Profile of Sander93

Following the same line of logic, why doesn't UKF get their Vickers nerfed? Why should only Soviets bear the brunt of OKW's shortcomings?

Vickers spam on lane maps can be very effective at shutting down OKW early game too, but at least the Vickers is a bit easier to overwhelm because of slower teardown, slower horizontal tracking, and 2 models lower durability. Nevertheless this is the reason we were very careful with buffing its suppression (a very small change from 0.00785 to 0.008) last patch.

While OKW's stock options to deal with MGs is limited, OKW already has sizable DPS advantages over Soviet Cons + T2 opening. Stock Volks has ~150% the DPS of stock Cons while only being 10% less durable while being only 20 manpower more (but also requires no sidegrades to have molly 2.0 and snare), and Sturms smoke CEngies. That's why before 7-man Cons everyone went for Penals against OKW.

A DPS advantage is mostly irrelevant on teamgames lane maps where HMG spam can frontally shut down an entire flank. I'm obviously aware that the Maxim is a bit underwhelming in other modes and other situations, but it is already good enough in the more laney teamgames maps (Red Ball, Angermunde, White Ball, Hamburg, Ettelbruck, Lienne, etc.) so making it better without a bigger redesign of Soviet T2 or OKW T0 isn't really an option without making it too good (and really annoying to play against) in above said situations.

This was true until the recent armour nerf. The MG42's damage output is far too high to use UC against one reliably. If the maverick ost player has gone for the RoF and pen bulletins on their MGs it's a straight up curb stomp.

It works well enough in conjunction with an Infantry Section. I know it's not a perfect counter, but it's better than nothing.

The pen bulletin gives +3% penetration, so on mid range (where the UC will be engaging) it will give the HMG 42 1.854 pen instead of 1.8, which ultimately gives 32% chance to pen 5.8 armor instead of 31%. That gives the UC an effective healthpool of 406 vs 403 against an HMG 42 at mid range, or 1 extra bullet (4 dmg). So unless I'm mistaken, it's completely negligible.

ROF bulletin gives +4% ROF, giving it 16.64 ROF at mid range compared to 16, which translates into 66.56 vs 64 pure damage per second (accuracy is always 100% vs a vehicle), giving it 21 vs 20 DPS against a UC (with the 32% pen chance with the pen bulletin), or a 19,33s vs 20.3s flat TTK. Which again is mostly a negligible increase when taking into account the cooldowns between bursts, greatly increasing the actual TTK (almost doubling it to something around 30-40s I think) which means that that 1s advantage will be next to no difference.

The APIT rounds delate a UC outright

AP rounds are not available in the first ~5-8 minutes of a game. Which makes it irrelevant for the point I'm making (that HMGs shouldn't easily shut down factions on certain maps in the first 5 minutes). And again, the fact that UKF struggles against early HMG 42 spam means that UKF should get (have gotten) better ways to deal with that. It does not mean we should buff the Maxim and throw OKW even further down the same hole.

This was not specified in the quoted post, but even so, its not as if double MG42s doesn't give brits a hard time in a corridor either.

Brits at least have the Vickers UC to contest HMG 42s out in the open. HMG 42s are easier to flank because of lower durability, slower traverse and a slower redeploy time too. But that doesn't really matter, as I've already said before, UKF with their lack of T0 indirect having trouble with early game HMG spam does not mean we should make it even harder for OKW too. This is not about "them versus us", this is about making sure we keep early game HMG spam effectiveness to a minimum.

That's not entirely true. They could walk at it, head on and throw a flame nade which will force it to retreat if not induce a death loop. Works more often than not...

That only works on Maxims that aren't properly supported. If they have another unit spotting for it so they can fire from max range, Volks get pinned before they get close enough. Or when they have max sight range when they're in a garrison. Even when not supported, Maxims will pin Volks before they get close enough, unless there was some sight blocker or light cover involved.


Only sending multiple squads at once might work if the Soviet player isn't quick enough to re-target, but usually there's a Maxim covering a Maxim, so that often leads nowhere. With 6 men durability, Maxims can usually reposition after taking a flame grenade with still 4-5 models left anyway. It's far from a guaranteed wipe or retreat.

Now imagine Maxims with buffed suppression, and even multiple squads won't be able to even get close.

Well, the easy alternative was always giving the maxim actually decent stats as a heavy machine gun so it didn't need sustained fire at all

That's not an easy alternative at all.

My main issue is that Maxims need a 6 men crew for the deathloop issue and are therefor very durable, while also being available right at the start of a game (unlike the M2HB and DshK, that can have better stats to compensate for the deathloop instead because they come a lot later), while also having a faster reposition time than the other T0 HMGs, which means it can't have good stock stats because then 2-3 Maxims would quite easily shut OKW down completely on corridor or urban maps (like Red Ball Express or Lienne Forest) right from the start because OKW does not have anything in T0 that could counter it (USF had a T0 mortar added to deal with early HMG 42s for a reason) besides flanking/overwhelming with infantry, which isn't really possible in corridors or against garrisons.

Besides that, there's always the risk of enabling the infamous Maxim spam again, which is something I'm sure everyone would like to avoid.