Sort of. The Alpha rules were instigated by positional and rule imbalances in the OOB Pacific game. The pacific setup in Alpha 3 is more or less the final derivation of the Pacific setup redux from over 2 years ago, including changes to the number of planes that can scramble from an airbase, the inclusion of the FIC peacetime bonus, and the limitation of Major IC’s to originally controlled territories. This Pacific setup (pre-Alpha) was more or less “Official” and was meant to ammend OOB rules and replace the Pacific half of the Global OOB setup with the new varient
The setup then morphed to address concerns with the Global setup (the first Alpha), as it was decided that it was more important to address global imbalances that had come to light and that this setup (Alpha) would also transfer to the theater games.
However, it seems that this hasn’t been widely accepted, mainly as any use in the theater games would need playtesting and the bulk of effort in playtesting was done only on the global game.
You SHOULD use alpha, as it IS a replacement of the theater setups. However, it’s my personal belief that while the revised Alpha setup and rules are likely close to balanced in the Theater games (particularly eliminating the J3 India crush that was the instigator of all this), I do not think that the Alpha rules dealt adequately with the US national Objectives on the Pacific board.
They appear to be proportionally equally reduced in the Europe Theater and the Global game from OOB to Alpha, but Pac saw a HUGE shift, and I think the Pac game might need to keep OOB objectives if there isn’t a Alpha Pac only objective to represent the West US bump.
