Something to lift the mood

[GabeKnight]

I found this and had to repost, it's hilarious and sums up my first (and second) experience with this mission at the same time. He's talking about US Pacific DLC, scenario "Guadalcanal":

Is it just me or is it (other than in the Japanese campaign) often neccessary to actively disobey your orders if you want to achieve some secondary goals in the US campaign?
[...]
Then in the next scenario you defend an airfield under construction for 35 turns and only are allowed to go on the offensive for the remaining 15 turns - there's no chance in hell to reach the secondary objective cities all the way across the map in that timeframe. Maybe with paratroopers, but I still haven't been able to afford any.
The only way I see to succeed is to disobey your initial hold-the-ground orders and start marching some troops westward right away and try to defend the airfield with a skeleton force.
Since there's a ton of japanese attacking, this might be kinda tricky, but I can't see any alternative ('cept Paras).
[...]
1st Scenario designer: Let's hit the player with a 100% numerically superior japanese attack. *chuckles*
2nd Scenario designer: Are you crazy? Let's make that 300%. *mad laughter*
1st Scenario designer: Right! And let's hit his navy with a superior japanese navy as well.
2nd Scenario designer: But what if he somehow overcomes the odds and could use them for defensive bombardment?
1st Scenario designer: Yeah, that's a concern. Let's just take his fleet away from him no matter how well he does!
2nd Scenario designer: Hilariously devious. You know what, how about we give him back his fleet peacemeal eventually, and then ...
1st Scenario designer: ... then, right when he feels he might use them to support his defense, we spawn in a huge fleet with a battleship and all.
2nd Scenario designer: Hehe, exactly. And then we give him three transports with marines and tell him to use them to capture faraway objectives he couldn't even reach in time at full speed.
1st Scenario designer: And then we spawn another huge fleet with a battleship and all in his path so he can never make it.
2nd Scenario designer: But what when he somehow manages to dispose of the first battleship fleet and thus can cover his transports?
1st Scenario designer: Ah, I dunno. Let's just copypaste a bit and spawn in another of them battleship fleets for good measure.
...

Original thread: Fantastic game - here's my first impressions

[Horst]

Yesss, this describes very well how this tough-as-nails mission was most likely designed. I haven't played it for some time, but remember it too well, as we all possibly had a PTSD thanks to this scenario. Who didn't wake up in the middle of the night after this: "the arriving Jap fleet screws all my units, noooooo!"
I just recently played Marines where Guadalcanal is such a joke compared to the Pacific campaign version. Pacific-Guadalcanal is even more stressful than the early Piatek mission of the PzC campaign.

[Andy2012]

Reminds me of this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ziXpIPAhD4

[Mojko]

I would also like to add that if you attack the town to the east you will capture a Japanese light AT gun. Sounds good, right? It's actually terrible because at this point you will not have enough supplies and this will put your whole army to under-supplied state which makes the scenario impossible to win. This is the only scenario where I wasn't able to complete all secondary objectives on middle difficulty.

[conboy]

I would also like to add that if you attack the town to the east you will capture a Japanese light AT gun. Sounds good, right? It's actually terrible because at this point you will not have enough supplies and this will put your whole army to under-supplied state which makes the scenario impossible to win. This is the only scenario where I wasn't able to complete all secondary objectives on middle difficulty.

I thought the secondary objectives in that scenario were put there just to make the map look better.

conboy

[GabeKnight]

True, even the "shoot down x planes" secondary obj. was very difficult to achieve if you didn't know beforehand that you'd probably need at least one AA and two fighters, instead of bombers, to succeed.
It was not until the third playthrough that I was finally able to complete all objectives in this scenario - on the very last turn! The fourth time around I even got there a couple of turns early and decided to wait on the outskirts until the Japanese leave the town on their own, rather than attacking . But I had to disobey my orders to "stand my ground" in any case!