flanker

Flanker: two axes timed to arrive in the same tick window, to overrun the defender's two-interceptor-per-tick launch cap.

The idea being tested is a rate limit, not a geometry trick. A defender can commit at most 2 interceptors and 1 gun shot per tick, so what matters is not how many drones are in the air but how many arrive per tick. The attacker's own launch cap is 4 per tick, which puts a ceiling of 4 arrivals per tick on any single-axis attack however it is shaped.

Two axes with different path lengths break that ceiling. One wave takes a dogleg -- out to a waypoint beyond radar range, then in from a different bearing -- and the other flies direct from a third bearing, launched later by exactly the difference in flight time. Both waves then land in the same few ticks, at up to 8 arrivals per tick against a defence that can answer 2.

The dogleg wave flies an arc at spawn radius rather than a straight chord. A straight line from one bearing to another cuts inside: from 0 deg to 120 deg at radius 480 the chord passes within about 240 u of the asset, which is deep inside the 450 u radar, and the wave is tracked and destroyed for two hundred ticks before it ever arrives. That was measured, not assumed -- the chord version scored zero impacts against every active defender. Steering a few degrees around the circle each tick keeps the whole transit outside radar range.

The drones do not fan out to dodge blasts -- an earlier version did, and won nothing, because at a 10 u blast radius spreading buys little survivability and costs the concentration this idea depends on. But they are de-stacked by a couple of degrees, which is a different thing. Four drones launched on the same tick from the same bearing occupy identical coordinates, and a single interceptor then kills all four; the first version of this bot lost 6, 8 and 11 drones to single blasts that way. A 2.5 deg offset puts same-tick launches about 20 u apart at the spawn ring -- outside each other's blast radius -- while still landing inside the same arrival window.

Timing is computed from the rules rather than hard-coded, so it still holds if a later season changes speeds or ranges.