Penals - To Merge or not to Merge?

I would like to hear community's opinions on question whether to Merge Penals with Conscripts or not in given situations:
- On the frontline
- On the base

The problem is Cons' "bullet magnet" base recieved accuracy.
Also you may count in Penals' vet 1 ability.

First one depends heavily on situation.

If you have only one Conscript squad around and you feel that you may need AT nade of course you won't Merge and just retreat with your Penals.
If you urgently need that Flamer around you will obviously Merge.
I get it, so let's discuss some "generic" situation where you have another Cons squad and you don't know if you will need Flamer in your next engagement.

Second one is purely strategic/economical.

Is it better to save some manpower several times in order to pump out more squads quickly and try to get "snowballing" effect?
Or maybe it will just result in losing Penals more quickly in next engagements and won't give you any reasonable advantage?
I'm also concerned about vet feeding in the long term, especially vs OKW.

Your thoughts on the subject?

I would say the best time to merge when in base is when you're low on mp and need your units out asap. When getting decent to good mp income, might as well skip merging for better unit preservation. It's also usually good to merge in base early game if you need mp to tech or get AT out when armor hits the field.

On the front-line it's usually best to merge if your penal has vet over your conscript or is needed to satchel an object. Other then that, obviously due to front-line being situational, just do it when need be for whatever scenario arises.

In regards to vet feeding, it's not that much of an issue considering OKW gains vet at a steady rate whether you merge or not, considering armor for inf units has a very tiny difference when merge is used, better to have units reinforced through merge on the front-line then retreat and sacrifice your field presence to give up allowing OKW to gain the vet they'll receive anyway the next time you engage.

I tend to use merge on the front lines to leave a full strength squad instead of, say, two squads with 4.

It's more the micro tax than anything. If you can do the micro it's always worth the manpower. (Well, except for on original team weapon crews I think.)

I've played few more games and noticed that Penals now have quite long time to reinforce, so that's another huge plus for merging them.

I once accidently lost a con squad through merge 3 min into the game

Very micro taxing