Another NC Max Post

you sure as hell do.
a well played TR/VS max will be popping headshots and you'll be dead before you can react,
the same counters apply, hurl a c4 around a corner, or 2 shots from a decimator, or 1 AV nade and 1 decimator shot.
but don't pretend that you need special tactics against NC max,
as if you can just go toe to toe with a TR/VS max and not get wiped out.

the counter to max is exactly the same, regardless of faction and all of the counters are effective against all of the maxes.
i play all 3 maxes, i kill all 3 maxes, i have no issue taking out any factions maxes in particular.

Asymmetrical balance...
i agree NC have the best max, but then TR have the undisputed best AA tool, vulcan harassers etc
VS have the only infantry splash weapon, and infinite ammo no reload weapons etc.
this game isn't copy/paste, each faction has things that the others don't.
saying "oh your max is the best, NERF!" goes totally against the asymmetrical balancing.
shall we remove striker because NC and VS don't have anything that comes close to its AA potential?

Yeah, it's always the same. They come up with ways to kill the NC MAX that need a bad situation for the MAX, a perfect situation for the attacker...and an attacker that does everything right while the NC MAX is an idiot with bad aim. Same stuff you hear when it comes down to Vanguard-shield("you JUST need to do this, that and that...then you will win against vanguard"...and I always get the urge to add "as long as he ain't doing this, that and that...cause then your stupid tricks will fail and you gonna lose for sure".

They never ever use the most common in-game situations...neither do they use a case where both players are similar smart/skilled/experienced.

Uhhg, Just give the VS and TR Close range burst weapons and give NC a Medium to potentially long range continuous fire weapon.
I've had these Lore friendly ideas for literal years: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps2/index.php?threads/prototype-max-ai-weapons.204555/

Obviously These Ideas are 4 years old at this point so don't focus on the numbers but the concepts

I disagree.
You couldnt be king of all situations.
Lets ignore the later BR40 days, stick to the BR25 days, much more balanced, although even that period was skewed with the annual service awards granting free rexo amoung other things. The devs really messed up their game balance (not for the first time lol) with those additions, new devs old game, it happens.

You got a max of 26 certification points.
And you could choose from:
(brackets represent actual cost of certification, with prerequisite certs included)

Armour
Standard Exo-Suit....................................0
Agile Exo-Suit..........................................0
Reinforced Exo-Suit..................................3
Infiltration Suit..........................................2
Mechanized Assault Exo-Suit:
Anti-Infantry..........................................3
Anti-Vehicle..........................................3
Anti-Aircraft..........................................2
Uni-MAX - All three MAX variants............6

Weapons
Standard Assault......................................0
Medium Assault........................................2
Heavy Assault...........................................4 (6)
Special Assault.........................................3 (5)
Elite Assault.............................................1 (6)
Anti-Vehicular............................................3 (5)
Sniping.....................................................3 (5)

Equipment (Support)
Medical....................................................3
Advanced Medical.....................................2 (5)
Engineering..............................................3
Combat Engineering..................................2 (5)
Assault Engineering..................................3 (8)
Fortification Engineering............................3 (8)
Advanced Engineering...............................5 (10)
Hacking...................................................3
Advanced Hacking....................................2 (5)
Expert Hacking........................................2 (7)
Data Corruption........................................3 (8)
Electronics Expert....................................4 (9)

Vehicles
Advanced Nanite Transport (ANT)...............0
Air Cavalry Scout.......................................3
Air Cavalry Assault....................................2 (5)
Air Cavalry Interceptor................................2 (5)
Air Support...............................................3
ATV..........................................................1
Assault Buggy...........................................3
Armored Assault I......................................2
Armored Assault II.....................................1 (3)
Battleframe Robotics (BFR)........................4 (7)
BFR Anti-Aircraft.......................................1 (8)
BFR Anti-Infantry.......................................1 (8)
Flail.........................................................1 (4)
Galaxy Gunship........................................2 (5)
Ground Support.........................................2
Ground Transport.......................................2
Harasser...................................................1
Light Scout...............................................5
Phantasm.................................................3 (2)
Switchblade..............................................1 (1)

