Nice seeing this kind of posts.
1- I would rather see them being added to the main building (T0). They can be priced as normal Riflemen but would take more time to field.
Or passive increase of XP gained.
Or leave them as they are now.
2- Support weapons: 1v1 and 2v2 i´ve never had a problem against maxims (mortars and zis guns are fine).
I´ve been voicing this for a while: make the crew reman and aim faster after getting the gunner killed. If we can have a manual option to reload this would be heaven.
If you want to make it less assymetrical, give maxims 5men, spread them out just like MG42, give them also their retreat teleportation, increase a bit width range and increase setup time.
3-
While just reducing long range damage somewhat is an option, I do think it could be interesting if the LMG damage was made to spread damage on the entire enemy squad instead of focused on a single model. Right now a big part of the power of LMGs is that they will very quickly snipe off members from the enemy squad, forcing shorter range troops to just run away because having half a squad in melee doesn't really help them. Spread the damage out and you'll instead have a much larger though lower health squad coming into melee instead, which could actually do something. It would also make MGs a bit more efficient against LMG blobbing, because right now the gunner just gets instakilled in a row because all the fire is focused on him due to him being the most forward member of the MG squad.