Recently I've begun to see a "comeback" of an SU76 spam meta in team games. In my games they've proven very effective even at late stages of the game and usually accompanied by Mark Vehicle making them shred armor.
In most situations I think if the Soviets had gone for SU85s instead of SU76 spam to counter heavy armor the outcome would have been much worse for the Allied side. Even though their penetration is not enough to guarantee every shot to penetrate premium armor and up their rate of fire and veterancy bonuses compensate that a lot.
The synergy of SU76 together with lategame TDs like Jacksons and Fireflies seems to be better compared to SU85s as well, especially when they are used to counter flanks with their mobility and rate of fire. (usually the flanker has rear armor exposed to the SU76 so penetration will probably not be an issue)
The cost of under 300 manpower and 70 fuel makes them decently low risk to use and losses are much easier to recover from compared to SU85 losses for example. Also with correct doctrines you can ignore Soviet t4 entirely so one will also save up on teching costs. The barrage ability itself isn't too spectacular but massed SU76 barrages can easily kill support weapons and do serious damage to OKW trucks from relative safety and quickly. When many other TDs and AT guns are idle when there's no armor around to engage the SU76s extra utility makes it possible to shift focus to combat support weapons or act as light artillery instead getting more bang for your buck. The spotting ability can also be useful from time to time even though it is not overly strong. Also the low popcap of 8 doesn't cripple your popcap as quickly compared to massed SU85s, Panthers or JP4s for example.
Naturally there are counters for SU76 spam, Pak walls or spammed raketens. My issue with such counters is that it leads to a-moving AT gun walls and blobs to cover for them and I think it's not good for the gameplay experience if you have to counter light T3 tank destroyers with a-move blobbing tactics. Also the SU76s ability to be pretty reliable against even expensive late game axis armor makes it a bit peculiar indeed when you need a Heavy Tank Destroyer to fight against the non-doctrinal su76 horde produced from T3.
I've included a replay from my latest SU76 experience where I observed the effectiveness of SU76s even from long range against Panthers and KT's front armor. Especially the (not well microed) Panthers got bursted down extremely fast, probably faster than an SU85 could have done the job. Only piece of Armor that could safely go toe-to-toe against the su76s was an Elephant.
(And I know this replay is a 4v4 MLG match but I think the basic concept can be applied for less competitive game modes
![;) ;)](/images/Smileys/wink.gif)
I'd like to hear your opinions: Is it beneficial to the gameplay experience to have a light tank destroyer that seems to perform better at its job than it's bigger T4 counterpart while being cheaper to tech, produce and be more affordable to popcap while having added utility of artillery barrages and being easier to replace losses along with better mobility. Also it's ability to render even axis lategame armor vulnerable to being bursted down by spamming the SU76s instead of going T4 for lategame TD is a bit peculiar. Especially when the T4 counterpart might perform worse against the lategame armor.