A.I. Max Weapons

Also he fails to think of the damage drop, target size reduction, and needed leading distance you add with any range as well as the base COF plus pellet spreads to get anything close to real DPS numbers. You can't use any paper DPS numbers if you can't hit the target from the target size being smaller than the overall spreads. Sent damage isn't dealt damage if all it touches is the air.

Shotguns have higher paper DPS but often lower, much lower, real DPS from the spreads and huge damage loss over ranges that start and end within the same room.


To be honest, I have to think there MUST be something else to these debates we are not seeing or SOE would have done something by now. Then again the devs let ZOE and Strikers stay as they was for months on end even though the proof was everywhere. I can't tell anymore why I bother to do these debates. I can't recall a single bit of feedback from any dev about these things. It is just everyone pissing in the wind and nothing is coming from any of this.

I think you forget that an infantry health is only 1000, and 900 for the infiltrator.

That means NC max doesnt really gain huge advantage in TTK, which is like 0.3 seconds faster in 5m.

If you want to compare a max vs max fights, it still doesnt really benefit the NC max since he can not kill a max in one magazine, meaning a long reload which is 4 seconds. TR and VS maxes will tear apart the NC max in those 4 seconds.

Fixed that for you.

An NC AI MAX killing another MAX requires dumping two full clips of extended magazines at point blank range, then reloading for 3.5s. Basically, even in the ideal scenario for an NC MAX you have to use everything you have to kill another MAX or die. You had better hope that they don't have Kinetic Armor or an Engineer on them.

It seems you won't be satisfied until the NC MAX is absolute fodder for the other MAXes, as apparently being stronger at point blank range isn't okay. It has to be worse than the other MAXes in its own niche? Utterly ridiculous. It's like you didn't even think before you posted.

the CoF bloom on mercies got nerfed a while back, and they do less damage, but remeber most TR max suits have dual mutilators not mercies, and mutilators are terrible, good luck killing anything at range with them

along with the CoF is the RPM, which on VS MAXes is slightly lower, but it makes up for it in damage and accuracy

The only good AI weapon in the NC max arsenal in the mattocks.

But would TR and VS maxes trade for anything other than the mattocks?

Trading off best weapons will ruin balance.
Although trading off the worst weapons is an option. And i would trade the worst NC max shotgun for the worst TR machine gun in a heartbeat.



As you said maxes dont usually go without support.
Aegis shield is terrible considering that it makes you a still duck, and doesnt even cover half of your body, and ofcourse it is very buggy to flak damage. You would be dead if you are in a room of enemies, while equipping the aegis shield and not charge.

Once an enemy spots you in open terrain, there is no real way of escaping if you have the aegis shield. (the NC max can't fight back due to excessively limited affective ranges)

No, I agree the Mattocks are obviously the best overall option for NC AI and wouldn't trade for anything else. I am not particularly fond of the less accurate versions of VS or TR AI options either though.

Well, this is a first. My last post was deleted for trolling, that never happened to me before. Even the alerts for the likes I got for that post are deleted. I don't know if I should be proud or sad from someone reporting me. Depends on the reason Id think. Though I might have an idea to what at least one reason was.

I so want to just retype the whole thing. If it wasn't 1:40am and I didn't need to wake up at 8am I would, but maybe not call someone out for madness or idiocy this time. Good night folks.

Sadly, this is the saving grace for the Grinders. A Standard Scatter Cannon, with Ext mags, won't reliably drop another MAX unless hes already hurt. But the extra 2(4) shots afforded by the grinders is just enough to put it over the top as long as your in close. This is what allows it to cleanly outclass the hacksaws, and is the only option available to compensate for the very tight margins of error the shotguns have. In short.... its the only half reliable shotgun in the game.

Yep, including reloads TR/VS MAX AI weapons put out more sustained DPS, NC AI MAXs spend most of their time (quite literally) reloading.

NC AI MAXs put out more DPS in 2x magazines, but this is marginally more useful (if that) against infantry (-0.3 second vs constantly reloading - I'd personally say less useful) and no help at all in many MAX vs MAX situations.

Appeal to the admin brah. They're pretty cool.

