This new stand alone release based on the legendary War in the Pacific from 2 by 3 Games adds significant improvements and changes to enhance game play, improve realism, and increase historical accuracy. With dozens of new features, new art, and engine improvements, War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition brings you the most realistic and immersive WWII Pacific Theater wargame ever!
Good to know as I have never played with PDU Off so I was under the impression that damage was prevented as well. But being able to freely switch Prod to R&D and back freely is still a huge deal to me so would never play with it off even as Japan as I think it really can unbalance the game.
You can't switch back to production without damage. See Lowpe's post in his AAR after he tried it. It goes one way only - from production to R&D, and it has to be to the next model.
That appears to be all that Realistic R&D Off does, other than expand the list of models you can change factories to.
Don't mean to hijack the thread but we seem to have traveled that path already so as it stands I am pretty confused on what exactly Realistic R&D actually does.
Based on the last few posts I gather that if the Realistic R&D is switched OFF, then:
a) if the Japanese player changes an aircraft production or R&D factory to any other type, and if that type is not in the upgrade path of the selected factory, then that factory will be damaged; and
b) when the Japanese player changes an R&D factory to production status, that factory is then damaged.
According to the manual above.
On - default
AC factory in Prod can only be changed to another plane type that is also in Prod.
AC factory in R&D can only be changed to another plane type that is also in R&D
Off
AC factory in Prod can be changed to any plane type whether in Prod OR R&D. Or visa versa. In other words AC factories can freely switch between Prod and R&D at any time desired by the player.
In BOTH cases switching factory AC types for AC that are NOT in the proper upgrade path WILL cause damage to the factories. While switching factories of AC that ARE in the proper upgrade path will NOT cause damage.
As an example Tojo IIa, b, c
You have a in Prod and b/c in R&D say 30 AC/factory. So 30 a, 30b, 30c. All fully repaired.
With Realistic R&D Off you could ...
Assign the 30 in Prod for a into research for b with no damage to the factories since it is the next model in the line. So now you would have 2 R&D factories of 30 each (total of 60) reseaching the b model. However switching one of these back to Prod for the a version WOULD cause damage since you are going backwards versus forward in the model sequence. So now you can research the b model at twice the rate as before so you would get it twice as early. So instead of 7/43 maybe 11/42.
However the major issue is that you when you switch factories from R&D to Prod, they now repair at 1/day versus the much slower rate of normal R&D. So in the example above, once you got the b model, you could switch as many Prod factories as you wanted to the b version, wait for them to fully repair if needed, then switch ALL of them to the c model R&D with no damage and fully functional towards research. So just imaging this with long plane paths like the Oscars, Zeros, etc. and see how fast you could get the top of the line planes with this being Off.
This is why I think it breaks the game. Get a bunch of Zero factories fully repaired at the start of the game, switch them to the next model as R&D factories with no damage incured, and see how early you can get advanced AC. You could easily have 100+ R&D factories researching an advance AC type like the Zero within a few months of the game start.
I hope this helps [:)]
