Why do people keep bringing up assault grens when the suggestion in the first place wasn't because Ost lacked cqc options, but rather the fact that Ostruppen (and only ostruppen) have absolutely no counters to Hit the Dirt, which is a completely free ability?
Osttruppen should be supplement for grens, not replacement, so rifle nade them.
Attacking at range is also an option as cons with that ability do literally nothing at long range, while osttrupen are quite accurate in cover at all ranges.
The point in the first place was giving Ostruppen the option to swap all their long-range dps at BP2 to be a squad that's practically 6 pioneer models' worth of dps with the ability to grenade while keeping their negative RA modifiers.
Or you could just build PGs.
It has nothing to do with overlapping with assault grens because while they both use MP40s, Ostruppen are inherently far more inferior in quality, have to pay for their upgrade, and have to wait for BP2 for said upgrade.
And by that time, cqc squad with pio fragility is of no relevance, just like pios and other non brit/okw engineers, so what's the point of introducing something that is useless?
It is, for all intents and purposes, the ability to pay munis for a 6-man pioneer squad with none of the abilities of a pioneer except for building trenches and bunkers, and the ability to throw a simple stick grenade.
Then why won't you get another pioneer squad instead?
Received accuracy of osttruppen makes them as durable as 4 man squad against anything except snipers anyway.
You can't rush them like assault grens because they can't sprint. They're muni-hungry if you rely on grenades and they're overall more fragile than regular Ostruppen because while they share the same negative RA, they need to get close and take more damage just so they can even do damage.
That still does sound like something completely useless and already present in form of regular pioneers.
All this, so that ppsh conscripts can't just oorah right next to their faces and Hit the Dirt and kill enough models to force an early retreat- And only if you chose the MP40 rather than the LMG.
Again, PGs.