Something I don't understand about NC MAX's

Basically Grinders are the only AI weapons left that let you win against a standard enemy AI MAX without you having to upgrade to extended mags.

The are also the only NC AI weapon that lets you win at all against a level 5 kinetic armour MAX. (this is mathmatically, as the rest of the weapons simply don't carry enough damage per clip to kill one without a 4 second reload - in which time they will more than kill you).

Mattocks are almost certainly the least worst option (even after their blanket nerf in the last patch), but whilst they are the least worst option they simply don't compare to TR/VS alternatives.
Yes you're going to get infantry kills with them without a doubt (they put a lot of raw damage down range, after all), but not as many or as easily as with TR/VS alternatives in the same situation.

Problem being is that there's a point where we're just subpar at both ranges and might as well switch to using ravens. The shotgun, by the very nature of having pellet based weapons, is either overpowered or underpowered at certain ranges if it's to be useful. Because at longer range it's going to miss more and more of those pellets, even if you tighten the spread. At closer ranges, all or most of the pellets will hit. If you nerf per pellet damage at close range, it will do worse at long range.

You do realize that you'd have to tone down the dmg/ pellet significantly in order to create a somewhat noticable difference in CQC given that we're talking about dual wielded triple barreled (semi) automatic shotguns. Problem lays elsewhere imo.

Imo the only way to justify more range on those weapons would be to significantly reduce the rate of fire alongside tightening the COF and INCREASING the overall damage per shot. Goal should be to raise the skill cap and maintain its current CQC dmg potential at the same time. This would further solve the magazine size 'problem' given that we've upped the dmg/shot. Reload speeds could be reduced a tad too. A good shot will still be able to make use of the full dmg potential where as, contrary to the current state, the (below) avarage player will probably no longer enter a room and cause havoc by default. For reference look at PA shotties. They've been put in a good spot with the rof nerf. Perhaps give dedicated CQC MAX shotties a burst fire mode similar to the jackhammers, with a significant cooldown between each burst and high cof bloom to make the full damage potential more accessible, especially against other MAX units.

In short, make them more skill oriented weapons overall and it shouldn't be a problem to add more range to them.

No flame:
And? if we had a ranged option such as the TR / VS one then where would you place the Empire differences?
Thanks God and Thanks SOE this game is different across empires and i Freaking love it like that, you don't?
Well I'm sorry but this game doesn't work like that, you'd better adapt to it because they won't make it the "same" across all empires, we have our ranged option, it's viable and as ranged as it can gets without breaking balance, we'll never have a chaingun on our max, after 8 months of this game I thought people would get over with it.

We're the best at Close quarter, we're not supposed to be on par with the other empires at ranged distance (altough we are somehow),

Asyemtric balance is a nice concept but in particality its obviously a work in process.

We have the best Anti-tank tank, but there are few open air tank battles where it matters.

We have the best CQC max, but though this is useful in a large number of situations, we are better for example at max crashing points inside. Outdoor infantry combat at 40-100m is increasingly important and in these situations they are effectively useless.

Its more down to the mapping than anything else. But there it is.

The shotguns in general are pain in the *** to balance, imo all maxes should have AI machine guns.

Atm good NC max player knows to stay in the capture points ( Capture points in PS2 are 90% CQC = full dmg per shotty shell) and dominate the CQC.

Well others say it "compensates" with the lack in range but i dont know why should any faction use maxes in open areas, they are too big targets and not that accurate.

I use maxes to storm buildings and CQC.

But its annoying to know that no other factions MAX will win NC max in CQC. Some NC say " stay back and be invincible " but its really hard to shoot to the capture point from outside the building.

Just add AI machine guns to NC max instead shotguns. NC gets like God saw, low RoF high dmg. Then everybody wins and everyone is happy.

This would only works (as it did in PS1 as a choked mode).

As just plain nerfed the NC AI MAX further would make the already functionally the same 0.3 second TTK difference (at 0m) actually mean the TR and VS killed significantly faster at 0m as well as (still) being better at range.