But sustained fire doesn't help if you're dead. An NC Max can more or less 1HK infantry at it's optimal range if it has a A.I. on each arm. VS has the advantage of versatile range and speed. I'm not calling for pity, but with any chaingun weapon the TR Max is minor-leagues. Due to someone CoF, it has about the same effective range of NC, and still takes more time to kill an opponent. The exception is with Lockdown, rear covered, and opponents in the fatal funnel. The pounders are great, but so are the NC and VS equivalents. Big mags and high RoF aren't helpful if you can't kill your opponent before they make it to cover.

Na, I'll just reword it a bit so that a the person Im assuming reported it wont have a trolling claim. I did bash a certain someone kinda hard and my choice in language can be read as harsh when I don't feel like self censoring. My point of view on "bad" words just makes them words with stronger meanings. So don't give a damn in using them when needed unless they stand for something really bad such as racial BS just flat hate.

A short example is stupid and idiot. Idiots haven't learned yet, the stupid can't learn. I hate using the word stupid because I was almost that myself and refuse to think someone can't learn.

Edit-
Looks like I don't have to reword the deleted post. It wouldn't be on topic anymore from the post I replied to also deleted with more missing from this thread. Maybe I wasn't the one reported and a mod just wanted to remove my post from it feeding a trolling post.


Back on topic-
It's true that NC MAXes can double click someone to death if they are within the right range. Can't say against that, we have shotguns and shotguns are shotguns. What being able to have sustained fire can let you deal with more than just 1-2 guys at once. Get within the same shotgun effective range and infantry will fast enough on your screen to make it near impossible to fight back on their screens. What sets burst damage and sustained damage apart is the fact that burst damage can only deal with a few players at once. Sustained damage can and has the means to deal with a filled room of enemies.

Fast-ish kills for the ones up close and reliable kills for the ones in the back with having more than enough ammo in a mag for everybody. That's the power of weapons with sustained damage. You might take more damage yourself but that can and is countered with armors to a point. Learn to pick high threat targets at a glance and you can even remove most of them before they have time to react to you.

Very well stated!

The difference in TTK between the best TTK NC AI MAX weapon on infantry and the best TR/VS TTK AI MAX weapon on infantry is 0.3 seconds (at 0m).

i.e. funtionally the same, so you are dead or not dead either way 99% the same.

Where as the TR and VS AI MAX not only put out more sustained DPS, but also put out a lot more sustained fire too (NC AI MAXs spend 2/3+ of their time reloading at full fire).


The TR MAX also has vastly more effective range, NC AI MAX TTKs drop very quickly where as TR and VS TTK are sustained well outside the range NC AI MAXs TTK have soared, I've no idea why you think TR and NC AI MAX weapons effective ranges are the same, they are not.

Overall it's well balanced. All ES ability are close to useless, the shield is not that bad but unless that you roll with a dedicated engie and squad you'd rather get charge with these shotguns.

NC max poor range, much power, slugs random accuracy, constant reloading, faceroll AI maxes if they can get up close.

TR decent accuracy, larger magazine, more versatile than the NC

VS blueshifts mucho accuracy, slightly smaller magazine, smaller hitbox more apt to dodge,versatile, overall my favorite

lol ill take my chances with that let try it for a month if im wrong im wrong. "im not cause i have an nc max char" and yes its rough without slugs and extended mags but with those i can kill almost anything within 60 yards in short order.

So you do agree that NC max sucks. Unless he puts in 1300 certs in every AI loadout he owns.

All i ask SOE, is to remove this high investment to actually be good with the NC max.

It's to hard to make shotguns comparable to other weapon types without ******* up. Even when you do find a good spot for everything shotguns are still a very small niche compared to any other weapon types in any game. Shotguns being on a MAX is a niche of a niche seeing how MAXes have a lot of costs and down sides to just pulling one. In the end you either make other weapons leach into a shotguns CQC so that they can have a chance or you have shotguns that just don't give a chance to stand against.

There are reasons shotguns have mostly only gotten nerfs since the game launched. One is that they play to the client-side hit detection and lag in PS2 perfectly so that you get free time to run in and blast up to 3-4 shells without anyone having the time to react to you entering a door. Another is that if a weapon type is on a certain class, say MAX, then it needs to be able to fight its own class and that can get tricky when said class can tank enough rounds to get into a perfect kill range with or without help, in this games case charge, and still be able to get out depending on how that help is used.

