Flanking does happen in the game, whether its to flank an MG / defensive position or just to negate cover. Maybe some players will run a blob of infantry into an mg, but not everyone is like that. Lack of flanking due to poor play / skill isn't an issue of the game, its an issue of the player.
I also don't think you can comment on things such as Rifles smoke grenade without playing the Alpha because you have no clue how it even works or how the faction it self works. The only people that would be able to comment are unable to due to NDA.
Relic and especially their balance dev peter are so afraid of hurting the precious feelings of russians and their wannabes here on the forums they made Soviets a cake walk to win
The campaign did paint the Soviets as saints in WW2 afterall.....
To all the people saying the Panther is a terrible unit, its because you are still trying to use it as it was before, where you could charge into danger and blitz out without much risk. Stop thinking you can do that and actually learn how to reuse the panther.
As you know, penetration is now dependant on range. If you keep the Panther at much longer range, it will bounce far more shots than if a tank is in its face. Also remember it has more range than other tanks, so you can make excellent use of this. Make good use of reverse and you can take on 2 T34's and win. Its also not that bad against infantry considering soviets lack proper infantry based AT. Turret MG helps quite a bit as well as giving it limited AA.
It could probably use a slight cost reduction, but I think its more of an issue to do with the Tiger performing so well for its cost.