The NC Max and why its terrible.

Ok it needs to be fixed, everyone knows its outclassed by a long ways. And here is why.
FIRST yes I know we have the shield, however since you cant fire when using it, it does little good except give you more time before your dead, and has a few moments when properly used can give a small tactical advantage.

HOWEVER our weapons are useless, oh dont get me wrong they have excellent hit damage up close...
but the main issue is sustainable fire, both VS and TR maxes have full Auto high dps weapons effective at almost any range and they can SUSTAIN fire for upwards of 15 sec more with ammo clips, with only a 3ish sec reload.

The NC max can sustain fire for 3 seconds ! and has a ******* 4sec reload (judging based on our only full auto weapon the others are even more useless)......that means we are stuck reloading more than firing, and that bit of extra damage we have (only at very close range) equates into very POOR DPS

Our max's already have a major weakness of only being effective at close range, so to put our maxes on par with the other races you need to increase the magazine capacity drastically instead of 5 rounds its needs to be closer to 20-25 rounds, so we can at least have a reasonable ammount of sustained fire before reloading.

On a slightly seperate note I got killed by a flash that ran my max over while i had my sheild deployed....come on, he should have just hot me and blown up, please add a damage reflect to the aegis shield against melee and vehicle impacts, it might not actually come up very often, but it would be nice.

It's not like TR and VS MAX's don't gib people >10m anyways. Our MAX isn't utter trash (once you cert it out a little, at least), but there's just so much less we're able to do with it in any circumstance.

Yup, my fully kitted max is almost use full. Almost. Its very bad, especially max v max, NC max is very bad.

20 more shells? To quote someone else here: ARE YOU BLOODY CRAZY?
4 would be enough. Scale up grinders proprtionally.

Best of all would be if we just undid the nerf. But make MAXes more resistant to pellets.

How to fix the problem?

Lower spread, lower damages, increase clip size to compensate.

Mine is fairly well set up, but the only thing its good for is dual bursters shooting down aircraft, I dont even bother using it for anything else.
But i really think getting the magazine sizes on par with other factions maxes will make a reasonable difference. we will still suck at range, but up close at least maybe we will have a chance to compete.

One thing that would help a lot would be an AV weapon option capable of engaging enemy MAX suits. NC MAX's do great at short range against infantry and can even do well at medium range with one slug arm equipped or Mattocks but they cant do anything against enemy MAX suits at range.

No its not crazy, adding 4 shells would only increase our sustained fire time to 4-5sec, where TR and VS can keep firing and slaughtering for upwards of 17sec, and our reload would still be as long as our fire time, NOW thats crazy, I would gladly take a hit to damage as long as i could actually keep shooting.

You're leaving out RoF though. What you're suggesting is a further nerf rather than a buff.

16 round mags, 24 with extended mags would be nice.

Better option would be to just give an equivalent of the TR/VS guns to the NC and so on.

#SLUGLYFE

I was thinking, why not:
a three pellet shotgun, really accurate-think headshots out to 20m
24 ahells
a burst fire mode

You're all too close-minded, you're not thinking big enough:

Gauss Saw Deluxe.

NC max isn't terrible for CQB. For medium+ range though, yes it is. I'd very much like a longer range cannon.

I NEVER pull my MAX for anything...BUT...A-A Duty. Its outclassed by the other two faction MAXs in every way. Our primary AI weapons are a joke at best. The Aegis Shield is useful while it up; unfortunately two seconds after being deployed in combat its down with a half second later the MAX with it. My outfit does really do MAX Crashes anymore since its not as fun as it used to be when the game was released.

The reason is, anytime the NC get something nice, useful, or even semi-powerful, its NERFED immediately. Which might explain why NC groups have been dwindling on my server. Most players have switched to the TR who get the best gear, best vehicles, best everything. Hell, they have a hat. We were told by SOE that each faction would get a 'cool' looking hat. Guess the VS and NC have to wait a few years for the Devs to hire someone with some creative abilities....

If the TR's weapons are about speed, the VS's about 'all things weird looking and usage'; then the NC's should be about strength. For a MAX, that means our guns should be menacing to look at and be shot by. When you round a corner and see an NC MAX it should be 'Oh Crap!' instead of "Oh, Easy Kill'. Just like the other MAXes!

OP i would also like a shotgun that shoots tank shells, a bolt action sniper that can go full auto and a rocket launcher that never needs to reload, but unfortunately these also wouldnt be fair.

The factors as I see them:

1. Non-Mattock scattercannon variants are awful. Taking any other weapon except Mattocks, you lose all mid-range fighting capability and don't really gain short-range killing power (it's hard to have more short-range killing power than the Mattocks' one-shot kills, yeah?)
2. NC AI MAXes are abnormally bad vs. other MAXes. This is actually a surprisingly significant factor. If NC runs a lot of MAXes, you can reliably counter them with your own AI MAXes, which means you not only beat their MAXes but are still dominant against infantry. If TR/VS run a lot of MAXes, the only solid NC answer is our AV MAX (which is both worse at MAX-killling and worse at infantry-killing than Fracture/Comet.)
3. Shield is awful. It causes my reloads to fire blanks (literally the sound plays for the shot being fired at someone directly in front of me, but no damage...for the entire magazine.) It also doesn't provide mobility, which is king (especially for NC's short-ranged MAXes.) And even when it does work, it's pretty limited in its effectiveness. Don't even bother with Shield; only use Sprint.

But apart from these factors, I actually achieve my 2nd fastest AI MAX kills/min with Mattocks across my characters (Onslaughts are my best). Mattocks are crushingly powerful if you're accurate with them. Like any MAX, you're going to die if you overcommit, but that's why playing smart, abusing cover, and using Sprint (both defensively and offensively) are so important to Mattock play.

I'm fine with our MAX being primarily close range, just let it be the best in that range. Usually the reason I die as an shotgun MAX is because I run out of ammo and 3+ infantry start moving in on me knowing they have 4 seconds. If I had a enough ammo to keep fighting a bit longer I'd be ok with it. But right now there are just too many down sides for a marginal DPS advantage <10 meters.

Give the NC MAX choke firing modes like in PS1.

What about this...


I will use Scatters as an base example..
PER ARM: 3X3 100dam bullets. at 25m it drops to 50dam.
COF gets resized to 3/4 of its current size.


Hacksaws (AUTO), are the same as Scatters but.
+ fire rate (50% faster)
- Spread
- bullets/pellets do 3x3 90dam and drop to 40 at 20m


Mattocks (long range), are the same as scatters but.
+more velocity
-1 less round per clip
+10m longer damage falloff range
+more damage: 3x3 111dam, at 35m drops to 75dam
-slower reload (25% slower then Scatters)


Grinders (CQC) are the same as scatters but.
-lower velocity
+2 rounds per clip
-+ bigger Spread 65% more Spread then my version of scatters
+1 more pellet per group (so it would be 4X3 100 dam bullets)
+faster reload (25% faster then Scatters)



Run into any gun and wish you were never alive...



Extended mags give Shottys 75% more ammo rounded up to the nearest even number. (Scatters would have 10, Grinders 14, mattocks 8 and hacksaws 10..
Maybe 650-750 damage for ALL slugs for NC MAXes.


EDIT: I forgot to explain the Pellets... there are 3 barrels per gun each shoots 3 pellets, those 3 pellets are clustered close to those 2 (3 for Grinders) other pellets that left the same barrel.



What about NC MAXes Falcons get the Raven treatment.. half the mag of Ravens, same damage as now, but is UNguided. (longer reload (2x longer reload then now)).