The shittiest part about this game is the insane lack of options. Grens have 1 upgrade you always get. Volks have 1 upgrade you always get. These units don't serve a point without said upgrade. AT rifles would give them better early game for worse late game while not improving their AI performance so much that they are OP early game.
Why do Volks and grens need this? Grens aren't supposed yo counter light armor because you already have paks, 222s, and Pshrecks in t2 to do the job for you. If you choose to not tech and use your factions at, you have Noone to blame but yourself. You dont see usf lt players or t1 soviet players complaining that they get hard countered by vehicles.
It's not just the M5 that's the issue, it's that the Axis factions are pigeonholed into ALWAYS going for something to counter the enemy at every stage of the game or you lose; and this is extremely true in the case of light vehicle rushes were you can easily get pushed right off the map or lose a large part of your army simply because your enemy can pump our light tanks/vehicles artificially before you can regardless of map control.
So in other words, they are stuck doing exactly what usf has been doing? USF has to go captain tier, since their LT tier gets murdered by 222s and okw period. Getting counters is part of the game. You have no business complaining that you have to get counters for certain units, especially when you have easy access to counters for vehicles that also cost fuel to use.
If you make the decision to take an extended tier 1, then you must be willing to reap the consequences when the allied player shuts you down with light vehicle play. You got countered, it's part of the game, and all factions have to deal with it.
Panzershreks are over rated as fuck and in both factions are giant munition dumps on fragile units that squad spacing makes !!FUN!! to keep alive and can be totally negated by just pushing them around. I would gladly give up Volks Shrek for an AI upgrade and a snare, because right now I have fuck all reason to make Volks outside of having meat to cap the map with.
Overrated? What? Pshrecks allow you to counter all allied armor short of the is2 and isu152, and thus are shit? You can't attack move with them. Use them to support your paks and other at sources, not a blob of long distance death.
Squad spacing is an issue, but it affects all factions. I wouldn't consider okw any weaker than usf vs. this for example.
And this idea that Allied late game is still artificially pissweak is dumb as hell, yes USF late game is micro intensive because Relic loves their gimmicks but Soviet late game is just as powerful as OKW or Ostheer late game. Especially since they got their stock army buffed and howitzers buffed.
As long as allies need more micro for their lategame, they will be weaker in the lategame. That is just a fact. Okw and ostheer have straight up heavies within their normal tech, not to mention mediums that scale into heavy-mediums with vet.
Axis have better scaling units (veterancy + stock upgrades). Scaling is the key word, and it directly translates to a lategame power spike.
Sorry but people are going to have to let go of the bitter feelings from ye olde days of Axis late game domination because it's making every discussion toxic as fuck.
You are projecting. There is no "bitter" feelings from the ye Olde days. Axis has a lategame advantage, which can be proved quite empirically with the statistics from 4s and 3s, where the lategame comes much faster.
You still haven't given a valid reason for grens and Volks to get at rifle upgrades stock that are far superior to that given for conscripts doctrinally. Hell, you still haven't given a valid reason for this upgrade to be needed at all.