Guadalcanal Campaign

[DCunningham]

I am playing the Guadalcanal campaign daily as the Allies vs the Japanese AI. Currently I am at the September 1, 1942 turn. Reinforcements are arriving in Noumea. I have assembled a TF to transport troops to Lunga. However, I am unable to load these troops on to the transports. I have set each of these units to Strategic Movement, but none of them appear in the list of available units to load onto ships. I suspect this is due to the HQ they are assigned to: the Reserve HQ based in Noumea but I am not sure. What am I doing wrong and how do I correct the problem?

[Platoonist]

Yes, most U.S. land reinforcements which arrive in that scenario are attached to the restricted South Pacific Rear Area HQ (R) and will have to be purchased out with political points. If a HQ has an (R) after it's name it's restricted. Since political points seem to trickle in at only 30 a day in that scenario, you likely won't have enough to pay for every unit. When you have enough accumulated to pay for a unit attach them to unrestricted HQs (like the US I Amphib. Corps), and then they should display on the TF load screen and be able to embark.

[BBfanboy]

And you need a Transport TF to load troops that are in Strategic Move mode. But really, if you are going to Lunga with the Japanese able to interdict the landing you should have your troops in Combat Mode so they can be loaded in an Amphibious TF. And don't skimp on the number of ships you use - you want to get the the troops landed and vamoose quickly with your precious APs and AKs. Lunga port is not big enough to dock ships loaded as Transport TF which means very poor unload rates.

And finally, load some smaller xAKs in an Amphibious TF with supply only and then combine them with the troop transports, so the newly arriving troops will have some beans and bullets.
You might also need to sneak in some small supply xAKLs that are able to dock at Lunga to keep up with the demand for supply, especially once aircraft start operating from there.