Except all 3 of them still can't. It doesn't matter how much better the Vickers and Mg34 might be against 2 squads, none of the 3 MGs can stop blobs of 3+ squads.
the vickers and the MG34 has trouble but it may suppress 2 infantry squads thanks to their large arcs... the maxim has neither the suppression nor the arc to suppress even 2 infantry squads....
Since deathloop is unfixable, why not lower Maxim's reinforcement cost? Losing whole MG crews to deathloop is greatly exaggerated, although I can understand the MP bleed caused by constantly dropping models.
i have an idea... why dont we just make the maxim 5 man then give it mg42 stats? since we cant fix deathloop we can just treat it as a 5 man mg then balance it from there...
It is a normal mg imo - the tradeoff being larger crew and mergeability. I feel that those suggested two front entities will also increase its vision a bit making it less vulnerable when solo guarding map fragments. I'd wait for the patch and test before any other changes are applied. One step at a time (lots of previous patches were 2 steps and it was too much).
its a normal mg with the worst suppression ingame one of the worst arcs ingame and suffers from the worst deathloop animation of all the stock mgs ingame... calling it normal is an insult to how terrible the unit is...