Your obsession with Penals shows up.
And it has been recently been justified since even MOD team members admitted that their current design that lead completely replacing other mainline should be avoided.
At no point they are compared to them nor should be.
Penal is the closest thing in role design and performance. They should be compared balanced wise.
They are compared to Volks, balanced against them, because guess what, they are part of OKW army.
Unit of the same faction should be compared with what they bring to the table not balanced wise since they do not fight each other.
Non truck dependant snare early on, flare, nade and 2 weapon upgrade routes are their core.
Non truck dependency is simply bad OKW design, (that one might argue that was necessary when OKW had a stronger start but not anymore). VG should have faust available at truck being built not set up and RW available at truck set up.
Being bullied but M3 (and WC51/WC) is cheese that should not be available. Adding a doctrinal unit fill the hole is simply a bad solution.
Flare is vet 1 ability available to also to soviet sniper and mortars.
The grenade inferior to incendiary grenade in most cases and Shreck route is hardly chosen. If I had to guess I would say more Penals get the PTRS upgrade than PF get the Shreck route.
So I am not sure what your point is but it probably not for this thread.
If you can't discuss the main point of the thread, then you should just stick to the other thread you open up.
I brought veterancy bonus which is part of this thread since the OP is asking a veterancy nerf of PF and it is actually you who started analysis better suited for the other thread...
When it comes to veterancy I would argue that Penal get better combat stats so any supposed "veterancy" PF have by design is in their utility and thus nerfing their veterancy bonuses is going against their design.
If the At rifle-grenade is OP,then their vet 2 bonus should be replaced by something else that would really make them have better veterancy than similar units as they are supposed to.