[arkhangelsk]

Originally Posted by Avatar_notADV

RF6's always had something of a weird force structure - three obscenely heavy hitters, a couple of pretty good fighters, and a few make-weights (better than what they're rated, but not even in the same league as the others.)

You've got that part right.

This means that disposing of them according to traditional military convention is stupid - if there's a threat on the battlefield that requires a Nanoha or a Hayate to counter, then none of the forwards have any business being in the area at all. Conversely, sending Nanoha or Fate after something that Subaru or Teana can handle is a waste of resources - swatting flies with a sledgehammer.

The first part is correct. The 2nd part here is incorrect. If you insist on a "positional" defense, handling the problems in parallel, then yes that's the best possible positional defense (which is why it is less mind-numbingly stupid than Ep17, which is probably why we waited till Ep21 and saw them getting beat up before we started to really groan), but the correct solution is really a mobile strategy.

Sending Nanoha and Fate to help the Forwards is not a waste. Their presence tilts the deck so massively that the situation will be resolved in seconds with minimal expenditure by all our heroines (not just the aces) instead of dragging on in uncertainty. Overkill speeds up actions.

Keep in mind there's four "fronts", as it were - stopping Numbers, attacking Scag, confronting Cradle, killing drones. They're not mutually-supporting in that anyone doing one of the tasks will be unavailable to help out on the others. (Not true for Jail's fronts - the Cradle will presumably Do Something Bad if it gets where it's going, whatever the Numbers are going after must be important, and ignoring the drones means they'll go shoot up your other teams - not so good, overall.)

Handle it in sequence using fast teleportation redeployment, not parallel, then. Inadequate CoF means slow advance rates and heavy casualties on all fronts. Good CoF means quick, easy victories, leaving you nearly fresh for everything else. When you split up too much, you think you are handling everything but you are in fact handling nothing or at best handling it poorly.

If you insist on teleportation being power intensive despite absolutely no evidence of it, then use Shamal who's just about healed to do the transports - she transported the sodding mass that was the Book of Darkness - a few humans can't be that bad.