Profile of Hannibal

Thanks! I forgot that brumbar armor nerf. Somehow things get quicker against axis armor.

Again the discussions we need to look at why the view that axis have such lower pen values still?

Is a little more hp but against plenty of 160 standard damage or faster speed but lousier rotation rof or accuracy, or not enough relevant vet bonus?

Do these older design choices not be reviewed just because Wehr is considered 'base template'? Yes unit composition, build order, availability, i don't deny Wehr is good faction. But Performance per cost per counters, have they kept up with all the changes? That's a no imo

Axis tanks do not have low pen. Mediums can fight other mediums and have similar pen chances against Allied heavies as if it were the other way around (slightly better for slightly higher base cost). AT gun is one of the best in the game, Panther can pen almost everything quite reliably.

In tank vs tank battles, Axis mediums perform to their cost even vs most premium mediums. There might be dome balance issues (can't look at every matchup atm), but there the problem lies not within the general performance of Axis (and OST especially) tanks

That is rather inaccurate:
PzIV Penetration near 125 Penetration mid 115 Penetration far 110
Sherman Penetration near 140 Penetration mid 130 Penetration far 120
Cromwell Penetration near 135 Penetration mid 120 Penetration far 105
T-34/76 Penetration near 120 Penetration mid 100 Penetration far 80

(Things get even worse when it comes to penetration if one compares PzIV H to allied premiums.)

I most cases allied mediums have better penetration.

My Sherman pen goes 140/120/100.
But apart from that, the raw pen value is pretty misleading. We should compare pen chances against a certain target, for example against other stock mediums.
OST P4 has ~70% pen chance against Sherman/Cromwell at range 20, it's 65% the other way around. The bigger the range, the better the P4s perform, at lower ranges P4 and Sherman/Cromwell become pretty much similar (all calculated with "my" penetration stats of Sherman).
This system sounds alright considering the slightly lower price for Sherman/Cromwell.

Not sure if smoke for UKF is needed, but then again I have not played them since Tommies were nerfed, so take everything I say with a little grain of salt:

If smoke is necessary, I'd rather see it on the engineers. UKF engineers are very decent in combat and it would add to the combined arms approach of the early game.
The obvious problem with that is that the engineers usually come in the late-early/early-mid game, so OST could have already gained too much ground for too little investment (don't know how sincere the problem is at the moment). This could be circumvented by MP buf for T1 with MP nerf for T2, Tommies or engineers, neglecting other side effects like earlier sniper and AT gun.

Also, since there is a current discussion about UC buff:
Maybe give UC a smoke shell? There is no animation for it, but I mean the gunner could just throw a shell.

Scaling doesn't necessarily mean vet. Weapon upgrade (for that sweet dps concentration and dps boost through munition), nades, snares, AT, resilient to late game wipes, utility, cover creation, reinforce cost, reinforce speed, etc.

Penals are a great option early mid and fall flat on the later stages of the game, specially if you have to rebuild them. Conscripts are the completely opposite of them. PF are basically a middle ground between those two.

I tested Penal fighting power todaz vs Grens and also a bit vs Volks.
They do very well, win most fights with ~3 models (sometimes 2, a little less often also 4) both in and out of cover at least when at range 20+ (have not tested below that except for running Volks into Penals from range 30). I tested vanilla Penals vs Volks/Gren vet 0, vet 3 and with Volks/Gren weapon upgrade at vet 0 and 3.

I think Penal scaling criticism might come down partially to over exaggeration. The other part are true factors like lack in utility/reinforce cost etc.

Don't call people stupid that exasily - it's not nice. I play allies a lot and know well what I'm writing about. I only reply to anti ost threads because most players love to boost allies and pretend not to see that. Ost players just don't defend themselves and allies will soon turn ostheer into a faction that nobody will play with in 1v1.

I always pay attention to never direct something like this towards the person itself and I criticized the argument. I also rarely use words like "stupid", but in this case the argument is pretty much objectively wrong and unreasonable. Everyone says wrong stuff from time to time, but nevertheless one should think critically about his own argument as well. If people don't do that, they must be called out on that.

I also differ from your mindset that the community is generally divided into Axis and Allies that blindly want to buff only their faction without second thought. OST got decent and well needed buffs in the last patches which where supported by the community. The faction is in a very good spot right now, both balance wise and considering the amount of different play styles that are viable. There are always some units that could need slight changes, but all in all the OST rooster has now become one of the best ones in the sense that every stock unit is usable and most of them in all game modes. We currently can't say that about any other faction in the game.