Lets clear some things up on why the maxim is the way it is. The deathloop which is not fixable is cushioned by the large 6 man team, giving it the best chance to recover from death loop since it cannot be fixed. The suppression is rather mediocre to prevent maxim spam of durable 6 man machine guns. If you raise the suppression or alternativly lower the price, you are pushing maxims farther towards the infamous maxim spam meta. The models per team is not lowered due to the existance of the deathloop.
If you have an alternative way to make the maxim respected in its own right, without creating an awful meta of machine gun spam, we're all ears.
that infamous maxim spam existed due to the lack of cost efficient non doctrinal infantry for the soviets... conscripts used to be shit and not scale properly and had no weapon upgrades to fight properly (which it still doesnt outside of doctrines)
therefore at that time i as a soviet player would rather use the maxim as frontline infantry instead since the maxim used to cost like a conscript squad yet perform far better than it... currently the problem of the conscript squad being weak is already fixed... if the conscript squad were to recieve a non doc weapon upgrade aswell...say a DP28 or 2... i as a player would rather choose the conscript squad which now scales in the long run over a buffed maxim... a small grenade wouldnt hurt aswell
maybe buff the maxim by giving it MG34 suppression and give the cons a DP-28 upgrade... that ways cons can duel with grens in the lategame non doctrinally... and not have to rely on a spam of maxims just to get the job done
ofc in tourneys ppl just go for penals guards instead but this buff at least opens the possibility of competitive t2 play over t1 or t1/t2 play
tldr... the old maxim spam existed because soviet players at the time had no alternatives... giving cons more tools like grenades (nobody gets the molotov) or upgrades gives soviet players an alternative making it safe to make the maxim decent again...