Not as useless as Panzergrenadiers with panzershrecks.
On the otherhand, pansershreck panzergrenadiers are very effective againts tanks.
You have to be a complete moron to lose any kind of tank to PTRS unists. Now while i do understand the developers intention here, the PTRS penal upgrade is simply *not* going to be used under any circumstances.
PTRS at best can scare away light vehicles, you have to fuck up REALLY hard to even lose a light vehicle to PTRS. Hell, conscript AT nades are better than PTRS most of the time.
Againts medium and heavy armour there is no debate, it's 100% useless.
Guards were completely useless when PTRS did no damage to infantry, penal PTRS upgrade is going to be exactly the same if it doesnt do anything to infantry.
What makes the panzershreck powerful is it's initial damage burst, you can fire once and retreat, and avoid taking MP losses.
With PTRS you have to stand still and get shredded by the tank, taking MP losses while the tank can just repair all the damage for no cost. Hence, PTRS againts tanks is useless, because you never kill anything, only do some damage while taking heavy MP losses.
M3 with ptrs penals might be ok, but since M3 flamer has been heavily nerfed and is basically useless now (doesn't do any damage), it's fallen off the meta completely. And even if M3 was viable, then you're better of getting guards for the FREE PTRS and using those munis on much more useful flamers/mines that can actually do something.
I do understand where you guys are going here, but believe me, it's just not going to work. Nerfing snipers, guards, as well as penals is just going to throw soviet T1 out of the meta completely. It will be either t2 or conspam again.
Either the PTRS penals need to do actual damage vs tanks, have increased range, or do damage vs infantry.
Aside from that the upgrade is going to be completely useless.
Other than that the changes are decent, i guess.