[Suggestion] Give Max a unique death icon on maps and HUD to assist medics and engys in prioritizing them

Due to the high cost and high value of Maxes, it's important for medics and engys to be able to prioritize them. Unfortunately, the death icons on the maps and HUD do not make any distinction between Maxes and other classes, so countless maxes are lost in a sea of bodies.

A separate icon would also help engys hone in on them, knowing that as soon as a medic revives them, that they will need repairs.

I suggest a new death icon be used for the Max. This icon should be immediately and easily distinguishable from the normal cross bones icon, so medics and engys can tell very quickly which ones to prioritize. The Max icon could optionally have a slow pulse to it to help set it apart, which then speeds up like the normal icon when there's only a few seconds left.

I imagine this would be fairly easy to do, as it would seem to only entail creating the new icon and assigning it to the Max, and the benefits would be felt immediately by Max players, medics and engys.

Please comment and you can also vote for it on the tracker if you like: https://dgcissuetracker.com/browse/PS-3139

Good idea.

Dont forget MAXs decay faster than infantry, another reason this is needed.

Would also avoid wasting a revive grenade and a non revive-grenadable MAX.

Two things I did not know, thanks. I had been wondering about the revive grenade, but never would have thought to ask about the timer.

i'd prefer if they simply did away with max revive and finally made them tankier and able to survive for longer than 10 seconds out of the spawnroom.

but yes, as i don't see a max change coming any time soon it'd be cool if after each instantaneous death,
the medics could know to revive me so everyone can get their xp for oneshotting me again.

That's funny.....and sad at the same time. They have hit maxes over and over, directly and indirectly. They can actually be a real liability if not played right, or even if played right.

Remember when tank mines didn't work on them? And the pre-Archer days? And Charge?

I can't believe they got rid of charge. I mean, if you force a Max to run away, that means something. It's almost as good as a kill, but at least the player has a chance of saving 450 nanites after his entire front line collapses.

Several times in the last couple of days, I have moved to the front line to join a bunch of teammates, begun fighting, and then all of a sudden I'm being hammered, and I check the map for support, the entire front line has been wiped out and I'm standing up there alone like a stooge, and no one is moving up. With charge, I'd at least have a chance. Instead, I get emergency repair, which means, under fire, they will need one extra bullet. (I hope they don't bill me for it...)

I do actually like emergency repair a lot, combined with nanite repair (I have both fully certed), it's a great combo in the right situations, but I just think they should have kept Charge as an option.

Maxes......not much love for 'em these days, even though it's one of the coolest things in the game. I hope this icon idea, if implemented, will at least give us a fair chance in the fight.

It's not as good as a kill, because it isn't a kill. I believe the community as a whole i rather unifed in our opinion that "deterring" has way less value than "taking out".

I would be ok with giving MAX units a *bit* more survivability, but only if the ability to revive them would be axed entirely.

I do agree with the proposed minimap changes though.

That's why I said 'almost as good'. Certainly kills are better, especially with Maxes, but the fact is, deterrence is a huge part of war gaming, and is extremely valuable. It just doesn't pay off as well in the stats or cool factor, but tactically, it achieves results, and in a game like this, deterrence has far more value than in the usual fast food shooters.

If you've hit a Max hard enough that he's running away, that's solid work.

Just a 'bit' more and lose revives? I'll pass on that, unless you drop the price to 100 nanites. At 450, I better be revivable!

Honestly, I think it was a mistake to enable tank mines to trigger on Maxes. Maxes get hit by so much already, they are magnets for enemy fire, plus the infamous LA and their exploding bricks......tank mines just weren't necessary. When I play engy hitting a dense room with maxes, I suicide rush in with tank mines and clean up. Fun for some gravy kills, but it's OP. It would probably be ok if they could cut the damage in half.

I am well aware of that and I do agree - in principle. However, from a gameplay perspective deterrence makes for a lousy time and lack of enjyment. Point in case - AA work.

Think of what happens when an ordinary infantryman gets focused down, or a tank (or pretty much anything else) - they go down and go down hard. MAX units are slower (as it should be) and a bigger target (again - as it should be), but they already have TEN times the effective health of a trooper (against small arms fire anyway). What keeps them somewhat in check isn't the abundance of potential damage sources (because those apply to most other targets as well), but their lack of effectiveness at ranged AI work. And that's about it.

IF we were to give MAXes more staying power then we should curb their ability to dish out damage AND I'd still like them to lose their ability to be revived.

Well, playing max on VS Cobalt is a god damn headache.... as liewec123 says, surviving for more than 10 secs in any base where EVERYONE has max kill potential is....painful. Maxes are powerhouse pushers or tanky point holders...that cant do these jobs at all.... and ive figured out why VS maxes suck balls (according to VS themselves at least).... no one plays engineer... you can run for several minutes screaming for repairs and no one is there.... on a rare occasion i get a pocket healer... he farms repair points like a god and i farm ppl. Its a symbiosis few understands....

Although I'm against the idea of making them impossible to revive, if you are going to do something like this I would increase their movement speed to that of normal infantry. MAX's have 2000 health and 80% small-arms damage reduction upgradable to 90%, for an effective health of 10 to 20 standard infantry guys. Just improving their speed should make them more than Tanky enough, if not downright OP considering how tough the old ZOE MAX's were. So maybe not a full speed increase but a partial one, but without the need to make MAX's even beefier than they already are.

