No good Soviet player opens with Maxim in Red Ball or White Ball because you lose all pushing power if you do. Its an instant-lose situation if you open with Maxim.
This is objectively not true. Soviet players might not
open with maxim, but maxims do see a lot of action in high rank plays, even in 4v4 tourney. You just need to know where and when it should be used.
On the flip side, async balance aside, MG42 open is powerful because you only need 1 to lockdown a lane. Where-as you need 2 Maxims to do the same because of the small firing arc. Maxims have the same cost and setup time as an MG42 and don't instant suppress like the MG42 does. If the Soviet player needs to get 2 Maxims to lock down a lane, that means the Ost player can get 2 MG42s to lock down a lane even better. Are you starting to see the problem here?
Again the whole premis of the complaint is that maxim is worst then MG42 in actually being auto-firing MG. Thats the core of the problem here, but maxim has other advantages (which are being called shit for some reason).
List of them being:
1) Being able to win MG duels
2) Much more sustainable to damage
3) Easier to relocate
4) Supperior AOE suppression
5) Really strong and cheap sustain fire ability
Disadvantages are:
1) Smaller arc of fire
2) Slower to suppress
3) Even slower at suppressing yellow cover
This list alone already shows that it just cant be played exactly like an MG42, but at this matter Vekers and .50 cal cant be played like 42 aswell. Maxim has a specific role of being either supporting unit or it should be used with sustain fire ability, it isnt meant for areas lockdown, thats why it becomes super hard to deal with on maps where it actually can lockdown areas.
If you need suppression platform and you dont give a damn about other advantages, then there is DSHK for this reason. Its conter intuitive way of using MG unit (especially in comparison) but its the way it was always ment to be used. Even on release, Maxim was almost purely damaging unit, before relic buffed its suppression which gave birth to maxim spam. If it wasnt the case, then it woudnt have had 6 men crew and smaller arc of fire, and people propused this, like since release to make maxim into proper MG, but relic never did it. In other words, it is what it is. You cant just lower its cost and call it a day, you cant lower the build time and call it a day without redesigning a unit.
Soviet 120mm is the best example of it, it was meh but survivable. It was buffed, surviability was untouched and now its cancer to deal with.
tdlr: need suppression use DSHK, maxim is situational unit which wont work if you want to use it as MG42.
Also not mentioning that opening Maxim needs to tech T1 so you're already down fuel and MP at the beginning stages of the game.
Also very weak argument. Considering that all factions have roughly the same tech timings overall from T0 to T4, so building a tech early into the game, doesnt put you into any kind of disadvantage res.wise. Soviets start will less MP, because they have cheaper starting unit resulting a better starting MP income.
Its only true for the fact that MG42 hits the field faster then maxim, but at the same time cons hit the field faster then grens.