster(instant duh), limited suppression on the move.

If they think that is fine, there really isn't an excuse for maxim performing so poorly or being equal in cost to MG42.

You can't have 2 units of same category and same cost, where one performs awesomely and another one is steaming crap in comparison, yet relic does it all the time, with main inf, with mortars, previously with ATGs now with HMGs.

Well, that didn't stopped kubel from being incredibly mobile, self spotting and effective at aoe suppression.
Sets up faster, tears down faster(instant duh), limited suppression on the move.

Yeah, except the kubel continues to take damage from rifles and cons after theyve been suppressed because of its large target size(relative to other suppression platforms). You can have 2 rifle squads in front of you push you off, despite them being already suppressed - unless you constantly babysit the kubel with a repair squad. This issue plagues absolutely none of the other mgs.

After playing this patch a bit more, I do agree the maxim could use some love, but your arguments are as always dull as shit.

Biggest bullshit i ever read, the unit clearly states it is effective against massed infantry and it can barley supress one squad. Relics excuse makes no since just nerf its set up time and make it a proper hmg.

Just give it and the Dhsk .8 near suppression like the 42, and bam done.

EDIT: Also remove the 25% received accuracy for all MG's, it's incredibly dumb how vulnerable it make's HMG's to LMG's.

Well now that we have the Wehrmacht and Soviet unit chatter back, you can now hear the old jokes about Maxim

"Get a real machine gun you primitive,Bastards!"
"You actually think you can kill something, with that ancient piece of shit"

So the best thing to do if you see 2 grens coming is to retreat immediately or get grenaded

They nerfed the fuck out of the maxims because I use to be in the top 30 1v1 spamming 6 of them to start with. There's a couple of casts of it out there. That's why they were not included in this MG buff too. Bastards!

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Btw, I like your Steam icon. Yuri's revenge was on of the best RTS games out there. I hope they remake RA2 someday.