ORIGINAL: GreyJoy
Don't know guys...
In my game against QBall (DBB 30, PDU ON, Realistic RnD ON) in Jan 1944 I was producing:
322 Frank KI-84r (had produced a huge number of Frank-a too)
250 George N1K2
200 Jack J2M5
170 A6M5
205 KI-43 IV
170 KI-44 IIc
60 KI-45a
Also it's not just about fighters... with PDU OFF the bomber sector is possibly even more involved in the changements...
In a normal PDU ON game, I basically transform, by 1943, the IJN bomber army in a mass of Frances and G3M3 (Nells), using the Nells just for Nav Search and the Frances to hit (fast and armoured).
All the LBA 1E sentais are upgraded to Jills and Judies (no more Kates or Vals around).
The army bombers get steamlined into a big Air Army of Helens IIb that do a multi-function role (Air2Ground, Low Nav attacks, ASW, Kamikaze).
No more Sallies, Anns, Lilies, Idas, Sonias...
The Army 1E bombers are all converted to FB (Nicks and, later on, KI-102b)
That doesn't mean the allies cannot win. They can win. But they simply can't achieve anything close to what happened in RL.
I perfectly understand (and agree) that PDU OFF is frustrating cause you cannot change the bad decisions taken in RL.
Probably, the best way to deal with this problem, is to create a scenario that modifies most of those stupid upgrade paths, so that the Jap player will still be forced to disperse his production among several models, but not taking from him the possibility to get, sooner or later, to a decent plane even for those sentais that are damned to fly Sonias, Anns or Marys throughout the whole war
I agree with Nik in the basic premise that PDU ON and PDU OFF both have problems.
PDU ON has gotten to the point that good players like Nik in Scenario 2 can acheive air superiority throughout most of the war. I preferred PDU ON until good players have learned to push Japanese production to the max, resulting in hordes of good aircraft, while the Allies are stuck with limited numbers of competitive planes.
I think an ideal game would be PDU ON, but with some sort of limitation to prevent such a massive R&D program. Paying PPs, or a more flexible PDU OFF that allows all units to upgrade to Frank, for example, if you upgrade to Oscar III or whatever, that would at least force you to advance at a slower pace
