The clown car is a huge problem for okw and just charges kubel
conscripts destroy volks without high vet
penals are even better than conscripts
I agree strongly with the above statement.
Unless you actually have played OKW, you don't know how big of a deal this is. As someone who had been ranked 14th in OKW 2v2 once upon a time (havent played 2v2 in ages, idk where I am now), this, even if not objectively unbalanced, is the most un-fun thing to play against ever.
With 80% muni income, OKW cannot get enough munis to reliably mine the M3 or get an early shrek. The Kubelwagon needs to always be careful and thus cannot chase the sniper down.
Back when WFA armies were released, everybody was crying about how strong SOV were against OKW. Sure, conscripts died like flies to Sturmpios, but
1. OKW had no counter to maxim spam. Good luck getting a stuka when the enemy sets up 8 maxims at your cutoff
2. OKW had no counters to snipers. No smoke, very expensive artillery piece, expensive Sturmpios feed vet and bleed like crazy
3. OKW had no medium tanks. When you're busy saving fuel for a Stuka, your opponent has gotten a t-34. (Rememeber, this was when OKW had 66% Muni income)
4. Guard Rifle had OP Button. Made any vehicle not a Panther die instantly it saw a guard squad. With this ability, it was literally feasable to 1. button a Luchs 2. walk up behind it with a pio 3. build a mine, or 1. Button a Luchs 2. plant a demo/throw a satchel. Soviet T1 thus had ridiculously good "anti-vehicle"
Since release, several things have been changed that have affected this matchup.
1. OKW still has no hard counter to Maxims, but can soft-counter it through a flak halftrack. The setup/tear down changes makes this vehicle much less susceptible to getting owned by an AT gun.
2. OKW still has no counter to snipers, although Flak halftrack can stop them from roaming about at will. Again, this is a stop-gap measure until Puma, Stuka, etc can be afforded to stop cutoff camp
3. Lack of Medium tank is no longer a terrible penalty due to higher muni income allowing shrek blobbing
4. Guards have been nerfed, while it is still hypothetically possible to satchel a buttoned tank, at least the Luchs can shoot back at the all-so-clearly approaching penal squad.
Concerns 3-4 have been mostly addressed, although 1 and 2 still remain.
These aren't so much balance issues, except that they virtually force Mechanised HQ vs soviets. At best, a 100% useless tier vs a faction is terrible game design. At worst, Due to mines and demo charges, Soviets still hold a significant advantage over OKW due to snipers + doctrinal units.
tl;dr
OKW vs Sov is aboring and unfun matchup for both players due to being bottlenecked into a very limited number of plausible strategies.