As a heavy max user I've a fair bit of experience, and have played through the various (merited and unmerited) nerfs to the AI variant. After the more recent set of nerfs; the NC AI max has become terrible at hitting infantry at any range where any other gun would also result in near-instant death. Your only saving grace is your armour. All maxes have the same armour: this shouldn't define the NC max. This experience has prompted me to become more reliant on slugs. Slugs which give you range, but also have an inexplicably large cof. Don't forget; by getting slugs you suddenly do less damage up close (zero-damage bug ftw), and you lose the spray and pray in a hectic fight. It's a sacrifice that ISN'T repaid by consistent damage at range. Looking at some of the other empires variants; they have guns that have constant damage at any range. That's a big boon. Granted you can't reliably hit a player at 200m, but you can from 0-50m. That's what I would like from my slugs please. In a re-enforced exo-frame that braces shotguns against a juggernaut of armour: the least you should be able to expect is for two slugs to land in the same place. It's a small buff - but warranted I feel.
NC MAX slugs one shots infantry at 8-meter distance. And how it works on long distance: And, MAXes is NOT for long range.
You gotta love slug testing in VR training. Now try it when you have multiple enemy that move and have certed armor and shields. I agree with the OP. I've got ~2500 kills with slugs but they slowly got whittled down and I just don't bother with them anymore. I like the choke idea, allow the MAX to swap between slugs and pellets on the fly.
I'd love to have the old PS1 choke mode back, but I'm not sure how their current engine could accommodate this; after all, you have two guns - one of which could be AV. On infantry you can hit 'b' or 'x' (i forget which is default) to activate alternative fire modes, but it'd then have to check which of the two guns to cycle. 50m isn't all that far when I'm trading close range effectiveness for it: and it's only the consistency that I have a problem with. On a weapon that has a critically low clip size and ammo reserve, randomly introduced accuracy issues are an unnecessary feature.
