Remember how Baby Mario cried if you didn’t protect him in Yoshi’s Island? That was done to encourage more intelligent play. This is even more true in Pikmin. Unless you have mastered the game, you WILL lose some of your squad, and it is never not haunting. You might blame the AI when they get stuck under a bridge or stand in the shadow of a Wollyhop, but even these moments can be circumvented with better planning and skill. I lost many hundreds of Pikmin on my first playthrough, enough to where I wanted to do a second one. Here, I was able to reduce my losses by more than half and beat my day record by an entire week. The time limit guarantees the world never revolves around you, but even the smallest changes in strategy will make a huge difference.