Wait. You need to calc the cost which it need to get volks with grenades and faust than. And time. Which are the req for vet 3 cons and vet 5 volks.
Faust, flame nade and rifle nade have a total cost of ZERO.
They are exclusively time gated.
That okw get other stuff with the Upgrade from volks is a other story.
Yeah, its the story of getting free stuff with just teching.
Comlpetely other story then actually investing resources that contribute nothing to tech and slow it down.
And you forget: what can cons what volks cant? Sprint, merge, can be more fight relevant than faust and grenades and dmg.
Except, they aren't.
Oorah was nerfed with cost increase and it itself is useful exclusively for AT nades, in any other situation you're better of not using it.
Having actual reinforcement platform behind you in early game(251) is MUCH more powerful tool then merge, which in itself does completely nothing, unless you got cons exclusively for it, in which case, the point about cons being too expensive and too bad for actual combat just got even more reinforced by you.
Imagin u want to Flank one mg u see the first time. Or u cant reach the tank to set the important faust without Sprint. And than your support for teamweapons is much better with cons. And so one. And dont forget that the 50% more life than modt other ost squads. While the same price...have nondoc 60 range tds and so on
Imagine having a doctrine which allows all ost infantry to sprint and do that, imagine that infantry isn't magically downgraded to cons level and actually is capable of inflicting massive damage once its where you want it to be. Imagine your support weapon actually being killed by sprinting PGs or grens when just being chased off by cons shooting blanks.
50% life argument is as irrelevant as it gets, because ost weapons are balanced around fighting that life.
Cons need to be the weakest static fight squad...because the cheapest with mostly 50% more health nondoc squad.
And cons are the weakest fighting squad.
Now they only need the price that matches worst performance in game for mainline inf and 220mp is a good start.