Maxim improvement ideas.

Hello everyone,

There’s been a lot of discussion surrounding the M1910 Maxim HMG as of late. Lots of people contributed numerous ideas regarding possible venues of balancing the maxim. In my opinion any improvement has to contend with the dreaded “deathloop”, so with that in mind I have come up with a few suggestions meant to counteract it.

Suggestion 1: The beat way to counteract the deathloop is putting the mg behind heavy cover to make models resilient and allow retreat to take place. However against the Ostheer, this is frequently punished by rifle grenades which leads to painful wipes. This creates a frustrating “put maxim in cover and lose it to RG, or out of cover and lose it to deathloop dynamic. I think nerfing one end of this equation with either rifle nades dealing less damage to green cover units or maxim crews getting damage reduction to explosives in green cover.

Suggestion 2: Garrisoning maxims is usually one of the strongest ways to use them, which prevents them from being deathlooped. I have seen mods utilise buildings from engineers that can be garrisoned by mgs, so what about a low health small outpost build by CEs that maxims can garrison?

Id just buff the maxims suppression to axis hmg levels and be done with it... with good suppression frontally charging the maxim would no longer be viable as with any other mg...

Improve suppression but increase pop cap, give it really slow build time and cost to 280 including higher reinforce time and cost. That way spamming it will be hard and it becomes a good support unit. After we are done with that we can take a look at Dhsk and make it more useful.

increase suppression, increase set up time

increase suppression, increase set up time

Increase the teardown time aswell soo it doesnt reposition as quickly...

Increase the teardown time aswell soo it doesnt reposition as quickly...

Split the difference. Make it pack up quick (help prevent deathloop) but make it take a bit longer than average to set up so it needs to properly soft retreat.
Adjust Supression to at least that of the mg34 and it's probably good.

Or simply reduce flame grenade range by 5 or even better move it to SP...

Or simply reduce flame grenade range by 5 or even better move it to SP...

Yeah when I play okw I’ll clear garrisons with the power of my credit card.

Yeah when I play okw I’ll clear garrisons with the power of my credit card.

God forbid you actually have to work to get a unit out like every other faction.... Power of the credit card indeed....

Improve suppression but increase pop cap, give it really slow build time and cost to 280 including higher reinforce time and cost. That way spamming it will be hard and it becomes a good support unit. After we are done with that we can take a look at Dhsk and make it more useful.

If it can supress it wont be spammed anymore then mg34/42,s.
Right now you need to spam it to get it to do its job. But its not worth spamming because how easy it is to wipe. Esp since volks got their change.
And giving it more pop and upping the cost even more is a stupid idea based on some maxim spam nightmare. It already cost more then the mg42 to get.

Eveything that made it op during its golden days has been gutted. Please stop living in the past.
It already got: cost/mobility/setup time/build time/suppression/traverse nerfed since those days. All it got was a larger arc but stil smaller then most mg,s. And a meh vet ability.

God forbid you actually have to work to get a unit out like every other faction.... Power of the credit card indeed....

Such as USF having T0 mortar and the amazing pak howie, as well as grenades or incendiary with smoke and sprint with urban assault.

Or Soviets, with cons sprint and molotov, zis gun barrage, clown car and penal satchels.

Sarcasm only works when what you’re saying is correct, just fyi.

Suggestion 1: The beat way to counteract the deathloop is putting the mg behind heavy cover to make models resilient and allow retreat to take place. However against the Ostheer, this is frequently punished by rifle grenades which leads to painful wipes. This creates a frustrating “put maxim in cover and lose it to RG, or out of cover and lose it to deathloop dynamic. I think nerfing one end of this equation with either rifle nades dealing less damage to green cover units or maxim crews getting damage reduction to explosives in green cover.

My suggestion from another thread:

What about nerfing its cone to DsHk levels and then giving a cover bonus ala Tommies, except instead of cooldown and accuracy it gets more suppression and its .50 cal style arc back? (No arc changes in garrison)

Basically it would live suppression with lower cone out of cover, but better suppression with live cone in cover.

and reduce price to 240

Such as USF having T0 mortar and the amazing pak howie, as well as grenades or incendiary with smoke and sprint with urban assault.

Or Soviets, with cons sprint and molotov, zis gun barrage, clown car and penal satchels.

Sarcasm only works when what you’re saying is correct, just fyi.

He suggested moving it to sturms which would be an absolutely reasonable change.
But all the other factions need to do SOMETHING to clear their garrisons. Okw it's an easy out on your durable mainline infantry. No extras required. As far as not working to clear a garrison goes okw takes the cake without a close competitor.
The other factions need a special unit or a timely side tech or undesirable unit or an expensive unit. Sometimes multiple of those. Okw has their cover/garrison clearer on their cheap potent and plentiful mainline infantry, and have it gifted to them. They don't even have to work to GET it let alone have a unit on hand to make use of it...

My suggestion from another thread:

I agree, I’d love to see cover be utilized beyond just a single % damage reduction. I think performance improvements in cover would both help players use maxims effectively while also reducing mg spam.

Any stronger maxim, we need to look at wehr counter
Right now, they are just enough to handle maxim.
And again i disagree maxim spamming is because of poorer suppression
Spamming is to make use of its fast reposition and higher model counts.

He suggested moving it to sturms which would be an absolutely reasonable change.
But all the other factions need to do SOMETHING to clear their garrisons. Okw it's an easy out on your durable mainline infantry. No extras required. As far as not working to clear a garrison goes okw takes the cake without a close competitor.
The other factions need a special unit or a timely side tech or undesirable unit or an expensive unit. Sometimes multiple of those. Okw has their cover/garrison clearer on their cheap potent and plentiful mainline infantry, and have it gifted to them. They don't even have to work to GET it let alone have a unit on hand to make use of it...

Yeah, I’d like to see Volksgrenadiers change their non doctrinal grenade to a regular Model 24 stick grenade, but then give Sturmpioneers the incendiary grenade at Vet 0 and no longer have the stun grenade.

Then you make the incendiary grenade a doctrinal weapon for Volksgrenadiers that replaces the regular model 24 grenade. Replace infiltration grenades with the incendiary grenade in those doctrines that have infiltration grenades and also give it to Firesturm doctrine for Volksgrenadiers, because fire. Buff incendiary grenade damage on impact too now that it’s only on Sturmpioneers or doctrinal.

Now you’ve removed overly cheap and cheesy infiltration grenades, normalized regular Volksgrenadiers but also still have a reliable garrison counter on your starting unit.

Any stronger maxim, we need to look at wehr counter
Right now, they are just enough to handle maxim.
And again i disagree maxim spamming is because of poorer suppression
Spamming is to make use of its fast reposition and higher model counts.

You ignore its much higher suppression and larger firing arc... there is a reason why the maxim is generally considered THE WORST MG INGAME

But as tested maxim better far suppression and much faster to pin squad. Combine with it much faster reposition timings, makes the point to push maxim further up.

Again im for wehr infantry, which is noticebly poorer in clearing team weapons, especially 5-6 man ones. You cant make maxim stronger without looking out for wehr

Id just buff the maxims suppression to axis hmg levels and be done with it... with good suppression frontally charging the maxim would no longer be viable as with any other mg...

LOL like they'd ever make an Allied unit like that equal to it's Axis counterpart.

Because maxim has fastest reposition times, it is silly to make it suppress any stronger.

Besides as tested by our friend Harry, maxim has better far suppression and pin times than the supposedly Super mg42.

Ain't far suppression and pin times very important, or more important. Many times allies can crawl up and drop a nades on mg42. Nades > rifle nades.