Given their last stated goal (to make it more accuracy based) in the last blanket nerf to NC AI MAXs they probably should have reduced the CoF as standard anyway, instead of nerfing everything and leaving the CoF alone.

Being plain worse is not balance, never has been and never will be.


MAX balance in PS1 worked pretty well, dispite the MAX being very different, there was a good example of MAX being balanced and different.

Being different is NO EXCUSE for them being unbalanced.

Better are close quarters?

All the NC AI MAX has a 0m is a 0.3 second TTK advantage (vs Infantry), that is functionally the same (with human reaction time, lag and most importantly clientside hit detections) as 0.0 seconds.

So basically TR and VS AI MAXs have the SAME TKK at 0m as NC AI MAX.......... so where is the "best" in that?

I feel that the NC max was great until the blanket nerf of our shotguns.

Every single time our shotguns came up BEFORE the nerf, it would meet this and similar replies:
"Yeah, we have no range - but we own biolabs, so that's ok. Just save your infantry points until we get to allatum (Unless you want to get mattocks, Scoff).

Now, it's more like:
"Yes, our maxes are terrible. Don't get the aegis shield, that's terrible, you're better off with default level charge. And make sure to start saving up for mattocks as soon as you can, and then start saving up for extended mags as soon as you can, because otherwise you're just extra exp"


But hey, I don't really care. I figure it's only a few months until SOE brings out the NS max weapon and all of the NC can get them and be useful.

The things is though:


Against infantry the TTK difference is 0.3 seconds (at 0m) in the NC AI MAXs favour - with human reaction time, lag and most importantly clientside hit detection, this is functionally the same as the best VS and TR AI TTK weapons.

Against other MAX the only weapon an NC AI MAX can win with as standard is the Grinder (all the other NEED a reload to kill).
Once fully upgraded to Kinetic Armour 5 again the only NC AI weapon that can kill an enemy AI MAX is the Grinder (all the others NEED a reload).

That's a pretty bad position for the NC AI MAX to be in as it stands.






I agree they should just give NC AI MAXs similar weapons to the TR/VS if they aren't going to allow choked modes like they had in PS1.

Just give the NC MAX single projectile weapon options and either, give the other two faction MAXs shotgun options or scrap MAX shotguns altogether (this would be my preferred choice).

I thought the general NC trait was supposed to be hard hitting slow firing weapons, I don't get why our MAX trait is extreme CQ specialist.

The NC max is fine within 10-15 meters. Thats where it should stay. Also dont bring ZOE into it, if you lose to something that buffs everything used against it by 30% then you deserve to lose and are simply bad.

Oh btw you forgot it buffs your gun and everything used against it by 30%. Sorry that that isnt enough of an advantage for you.

What good is that for me when it moves around like the flash ?

I wish it moved as good as you say. But it is a larger target that moves just as fast as a normal infantry player. If you cant hit that then you cant hit anything.

No friend it moves faster than infantry, really don't make me upload another vid showing something we all know, would take some of my time and i'm not in the mood. One of those ZOE Maxes show my Vanguard and instead of running away it came at me, went partially down a ravine and then came up shooting while going left-right-front-back. Needless to say i couldn't hit him and in the end he actually blew up my Vanguard. If you think that an infantry would be able to move as fast then i need to see that.......

Then you are bad, it is not like we have fractures or ravens or any quality AV weapons.

Bad ? No. I just can't hit a moving MAX that has double the speed of infantry with the Vanguard canon when it's got a 4s reload time and when i'm using AP rounds. I think it's logical.

Ever since the VS stock AV weapons got a buff they've been well and able to hold their own - especially with ZOE.

I haven't done the maths, but even with 30% extra damage slug mattocks (with extended mags) may not have enough damage per clip to kill a Kinetic Armour 5 MAX .

Seems like you haven't tried pitting dual Comets against dual Pounders/Falcons.