It seems you have never played an NC MAX. Close up and personal is the name of the game, although you of course will go down eventually if you kamikaze In fact it could be argued that this ability would allow TR and VS to encroach on the NCs speciality, CQB
I think the MAXes need something to make them the feared unit on the field - at the moment they are just too easy to kill and too inaccurate at anything but 5 meters to be threatening. I think they should be 1 hit melee kills. They are slow and lumbering and should have the power to intimidate other players. I also feel they need some work to their animations and audio to give that sense of weight and power - especially the VS MAX. Make them much better, make them more expensive if need be but presently they are not fulfilling their role.
I agree they should kill in 1 hit, if you're stupid enough to get that close to one. I've taken half a max's health off with my gun, then when I ran out of ammo and he was reloading, I ran around him and KNIFED him to death. In the beta forums I proposed that the charge could be the default max ability, and you could cert into it to decrease its cooldown and have an auto melee attack when you run into an enemy while charging (its always so damn hard to hit T while moving as Q is taken for spotting) This ability could be swapped out by the other certs, which need to be alot more effective. IE kinetic armour fully certed might make you 90% impervious to bullets, but it replaces your charge. Or you opt for regen which could be at least 2% per second fully certed, with a 10 second wait from taking damage. Maxes need to be more interesting, more effective at a chosen ROLE and have to think about their situation as being near impervious to bullets, they could be easy to down with rockets etc.
I like this idea. My first sugestion (when they still had araxium power implant slots) was to make 2 melee power implants. 1 be that offensive meele slot that would allow you to do an assianation animation if you catch a softie(non MAX infantry) in the back, and if in a MAX suit allows youre melee hits to be a execution against softies. The other be a defensive attack which counter assianations and executions and give you a stun attack to your basic melee but makes your melee attacks slower. For MAXs it would give them a stomp/ground-bash very short area of effect damage. But the devs did not think of any passive benifit implants that were any good (dex was the only one, the rest were vehicle discounts) and there was the problem with araxium causing AFarmingK. So instead of fixing it they just removed it all together.
While I feel that when you're the MAX, there is some sense of weight to it from the swaying of the camera, I do agree that it could be worked on to really hammer home the notion that these things are thickly-armored hybrids between suits of armor and miniature mechs. I don't feel like a weighty, bulky MAX really fits the VS aesthetic, though. It would have to reflect the flexibility and mobility that the VS is known for, which would make them lighter than the other empires' MAXes.
MAXes are not really feared as of now. They suck at anything that isn't close range. You basically get a gimped infantry with a bigger HP pool, that's it. MAX melee should either 1 hit, or the charge should do damage, so it would be charge the enemy, 1x melee = dead.
There are MAX units that cause fear and carnage, but it is those who move as a coordinated unit with an Engineer. If an AI MAX get caught out in the open by a vehicle then it is usually toast. And likewise if a fully AA specced MAX gets caught by infantry. I dont really see a problem with that, you can get a MAX suit for zero certs and the price of two hand grenades. Allowing a MAX to ditch both guns for a powerful melee would be a different question. I could see it being fair, but it depends on how it was balanced and how the engine handles melee as a primary weapon. The knife and bash are fun, but you usually dont base your survival on how well they work. And sorry to bring up the NC whine again, but a common pool CQB MAX could tilt the balance unless we also get a common pool med-range MAX
I also think MAXes should 1-hit with their melee attacks against normal infantry, and not just because of gameplay issues. A MAX is essentially powered armor that utilize servo motors and artificial muscles to allow greater strength and durability, which translates into bigger weapons and more armor. It should also mean you have the ability to snap someone's neck when you clock them in the face with a 25+ pound gun attached to your significantly-stronger-than-normal, mechanically augmented limbs. Charging should also do some manner of damage or knockdown, but I suppose we get enough team damage warnings without having MAXes that damage things they charge through.