So if you chose to have Reinforced Exo with heavy assault, your 9 certs in the hole.
Add medic and engi so you can heal yourself and others, 15 certs gone, 11 left.
Add in AV to fight off MAXs, 18 certs now gone, only 8 left, and we still dont have any transport.
So you put 3 into Air Cav Scout for access to a mossy, reliable fast single person transport, now we can get to a fight quickly.
But wait, we cant exactly help any of our squad mates with this loadout, lets cert into advanced medical so we can revive people.
Now we're setup for infantry play with a squad, nice lets g.......whats that command, TR are pushing really hard with vehicles, you need more tanks, BFRs, and fortification engineers to start upgrading our base and laying mine fields?
Well ****, we havent got anything we could use, no ground vehicles, cant upgrade turrets, cant place mines, what should we choose with my last 3 certs, Combat Engi for mines? Armoured Assault 1&2? Ground Transport? Air Support?
And what about hacking, we havent even considered hacking certifications, we cant clear viruses from our own infected bases or turrets for example.
What about spawn points? We have to rely on others for our attacking AMS and seige breaking routers?

Sure you had some options for things to do in most situations, but no1 was ever king of all situations, there just simply wasnt enough certs for the job.
Thats why squads had the ability to define which certs you needed before you could take a position in that squad, because being effecive i all situations meant relying on your squad and outfit mates to patch the holes you could not.

Ok so it wasnt 'the perfect system' but if the critique is that you could be a super soldier with options for all situations, what does that make the PS2 soldiers?
I prefer the system over the one we have currently, although i realise why they have what they have.

*raises beer* to every Max that inspired this thread.

Next Halloween could you give the Max units a big effing chainsaw.

You missed the entire piont. With a 400 fire rate, adding both TR arms together equals a less accurate LMG.
Using that same formula, adding both NC arms together gets a pump gun with the range and accuracy of a semi-auto.

Or go by your logic. One TR arm is a 1/2 fire rate LMG with crappy accuracy, and one NC arm is a fully functional semi-auto.

That pretty much sums up why NC Max guns are so good.

I think it's hilarious and sad that while you're posting about somehow defending this mess, your signature consists of said Max killing an entire stairway of players in 1.5 seconds. I bet that was a Fun Experience(tm) for those players!

DBG is redesigning TR Max weapons along the usual TR faction specific traits.

Voila:

1. All TR MAX weapons will now have the innovative "spin up" mechanic. This will ensure TR MAX weapons have 2-3 seconds of being useless before reaching peak mediocrity, by which time, of course, the TR MAX is already dead.

2. In line with TR Daka Daka, TR MAX ammo in clip and in reserve will be below that of NS or VS/NC equivalents. Yes, you read that correctly: TR, a faction that should have MORE ammo than the other two factions, will actually have LESS ammo, while miraculously and simultaneously not gaining damage or accuracy. What? Well, I guess you just don't understand "design". Apparently you haven't heard the phrase "Less is More".

3. Once the weapons are released to Live, despite Test feedback and after a patch/login issue that shuts the servers down for a day, a few TR MAXes will still manage to get a few kills (hey VS and NC, never go AFK mkay?), so naturally the weapons will be nerfed, with no refunds, and better actually effective variants will be released as NS weapons, available to NC and VS.

4. The VS will have an extra special faction specific weapon attachment FOR THE NS variant. This weapon attachment will modify the VS use of the NS weapon to have a hit box AS LARGE AS AN ENTIRE HEX. Also, infinite ammo.

==<< Design (tm) >>==

And another thing that hinders beating out a NC max with a light assault now is the delay detonation on C-4.....

In this Video you can see how fast NC max can kill TR Max and infantry. I know it's an old Video but it's the same time to kill except no more charge function.
watch at 3:50 when the TR Max starts attacking with full Health. The NC max can Keep about 60% of his Health.
Btw this Player has no good aim tracking and is mostly just spraying, yet he still gets lots of kills.
Watch it and decide for yourself. I already have my opinion on it.

And still half ammo in clip....

I hope this is a joke.

This isn't entirely accurate.

The most accurate MAX shotguns are the Scattercannon and the Mattock, with both being identical to each other and to all other ES shotguns of every type in regards to hipfire initial CoFs.

