I've been playing since beta, so many memories of things tweaked and changed over the years...
I can't recall though - Why have Conscripts never been treated like the core infantry they are? The Penals have lost their flavour as well as a sensible game role lately. If light AT is such an issue why not open up a single anti-tank rifle option on Cons, locked behind the AT grenade or something.Or even on Engineers. Allow Penals to be the demo-charge-lobbing, good medium range anti-infantry suicide squads they ought to be. Leave the flamethrower off of them if need be.
That functionality was reserved for being packaged into a sellable commander. Much like most of the much needed components of the stock armies: reserved for DLC.
The old 270 mp Penals were perfect for being a doctrinal unit. The old old 360mp Penals were devastating, although the the 3+ second command delay made their satchels pretty strong back then too.
The AT satchel functionality was a great addition for Penals, though it probably always needed to be locked behind an upgrade. (It also made PTRS unnecessary.) My personal suggestion was to merge molotovs and AT nades into a single grenade package. Penal Satchels and Engineer Demo charges would then be locked behind a new demolitions package upgrade to replace the open slot at the HQ.
There's been plenty of changes to this game, but very few of them have managed to scratch what makes this game such a problem child for being competitive.