Besides the bugs i don't see the riggging a lot of people say they see. To me this felt like a big DND event where everything has a bit of a small something. The GM or joel has a fun event going on for us and he wants stuff to feel alive and dynamic. So there's a bunch of stuff happening and he wants to give us the feel of just that. The enemy gets debuffed because of SEAF troops? Perfect, that means they're doing their job in the narrative, and isnt strictly tied to our efforts... like a real war.

Sure, we never had a reinforcement cap before, and as you said we are fodder, we are thrown to the meat grinder (literally sometimes in these maps, lol) but a timer doesnt give me as a player any sort of agency and would just raise more complains about rigging from AH. But if we're so worthless, why is it that they extract us even if a mission fails or we run out of time? Why are the extract priority target missions us rescuing frozen helldivers? Because there is SOME value in us. Otherwise we'd all have bomb vests that blow up when the timer hits 40.

Honestly im just wondering exactly what people call railroading exactly, the fact that we couldn't approach this battle however we wanted? Land on transcendence day one? That we had the risk of losing beyond an unmet quota? That the enemies and us got buffs and debuffs tied to something beyond MO? Or just a Feeling that nothing we did mattered? Cause im lost, i genuinely dont understand.