Penals come early ingame, if you forgot that little detail. This is absolutly balanced.
You just discovered, faction assymetry, is fun, you will get used to it. Now if you pretend cons to deal lategame with cheap ass cost, the best utility and doc upgrades, you are out of your mind.
Soviets do have those too. Or even better, they have a selfspotting, expensive but very effective TD to deal with heavies, Axis dont.
i kinda did state that penals were kinda strong earlygame and that T1 play was absolutely focused on blitzing and cutting down the enemy before they become a threat...
faction assymetry is good to a point... when a faction lacks an essential such as reliable non doctrinal infantry or mobile mortars (cough UKF) the faction tends to do extremely badly
and imo the best idea is to introduce new elite infantry to sov T4 as i stated with solution 2
2. introduce brand new elite infantry into the soviet T3 or T4 building...
option 1: guards riflemen... armed with mosin nagants and a DP-28 upgrade however no PTRS... functionally similar to the obersoldaten but a 6 man squad instead... gets RD grenades and a not one step back vet 1 ability (to itself) instead of the nukenade and the blenderkorper.... <= a bit less likely to break the game dynamic
option 2: guards assault... armed with all PPSHs with an optional body armor upgrade... gets RD grenade and molotovs for close range combat... <= an interesting option inline with aggressive soviet play
option 3: introduce standard guards in the T3 or T4 building... replace guards with frontoviki with ppsh <=== a surefire way of not breaking the game... still presented with the standard anti everything blob however...
Soviet inf can keep up, almost 40 min ingame, if you cant manage to control and secure a good amount of VP you lost to yourself...
I dont want to be mean, but i cant understand the way you compare units and concepts, like blindly claiming "soviets are bad", no man, soviets are good, you are not using the best of them maybe.
the soviets arent bad... theyre really good... theyre just highly reliant on doctrinal gimmicks like guards and shocks with penal cheese m3 that the gameplay is simply becoming monotonous... ever since the patch ive been experimenting with new strategies like commissar penal strats or conscript-shocks-urban defense in an attempt to break the monotonous use of guards motor coordination... by adding new elite infantry however i can play the game without having to rely on gimmicky setups due to the lack of a lategame core infantry unit