What would you do to MAX's to make them useful, skillful, balanced?

MAXes could have received more interesting weapons. They should have had a greater emphasis on faction abilities rather than weapons. Instead of 2 weapons, MAXes could have had the option to carry utility equipment, like the NC shield, or a knockback AOE, or a stealth/anti-radar field, or a grenade launcher that fired mild conc-grenades. Anything. SOE has some pretty creative folks, I'm sure they could come up with some great ideas.

Buuuuut, that's not the MAX that was released.

And so, that ship has sailed.

Unless you redesign MAXes completely at this point, which isn't going to happen, we're stuck with MAXes that have 2 guns, are tankier than infantry but not tanky enough to truly play seige breaker (unless in numbers), and with weapons that kill infantry very very quickly.

Nano-regen armour. You don't even need an engineer, just a medic is enough. A maxed out medi-tool leaves you with enough HP to find cover and auto-repair back to full.

I would give them less firepower, more armor, and more defensive/protective abilities.

If you are going to make the MAX weak and only be a shield for his teammates people are just going to ignore the max and shoot the others instead. Why or MAXes bulletsponges? Because if you do not kill them they will **** your team.

I didn't know Maxes even had access to that! But anyways, I suggested that Medics couldn't revive Maxes at all, so as soon as a Max is dead, that's it.

They're fine as they are.

Remove AI weapons, make it so AV weapons work like Comets against infantry as far as shots required to kill / mag size for each arm. (For short range) For long range, make them like fractures w/ larger mag size but more shots to kill. They can do whatever against vehicles for faction specific stuff, but for AI duty the comet is in the best place IMO.

Just to throw out a radical proposal (I don't necessarily agree with this):

Add a hard cap that only allows 10% of an empire's continent population to be in MAXes. They shouldn't be 50% of the population at ANY fight, much less EVERY fight like they are often currently. Put a queue system in much like the continent queue to request MAX clearance. Resources in this game are not a limiting factor. Personal cooldown timers were, but they were removed.

That still requires at least two people, add an engineer and it's three. If one person can't take all three at once they'll still complain.

Alpha platoon get ready to login to your VS / NC / TR chars, we're about to attack the biolab so we'll need to keep their MAX numbers down. Stay semi-afk at their warpgate until further notice.

Lots of ships have sailed with PS2. Perhaps we'll just have to live with imbalances and un-fun decisions until PS3. Perhaps, for example, they could dispense with the asymmetrical balance altogether next time. I know that asymmetric stuff has a lot of sentimental value, but it would be one way to cut out a lot of time wasted arguing about balance.

I'm sorry, I think I must be misunderstanding you. What's your stance on the idea exactly? Why are there 2 people, 3 plus an engineer? I'm so confused.

1) You'd be removing an entire platoon from the attack force.
2) They'd have to start at the beginning of the queue and wait for it to cycle through before they would actually be taking up MAX slots.
3) More elaborate AFK detection would shut this down, such as no EXP earned from actions in the past 5 minutes.

I'm not sure MAX units are good for the game period.

Maybe remove them

Make them have the same HP as a MBT.
Make their weapons have the same damage as a MBT AI/AV secondary.
Make them unable to be revived.

Have like dual PPA maxes, dual vulcan maxes, be so sweet!
That be cool right?

Personally, I'd like to see MAXes tied to facilities the way MBTs are.

I know people will complain when they can't pull MAXes and the other side can. For those folks, I say this: Well tough, you let that MAX facility go, so it would be your own damn fault for losing access to MAXes. Yes, you, you personally.

MAX was fine when the game came out... it should NOT be balanced with infantry , its a damn battle suit and not a fashion accessory

Some of the responses here in this thread give me the impression that some people think MAX DPS is actually higher than it really is, so I want to try and give some perspective on the matter.

Orion: 1787.5 DPS
Two Blueshifts: 1744.6 DPS

Yeah, that's right, a single Orion has higher DPS than two Blueshifts combined, while also having better accuracy (at least while ADS).

Now if we took a look at a different MAX weapon, say the Nebulas, we'd be looking at a combined DPS (both Nebulas) of 2030.6. That does give the Nebulas a bit of an edge over an Orion, but also consider the fact that you pretty much have to be hugging your enemy to achieve close to that DPS. I'm sure that DPS number wouldn't seem so great if I compared it to some semi-auto shotguns, which would be effective at pretty much the same ranges as the Nebulas.

I don't have a quarrel with MAX damage output so much, but I wouldn't mind if it was a somewhat more interesting logistical challenge to using them. Perhaps MAX spawning is handled more like vehicle spawning, where you spawn as a regular infantry class who then "pilots" the MAX much like you would a tank or a plane from a special terminal. For the most part every base would have a MAX terminal where one of their redundant infantry terminals would be, just for spawning MAXs. Sunderer AMS terminals would just be regular infantry terminals on both sides, so instead there would be a different method for providing forward MAX support to consider, making it part of the logistical challenge for attacking a base just like having good AMS positions or supplying enough (but not too much) vehicle support. Maybe those random hackable infantry terminals outside of the spawn rooms on bases could be MAX terminals, so infiltrators hack them to provide a forward MAX spawn for their team. Alternatively, have a defense slot cert that replaces one of the infantry terminals with a MAX one at the cost of things like blockade armor or a deployment shield, or maybe even have an alternate deployment cert entirely that gets rid of spawn point capability and both infantry terminals in favor of MAX terminals (with the owner getting a large point bonus every time someone pulls a MAX from it).

General MAX behavior then is made more like other vehicles. You can't revive a downed MAX, but since the player is now a standard infantry class piloting the MAX rather than the MAX itself, they can be revived as their base infantry class. I would also in return however, consider letting players leave their still active MAX if they wanted, similar to exiting a vehicle, and get back into it when they've done their business (Though I suppose this opens up potential for an engineer piloting a MAX to repair themselves, but then that's only if they can find a place to park the suit safely). As well, similar to vehicles MAXs should auto-detect on the enemy's minimap within a certain radius, perhaps adding a new stealth cert line to reduce this detection range and the sound of their footsteps at the cost of other, more direct combat-oriented suit slots.

Gotta consider that dropoff and missing pellets too for DPS on shotguns. They look great in theory but every lost pellet or couple meters drops the damage immensely compared to most high RoF, high capacity weapons that other MAX's have access too.


Overall it seems like the general consensus is less damage, more tank. Limit max crashes in some way. The less "Spam weapon/unit/item A" the better.

You're comparing MAX TTK vs. infantry with Infantry TTK vs. infantry. Why?

The TTK advantage that matters is MAX vs. Infantry compared with Infantry vs. MAX. And MAXes have about a 2x TTK advantage.