Profile of Aerohank

As I have point out to you light gammon bomb are similar to bundle grenade and that is simply not enough to make the assault office a great unit. You are using the bundle grenade as justification for everything from zis barrage to need to buff Penal and that is simply not the case.

I never said that any grenady by itself makes a unit worth getting so I don't know why you keep bringin it up.

Penals and Zis3 are from tech tiers which are 90% of the time used in exclusion of eachother, so it's perfectly fair that both tiers have parallels to the bundle nade - which is always available to Ost/OKW regardless of tech path.

Now try to use a move vet 0 Pg to bundle grenade range vs late game allied units and see what happens.

This might be news to you, but units can actually be used for other manouvers besides straight up cover V cover fights on the testing map. The tactical possibilities that units provide are calculated into their costs - which is why a infantry squad and a HMG are the same manpower price despite the fact that the HMG will always win an A-move simulation fight.

Can the bundle grenade help a Pg vet? Yes it can under certain circumstance but claiming it is a reliable way of doing it is simply stretching it.

Bundle nades are reliable and are enough of a justification to make Pgrens lategame when you need to replace infantry squads. This is not a reach. Most infantry units have some form of this justification, others may have snares for example. This doesn't mean that the fresh units will dominate the field.

So Penal can not beat vanilla grenadier and vanilla VGs?

That's not what I said. I said Penals are balanced for tech and unit cost. When Volks get more expensive and cost 160mp in early game tech before you can make them you can make this dumb 1 squad v 1 squad argument again.

Penal opening where overpowered and dominant for years now they have simply powercreeped from the more more powerful conscript opening (while unable to deal with Osttr caping power).

And this will continue to be the case as long as their two mainline infatry available with their current designs. One will simply be superior to other and buffing one or the other will solve nothing while it will crate more power creep.

Problem remain T1/Penal design.

If penals were overpowered but powercreeped by Conscripts, then logically either Soviets are super OP right now OR each faction has powercreeped to the point where they can stand up to the conscripts, which defacto makes penals UP in the here and now - the only time that matters. Since Soviets aren't winning any tournaments in the here and now I'm going to go with the second option.

Your opinion that penals and conscripts cant co-exist is getting old. Soviet T1 and T2 are exclusive in the early/mid-game and offer different playstyles. There is no reason why they both can't be viable paths. You seemed very much into split techs instead of simple linear tech paths so I don't know why you are so against the idea.

And it harder to lose a Penal squad with 6 entities and to the last ability than a 4 man squad like PG.

In order to get into grenade range or even mid range for ST44 Pg lose entities that more expensive the Penal models.

As I point the grenade is simply not enough to make a unit successful.

If you think that getting a penal squad lategame is as an effective investment as a Pgren squad then I'll let you live in fantasy land.

My point with this was that, even with current design, Penals don't need an additional weapon upgrade or similar to boost their DPS. A Penal squad right out of the barracks is about as good as other mainline infantry with their weapon upgrade purchased. And no one complains about other mainlines being too weak if you rebuild them.
Conscripts on the other hand suffered a lot before Mobilized reserves, because both DPS and survivability were bad at vet0. Even cheap Conscripts were bleeding you heavily because it took them ages to get vet 2 due to low damage. All of this got adressed with Mobilized Reserves.

Saying that old Conscripts and Penals suffer the same problems and need the same treatment is in my opinion straight up wrong.

Penals firepower is all they bring to the table. Their firepower alone doesn't really do anything if you bring them in fresh during the lategame. Most other infantry squads have some alternative ability that make the units usefull even when they are at low vet. Pgrens get nuke grenades, conscripts have snares etc. These abilites are good enough to justify the bleed you are going to get from them when they face vetted troops. Penals on the other hand have a short range nade with 3 second fuse which is cool for youtube clips but are easily completely dodged by anyone slightly awake. So there isn't really a reason to get them lategame as they are now.

It's weird how people are so against this idea when this is also the literal way that the maxim is being handled this patch. A unit that only performs in accordance with its MP cost if you keep feeding muni into it.

No, the Maxim definitely should not be buffed. Everything has to be done to prevent Maxim spam from becoming a thing again. It's already pretty commonly used in 3v3/4v4 and is a strong strategy despite the individually poor performance of the Maxim. There are way too many lane maps like Whiteball Express, Redball Express etc. that just make it WAY too easy to lock down the entire map with MGs.

If we are going to balance the game around the dumbest 4v4 maps in the game... what are your proposed nerfs to the JT, elephant and MG42?