Missions end so soon

[Rangoon]

I'm about six or seven missions into the original, main CMSF campaign. One trend I have noticed is that the missions sometimes end quite a ways from my objectives. They might be major US victories, but I'm not even near my objectives sometimes.

I just finished a mission where I was supposed to advance across several phase lines, and (I think) reach a pump station and power station at the end of the map. The mission ended before I reached the final phase line and it gave me a "failure" X on the pump station and power station. I still had 25 minutes on the clock and it was called a victory. Well it would have been a better victory if the sim had just let me continue on a little longer.

I can understand if the enemy surrenders, then you stop fighting. But why in this case wouldn't it at least give me credit for reaching the stations if the enemy had surrendered? And sometimes the enemy surrenders with what still seems like a small army (not just a few ragged squads)?

I think I'm missing the translation from reality to this end-of-mission mechanic. Could someone help me understand this better?

[Kat Johnston]

If it's the mission I'm thinking of (everything with Normandy-inspired codenames, it's like they wanted to be playing something else that wasn't around... ), the pump station and power station are "preserve" objectives - at least, in the briefing it says they are - and so mustn't be heavily damaged or you won't get the points for them. If you'd "destroyed them in order to save them" that might explain it. Though ISTR hitting guys on the roof with Javelins and still getting the capture. ^^

[Erwin]

The more recently created CMSF missions are much better designed as the designers had gained a lot of experience with the CM2 system.