The Mattock has a pellet spread of 2.5 compared to the Scattercannon's 3, which is tied with all the non-directive semi-autos and first generation pump-actions. However, only MAX shotguns still have bloom per shot, of which is 1 for all of them.

The longest maximum damage ranges for any ES shotgun is 8m, one semi and the second-gen pumps. The only MAX shotgun which is not 8m is the Mattoch, at 12m.

Ultimately the NC'S MAX shotguns are universally less accurate than others, but can deal more damage per pellet at longer ranges.

The NC essentially gets a single pump-action with less accuracy and the same or greater range which relies on the large number of pellets fired at once, but only if two separate weapons are fired in sync. Not exactly a force to be reckoned with without the massive heath and damage resistances.

Consider the two types of pump-actions: Accurate and high damage. Of the two, the more accurate first-generation shotguns are considered better as they more consistent and end up dealing more damage overall.

Source: http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/Weapons

Though I risk sounding like having TR victim complex, it fits the pattern we have been in. I am convinced the new tri-barrel weapons we have were initially designed to have some form of spin up mechanic but some glorious unnamed soul within the design team went "...you know... do we really need to dunk on the TR THAT hard?" and for the briefest of moments within this insane universe, common sense and human decency shone like a beacon in the dark and we were spared from that torture.

But not long and bright enough not to come up with something less depressing then the SMG's spin-up shotgun... thing.

Been playing VS lately, doing more CQC stuff...I didn't really have much of an opinion on NC maxes until now. I thought getting 1 shot in the ~10m range was acceptable, but getting essentially 1 shot (or killed with an extremely fast followup) with mattock slugs at ~30m is just flat out ********. It's not like they are hard to use, so even not so great players can use them quite effectively.

TR/VS need similar options or a nerf/change is needed imo.

However, I think MAXs as a whole need a rework to fit into the game better currently. Which includes infantry counters/defense options against them. Right now they are far too strong in a few select situations, while being far too useless/weak in many others.

Right now, the NC MAX is pretty BS. Even if it isn't, it's out performing other MAX suits by a large margin with it's shield.

In general, MAX suits are overly easy to counter right now with C4, but the NC MAX is the least vulnerable to it. Mostly thanks to the fact that it's faction ability is not making it more vulnerable to C4, unlike the other two.

There was an old idea circulating around a while back to buff all MAX suits C4 resist, and remove C4 resist as a feature from ordinance armour. I am sort of surprised that hasn't been done yet. And seriously, TR and VS need some ability buffs.

But here in lies the most basic problem. Shotguns by nature are high alpha damage weapons. I was going to go on a tirade about imagining if MAX's had access to basically dual sniper rifles but then I realized it was uncomfortably similar in concept to NC max weapons with slugs. That is, if the slugs work the way i think they work.

Basically, you can sort of get away with LMG type weapons on VS and TR MAX's being garbage on their own because of the mechanics inherent within them. Those weapons are NOT high alpha damage weapons by design thus you can fiddle with the numbers and concepts. They have the sustained damage output coupled with the durability of the MAX to arguably excuse the lackluster performance overall.
Shotguns however don't have that luxury. They HAVE to have that damage output to be viable at all, regardless of iteration. So sure, the scatters are in general weaker then normal shotguns, but the disparity is far smaller.
There's also the nifty thing that shotguns by design are meant to be hipfired at center mass. Even with the spread, due to the intended range which lines up far too well with the very close range combat of this game, plays very well into the MAX's arsenal. While as full auto weapons in general are meant to be ADS'd to rely on headshots for most efficient play. This is difficult when half your rounds will naturally fly off to the moon due to the cone of fire if you're anywhere outside of shotgun range.

Personally, I want to know what were the exact arguments and excuses used for the statistics and mechanics in certain MAX weapons. I wonder if the option of not nerfing the NC MAX weapon's burst capability, but instead the sustainability is viable. What if the scatters functioned much like the Baron, semi-auto but reloads one shell at a time. The damage potential then is offset by the fact that the NC MAX would lack any meaningful suppression and sustained damage potential. It can burst down one or two targets very quickly but is left basically unarmed or with severely nerfed fire rate until it manages to fully reload.
Or an another (and a bit more sensible option, maybe) is to severely decrease the number of pellets per shell but increase the number of shells in the magazine. Thus the damage per magazine is more or less retained, but just like the TR and VS, the NC MAX either needs to "hose down" the enemy for an extended time with one arm or use two to "add up" to a fully fledged weapon. Maybe the minimum damage range can be stretched out to also compensate. End result is that it takes potentially longer to kill the enemy.
In the end, both options could be used with some weapons being high burst, long downtime or lower burst with more sustain. More difference in the different versions of the scatter.

