I'm going to try to reply to multiple posts in the one post so bear with me.
Aralepus: If we're going to go the historical/realistic route when it comes to penetration its worth noting that there is no side armor in the game, and the SU76 could reliably penetrate side and rear armor. If it shouldn't penetrate front armor of these tanks how should this be compensated in terms of game mechanics? =)
Even though I feel the whole realism argument is null and void for this game.
Well, the game mechanics aren't like, say World of tanks and War thunder where if your gun isn't good enough, you have a 0% chance of pennetrating. Its what a guy said earlier, it will have a certain percentage chance of penning. If an SU-76 has a 10-20% chance of pennetrating heavy armour (compensating for side armour), and an 80-100% chance of pennetrating P4s, I'd be happy with that.
Yes, in most cases gameplay > realism I agree, but there's a certain limit as to how far you can drift from realism. Believe me, when 37-50mm guns start pennetrating Shermans, I'd be annoyed too. Otherwise, it'll be Company of Placeholders, not Company of Heroes.
VonIvan: If you think the SU-76 is OP, try spamming shreks and AT-guns with a little puma or Panther support. I hear it works wonders.
ALL HAIL VON IVAN kappa. Well yeah... but you'd be leaving yourself very vulnerable to AI.
Thats a lot of manpower investment into AT haha.
Wingzero: If we were to reduce the penetration, SU-76 will be a underused unit again and we don't want that. The only thing we need to do is increase it's cost and that is it. The biggest problem facing SU-76 is the blob factor.
Er, no it won't. Assuming the SU-76 can still deal with medium tanks adequately after the nerf, for a tank that comes at the time it does, it'll still have unparallelled AI and AT.