Because it's what happens ingame. Something that you wouldn't know about. I'm glad whenever I see a penal battalion because it means there are less conscripts on the field. I mostly build penals when I want to troll people, definitely not when I'm actually trying to win.
It doesn't help that my view of penals ingame is biased by the game situation that building them creates, ie. forcing the soviet player to always be on the attack because they've lost map control they could've had if they only had more conscripts. Walking up to grenadiers that DON'T have an LMG42 results in more manpower losses to penals than to the grenadiers, and with the LMG42 you're fucked no matter what. And not like penals come out markedly faster than the first LMG42 anyway.
Ok, tell you what. Show me a replay that proves your point as it was presented earlier (ie: both as vanilla, and obviously on equal footing), and I will not post on Coh2.org for a week. If you cant, you dont post on Coh2.org for a week. Bet?
Also, why on earth are you walking up to Grens with Penals?!
Again, I cant understand how you can say, with a straight face, that you are actually walking up to Grens with Penals?!
(Tip: If you actually looked at the stats I posted, you would see that Penals have twice the DPS of Grens at ALL RANGES)