I also sometimes for giggles rephrase the stats of the weapons in an another way. What if, you'd consider every pellet a bullet. This means that every shell fired can be treated as a burst from a B type rifle, Scattercannon's shell is 6 pellets, thus an instant six round burst.
The base six shell mag takes two seconds to unload (180RPM divided by 60 seconds is 3 rounds a second). So it takes the MAX two seconds to essentially fire off 36 rounds of crappy SMG, 18 per second, multiply by 60 and we get 1080RPM. Even with garbage damage profile, that's an insane RPM. I think the only weapon in the game with anything close to that is the Rotary cannon on the Mossy and the Lynx at a stretch. Even at the lowest damage end of 50 per "bullet" we get a DPS of 900, on one arm. Compared to the DPS of a heavy cycler's high end of 958. For reference, in this configuration the high end DPS of the scatter is 2340.
Naturally all this is just a mathematical thinking exercise that glosses over quite a few things just for the sake of some interesting mental gymnastics. Like all DPS calculations this assumes perfect accuracy at center mass with no latency issues, for example.

For kicks I did this backwards on the cycler to get the "shotgun" version of that and it turned into a ten shell shotgun that fires 1.2 shells every second. An RPM of 72. High end damage of one shell is 858 and low end is 750. Higher then the scatter's 780 high and 300 low. But considering the scatter can put out more then twice the ammo in the same time frame, it more then makes up this disparity.

Is it helpful? Hell if I know, but it keeps me entertained.

I'm not 100% confident on slugs, but I don't think they're very comparable to sniper rifles. Too little accuracy and fairly short damage ranges I think.

I think the issue is that shotguns will always be powerful if ever at short range, and while the TR's & VS' machine guns can still kill almost as fast in short range they still work at longer ranges but the shotguns spent all range on extra, and at times unneeded, firepower.

Well, following the 1/12 hotfix shotgun changes shotguns are sort of meant to be ADS'd with as well now. Both types of MAX weapons regardless suffer at ranges albeit to varying degrees, but the sustained fire of the chainguns and co. gives them the advantage in most fights I think.

I personally wouldn't be against some kind of change like that, where each shell did less damage but fired faster and had larger magazines. Sort of a Tengu-ish high-capacity auto-shotgun wouldn't be bad.

That is an interesting way to think about the weapon, but I don't think it's very relevant. As you said it doesn't really take some of the important factors into play.

NC vs VS/TR ttk makes all the difference in the world. Half my targets with automatics survive with a sliver of health after a rocket launch, then pop a medkit and launch another rocket. That slightly longer ttk also means your target always has a chance to launch a first rocket. When I'm in my NC Max they simply die, often before the first rocket gets launched, and they never get the chance to launch a 2nd.

As for shotguns needing to be powerful up close, they really don't need to be. They have similar accuracy to TR automatics already, so nerfing damage while extending mags and fire rate could keep the same overall dps, without the instant kills that make them so OP. Think of a pump gun on one end of the spectrum and the Tengu on the other. There's plenty of room to play with the numbers.

The difference can be vital, in some situations. Getting the instakill off with shotguns will always be better than the fastest TTK with a chaingun, but then frequency of instances where 0.2s makes the difference is very low. The majority of engagements won't end in a sliver's difference, where the sustained fire of a machine gun would be more likely to benefit that raw damage per shot.

If a shotgun is ever going to be powerful at all it ought to be in short range by the design of a shotgun. But I do agree making them closer to the TR's & VS' guns would be better, though I think we're coming to the same point from different ends. Honestly though, in my opinion the best thing to do would be to just give the TR and VS some carbon-copy shotguns and give the NC some carbon-copy chainguns or whatever from one or the other factions' MAXes. Everyone gets another option, everyone picks whatever type of gun they prefer more.