Yes osthers mg42 is the best mg in the game, no faction relies more on their MG's then ostheer. Ofc other MG's will feel weaker when u compare them to the mg42 and that's your mistake. Vickers, .50 cal and maxim are all still very useful and are performing just as ther supposed to
Maxim is hardly doing its job especially when Cons are so awful and the synergy doesnt work that well because of it, the fact u need vet 1 on maxim for it to even suppress targets and use ammo for that aswell is stupid. Soviets arent the ammo floating faction they once were either, and if u want cons to scale then u need expensive sidetechs to have useless grenade chuckers or go for a doctrine with ppsh's. Which then doubles down to why penals are so relevant
It's rather that other MGs seem lacking compared to it but they're still good nonetheless. 50cal was nerfed because it was instantly pinning everything even at max range(even 42 doesn't instantly pin unless at really close range) and had a sprint ability, which, combined with an instant pin, made it immune to flanks. Imo, other machine guns are fine because they have other things going with them (with maybe except maxim that could use something like 10 MP cost decrease).
Yeah i meant more about the vickers, i dont have an issue with the 50. cal nerfs and its still great. I don't feel like vickers has much going for it, u could again say that it deals better damage but the damage isnt that impressive and again, i personally get a mg to suppress not necessarily to kill units. U have tommies for that or even UC to bleed/support. And yeah the vickers vet is awful as someone said earlier here, tied to a gimmick. Although wasnt that part of the nerfs, that the inhouse range was nerfed too?
And Dshka is just the lovechild of maxim and 50.cal bringing out both bad things. Im sure these doctrines would see more play if the Dshka was more useful (though penal+dshka could be an issue but idk)