You just can't have weapon types be the same. Shotguns are and should never be comparable to anything but other CQC weapons. With soft infantry that is the case as all classes as all, but cloakers, have full use of shotguns, SMGs, and almost any other weapon type they wish. With MAXes there is only 2 weapon types, HMG and shotgun, and only one faction has and is limited to only shotguns. To make anything of a decent balance with this setup you must simply do magic. Anything short of magic is going to make problems from shotguns not being able to act like HMGs (long staying power) while HMGs are able to act like shotguns (fast damage). Onslaught and Nebula are fully able to act like a full blown CQC weapon from their high ROF and once controlled they are just as or even more deadly. NC MAXes only staying power is the Grinder and that has the longest reload time of any MAX weapon, even its short reload time is longer than any other reload time. Or if you want the range of HMGs you only have Mattocks but they are still very much shotguns with massive damage drop (as to HMGs) with pellet spreads that make the damage drop much worse.


The only way I can see any real balance is to make NS MAX AI weapons or give all factions an ES version of the weapon they lack. TR/VS gets a shotgun and NC gets a HMG. Id think making 2 like minded weapons is faster and easier to balance than 3 that each need their own thing. But the time for such things has past. SOE did a MAX focused set of updates and will not return to them till after all other classes and vehicles have had a pass. Id bet that we didn't get the NS flamethrower from SOE thinking about this very thing. TR/VS would get a pure CQC that acted just like a shotgun (Higby's very words) but NC would gain nothing to help them with their range issue. That grenade launcher was just a bad idea in the first place, pure spam and is more likely to kill the user and his own faction than the enemy.

This issue can describe the TR MAX to a T. The short TTK ability of the NC MAX can indeed drop 3-4 enemy players in rapid succession before you have to reload. Wow, such a pain to have to reload, you can reload while you flip up your shield - in that situation you have killed 3-4 enemies and are now shielding yourself from frontal attacks from the fifth player - arguing that it's unfair that the NC MAX can "only" drop 3-4 players swiftly before you have to "endure" a 4 second reload while shielded is inane - the TR MAX has no such defensive ability and his TTK means it takes him far longer than the NC MAX to kill even those 4 enemies, time they have, due to living longer, to retaliate and kill him. The TR MAX has, without equal, the highest TTK of all MAX'es due to the hilariously low ROF on his "chainguns" - his power lies in sustainability and the volume of fire, not the damage or the rapid fire, even at point-blank a TR MAX has to keep his aim on the enemy for often several seconds to kill a single enemy, the VS MAX doing the same does on average more damage with comparable ROF and better accuracy, leading to a shorter TTK only beat by the often instant TTK of the NC MAX.

In short, given it's shield, and it's rapid killing ability, the small magazines and the needs to reload often is about the only thing that keeps the NC MAX being overpowered, arguably since ZOE got nerfed and is thus apparently now very unpopular to use, the NC MAX has the single most useful ability and the most powerful ability in short to mid range. The VS MAX does best at long range, but even the VS MAX has issues landing reliable hits at that range. The fact that the NC MAX is the one that sucks the most at that range still don't change the fact that no MAX can reliably kill anything outside of 40-50 meters depending on what MAX it is.

The short and simple conclusion is that out of the 3 the NC MAX is today the most user friendly and the most reliable. The fact that it can't kill effectively at longer ranges with it's Anti-Infantry weapons is a feature, not an oversight, and I've fought plenty of NC MAX'es that compensate for that by using dual Falcons or sometimes even dual Ravens to hit infantry. Plenty of VS and TR have died to a dual hit from a pair of NC anti-tank warheads fired by an NC MAX, and plenty have also died to slug users, another option available for longer range killing to the NC MAX.

I really don't think your complaining is very valid. Have you tried playing at different ranges with any TR or VS MAX'es recently? I have. It builds a little perspective.

Then you are asking for SOE to make the NC MAX even more powerful than it is, based on nothing than your own sense of bloated entitlement. My TR MAX has thousands of certs invested into it and it still performs only so well in situations where and NC MAX with comparable investment would be superior. Just because your MAX don't score you a K/D of 10.1 every time you use it with little cert investment don't mean that it "sucks" it means that it has limits and is thus not overpowered. I recall a time period when a certain MAX had virtually no limits and was completely overpowered an every way, we all know how that eventually turned out.

Having to spend certs to build up performance is a reality for all players using all kinds of weapons and vehicles and aircraft. Same is true for your MAX.

And mine.