0.5 CP Same as AGrens
That new CP system they had testing needs to come out. MGs need to come out as early as balance allows, due to weapon teams overall becoming much less valuable as the game goes on longer.
Yes well...the unit is clearly far too strong for 0cp so either you pick it coming out later or have it nerfed quite hard.
And the gun can be countered the same way German players told Soviets to counter the MG42 a few patches ago. 
By quitting the game until a patch comes? Which is what happened, except a ton of those players never came back. Also atleast the MG42 never just slaughtered your squads in seconds due to a hilarious base damage, took more than twice as long to redeploy, didn't get AP rounds at vet0, didn't get sprint at vet1, and had 3 less squad members.
Seriously though, its range and damage should remain the same, but if anything changes, then its suppression should not be better than the Maxim's if it is actually better. Maybe tweak the arc as well. The DSHKs a weapon that fires bullets longer and of the same caliber as the .50 cal. It should have the range and damage. Not just for the sake of history, but the sake of placement in build scheme.
Seriously the ridiculous 2x maxim damage plus even more against armored targets needs to go. The maxim deploys needs to go as well, if anything it should deploy slower than the MG42. And the free AP rounds. But more than anything it needs to not come at 0cp because it just horribly breaks everything (especially on the smaller maps like langres) to be able to deploy these douches straight off.
I keep saying this as well, but Merge isn't an all powerful ability. You have to use up a squad to merge and you often end up with a unit that's not worth keeping on the field. So if someone uses Merge to refill crew, that's one less unit capping or attacking. Merge is useful, but only situationally.
You're missing the point with that. Merging to the DSHK means that it's a 360MP callin but only 240MP in reinforcement terms. Plus as long as you're only facing infantry (or in the dshks case as long as you're only facing infantry or light vehicles seeing how it literally kills scout cars in a second and fhts in two) an hmg on the field is far more valuable than a conscript squad.