How is SU-76 affecting T34/76 being utter shit?
Yes, 34/76 is cheap, but its still pretty menpower heavy and quite shitty, its unreliable unit for any situation and unless you have like 4, you'll have it underperform.
It indirectly affects it because it causes them to come out later when they are even more useless. If su-76s weren't good, then the fuel you'd save not getting them, would go towards teching and t34s. At the moment, you get maybe one or two SU-76s and by the time you get T4, t34s wouldn't be very useful. I think that's the argument he is making. If they were good, then obviously you might want to rush them anyway, but it doesn't help that su-76s are so good right now that it's much more cost effective just getting those and only getting T4 for t34-85s or katys.
In a vacuum, they are pretty cheap for what they do, but their survivability is such a liability by the time they come out, that the resources spent is just a waste. I think the key to making them better is making ram useful again and better vet bonuses.
I'd love for them to be better at flanking. Making rotation and speed faster and close range pen better would be cool. I think ram always causing gun/engine destroyed on the t34 is dumb. If anything, I'd love for the crits that the T34 gets when ramming to match the vehicle that it hits. So if ram fails to pen a tank, then it shouldn't caused those crits. That might make it more viable. You're punished way too harshly for using ram. If not that, then maybe increasing the pen of ram as the health of the T34 goes down, so maybe you're more incentivized to use it as a last ditch maneuver as opposed to opening a battle with it like in the past when it was really good.