Profile of Katitof

Ah. And this completely solves the resource density problem between armies such as 280 manpower rifleman with 120 muni upgrade capacity being pop-valued the same as 240 manpower 60 muni upgrade capacity grens?

Yes, because you have other units that can reduce them to dust.
If you were spamming grens vs rifles and thought you'll end up on top - that's not balance problem.

Or did you just ignore the whole sickly forest because you found one improving tree?

Not understanding something does not mean its broken.
You'll learn eventually, I believe in you.

It's great that USF can get around pop-cap. It's stupid that other factions are limited by it.

Its great that soviets can have 6 man squads. Its stupid that other factions are limited to 4-5.
Its great that OKW can put whole base outside of base sector and it gets utilities with it too. Its stupid other factions are limited here.
Its great that Ost has premium tier with semi-heavy tanks which are above anything else in performance. Its stupid other factions are limited here and have to choose only 1 unit or can't have it at all.
You catch my drift yet?

Also, again, read patch notes. USF will be severely punished for going over the pop.

Can anyone give me a justifying reason for hard pop-caps? Beyond performance issues?

Yes.
Army balance.
Economy balance.
Power cap(allowing comebacks).
Map presence.
Map balance.
Map size.
Encouragement of mixed armies.
Discouragement of one unit type spam(easily countered).

These are all together, and each individually why we have pop like we do.
Feel free to deflect and disregard them all if you wish, it will not make a single one any less valid.

but zis barrage does dish out burst damage, nearly unavoidable since it can range from 60.

Make up your mind, burst damage or 60 range?
Because both of these do not happen at the same time.
Also, it doesn't do any more burst then regular mortar barrage on preview mod, so you might want to update yourself.

Is the T34 being shitty also the reason why it got its price increased?

And if you argue that the T34 being bad was the reason for the existance of the call in meta, the only thing it proves is that you do not understand why the call in meta existed in the first place.

1) I never said T34 was bad, I said main gun was.
2) People used doctrinal 85 over it even after they were tied to tech, only after MG buffs it re-surfaced, in case you don't remember.

T-34/76 was given better mgs than other tanks to make up for the fact that it was delayed when it was moved to T4 in the 3 building soviet design around 5 year ago.

This is false.
The tank was simply underpowered regardless of timing.
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(probably because people used in T-34/76 performance where wondering why KV-1 mg are worse)

This is false, misleading assumption again.

KV-1 having same gun as 76 suffered the same problems dealing with infantry.
MGs were brought up to 76 level to discourage infantry getting near it.

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I think Kubel vet requirements should be decreased, it never reach vet 5 and it is useless in most of the cases in mid/late game.

I think the vet 5 suppression will make it more useful in late game but it is very hard if not impossible to reach vet 5 with Kubel currently.

Kubel has shared vet.
Use it in combination with any other unit and watch it get vet5 in no time.