You know, I've often wondered if the other factions have that problem with little or no engys supporting Maxes. It is a serious problem for VS on Connery much of the time.

Countless times I've been the only engy keeping up 3-4 maxes, which means they spend half their time standing around doing nothing, waiting for repairs. And now that I'm playing Max more, I'm feeling it too.

Yesterday, I was on a front line with 4 engys, and they were all ignoring me, doing their own thing. I had to constantly call out and head over to them to get their attention. Can't even get them to drop ammo packs half the time too.

I just don't understand it. I have mained Engy in every game I've played that has had one. In PS2, it's a no brainer xp farm to drop dual packs and hang out near Maxes, and also invite them to your squad for extra xp. Btw, for all of you Max players who never have enough engy support, the best thing you can do is invite the engy helping you to your squad, or accept an invite from them. If you can't do it that way, and they are in a squad, then join each squad in the list until you find the one they're in (if it's not full). I'm always amazed when my invite to the Max I'm repairing is turned down.......and then the first thing they do after declining is yell, "I need this damage repaired.....".

This is why I almost always run the double repair cert lines. Those two together really keep me going a lot more than engys.

I disagree. I'm just not the kind of player who 'has to have lots of kills'. Deterrence work is an inherent part of the game, and I enjoy it fully, including AA work. I love hitting aircraft hard and forcing them away, and then the occasional kill I get is that much more satisfying. If the kill rate went up for AA, people would just stop playing air, and the airgame would collapse.

That 'ten times health' sounds great until you step into a doorway and instantly 3/4 of it is gone, and then as you step aside, splash takes you down to 1%, and then you sit there half the time waiting for an engy from the other side of the base to come over, or someone nearby to feel sorry for you and change class.

The 10 times health is primarily countered by the fact that as soon as you are spotted, 10 times the enemies attack you, and when that happens, you have no more effective health that the Inf standing next to you.

The way it is now, Max is good for a fast push into an enemy room with just a few players, and a few of your teammates with you, and also strafing behind cover while hitting ranged targets, oh, and AA, but for everything else, he's basically a sitting duck.

I can't either. It was one of more effective ways of avoiding wraith flash and harasser roadkill cheese.

Having completed my Medic Auraxium, I'm now working on my Engy one (only one tick left - Aurax MANA AI or Stickies, whichever comes first! ). As it stands, I don't directly support any MAX that isn't in my outfit, in my squad/platoon and on voice comms.

Why? Stupid MAX's.

• I can't even count the number of times I've died while repping a MAX because the idiot just spams crouch instead of watching my back.
• Or MAX's that seem to think they're invulnerable because I'm repping them and run off, forcing me to either abandon them or chase them straight into the line of fire.
• Or MAX's that retreat to the OTHER side of the door / corridor / gap of various description when they take damage and then yell for repairs and expect ME, with my squishy body, to cross the gauntlet instead of just retreating to my side at the start instead!
• Or MAX's that seem to think I've got nothing better to do than rep them, so charge straight into the gauntlet, eat a ton of damage, achieve nothing useful, then come back and expect me to rep them back to full over and over and over.
• Or MAX's that hide in the corner, making me stand in the open (with my back to everything) to rep them instead of letting me hide behind their massive armored body while I rep.
• Or MAX's that TK you because you didn't drop whatever you were doing immediately and repair them, even though they were behind you and you had no idea they were there or needed repairs.
• Or MAX's who dance in and out of the line of fire of my turret (or just straight up stand in front of it), preventing me shooting at anybody that's shooting ME, getting me killed, and then STILL expecting me to rep them. I mean, it's not like I'm a stationary target that they could easily avoid or anything.....
• etc. etc. etc.

At the end of the day, I don't mind repping MAX's. I don't even mind repping them repeatedly, if they're not morons. BUT : 1) they come to me; 2) they throw out a "need repairs" so I know they need help; and 3) they watch my back while I rep them. Fail on any of those three simply things and I've got better ways to spend my time.

I understand. You sir, however, seem to be in the minority. I do realise that forcing the enemy to fall back technically counts as a 'win', but to me it lacks that gratyfying 'oomph' (not to mention the fact, that enemies 'scared away' tend to come back and thus you solve nothing in the long run).

Whilst I love hitting aircraft and making them explode (along with the pilot, hopefully). The argument for more skill-based AA has been made here over and over again and the sheer volume speaks for itself. Flak stacks incredibly well with numbers while a single source of it is nigh useless. Guting it's range renders it *absolutely* useless (case in point: Aspis Phalanx Turrets). Precision AA requiring direct hits and thus forcing a skill requirement on the user, while also allowing pilots to actively dodge incoming fire would likely be a whole different story.

That's the way the cookie crumbles. When you round a corner and run into a MAX, that 1k health tends to evaporate pretty quickly as well...

That's because you are ten times the threat. Play smart, have a pocket Engi, don't overextend. You know - the usual stuff. And once every while you will die anyway, because this is Planetside 2.