Going into MP23 I knew something's funky and didn't exactly know how it worked, but during gameplay I noticed some "truths". Flanking often feels delayed, sticky and dependent on supply, none of which is obvious from the description! Though only now I did some additional tests and some look at scripting\policies\FLANKING.focs.txt and I got even deeper understanding than from MP23 (probably should've done those tests during the match to use that better against wobbly )
My guess is weirdness in how flanking works comes mostly from two things:
- Funkiness with "Stationary" test that I think evaluates True unless you were on a star lane previous turn, which has unintended consequence that it stays true even if you moved, as long as you finished in a star system rather than on a starlane
- I gather it needs supply to adjust damage up, similarly to getting bonus damage from technology
- The "Stationary" part is essentially one turn delayed. It doesn't work on ships that have just arrived into the system, at least from "midflight" i.e. not directly from another system. Presumably the "Stationary" test is not "True" for these ships yet. So you lose the bonus if you end your turn on a starlane.
- However, the bonus sticks with your fleet as long as you are doing single hops without in-between flight that puts you on a starlane. It's on for fights at the destination and stays with you as long as you are left with more ships than enemies. My guess is there is "funkiness" in "Stationary" condition as mentioned above. Even a single ship is boosted next turn if it stays in a system and other ships fly away, or if it singlehandedly one-hops into an enemy. Though such single ship keeps the bonus only for the fight and loses it later (if it survives to tell the day); if you're left with fewer ships than enemy, they will lose that bonus as well. But if they keep it, they don't need supply to keep it
- Ah yeah, the "Stationary" part doesn't turn on for a single ship in a system. Not obvious/mentioned but fine in hindsight, hard to flank on your own though arguably not impossible (stealth attack - oh yeah maybe flanking should interact with stealth and make it even more powerful, but I digress)
- Otherwise you need supply to get the bonus. Once you lose it (entering mid-lane or system with more enemy ships), you need supply to regain it, you won't get it back even if you start having superior numbers but outside of supply.
- The pincer manouver actually works on the turn of arrival, however only if there was supply access, making whole pincer business even less useful than it sounds. And next turn it's taken over by "Stationary" bonus if you stay around, so at least if you lost supply there and then, you'd keep the bonus through the "Stationary" test that keeps your damage/attacks up. So pincer can work just outside your supply but not deeper into the enemy territory, meanwhile the "Stationary" part would work deeper as long as you were one-hopping not to lose the "Stationary" condition
You can observe it for example turn 204 in MP23 before I rammed my ships into wobbly. Regardless of how many ships I would ram into wobbly, I would have the Flanking bonus (so e.g. my arc disruptors would take 5 shots each
Pincer is harder to set up, I was playing with it in single player but could be tested with same savegame from MP23 if my smaller fleet would be given chance to get from behind. The ships that come from within supply would get the bonus (mind to lose the "stationary" bonus to test it), while the ships that came from behind would not get the bonus. Still something, I guess