Planning

As you finished filling in the details you pulled up the map of where most of the fighting would take place. The area around the town. It was mostly untapped forests that had been put down to aid in the terraforming efforts. Fighting in the woods was always a risky proposition. Sierra was the first person to speak up as everyone examined the map.

"Well this is going to be tricky." She said before making a square around the town where the growth was cleared for 200 meters in order to prevent roots from causing issues. "This is the perimeter we have to defend. The enemy is going to be able to come at us in strength from each direction. The woods will hamper their movement, but they'll also conceal it." She said studying the map carefully. "If we just sit back and wait for them they'll be able to whittle our forces down with raids and infiltration strikes. We'll get some of them too but they'll be the ones picking the fights. I don't like that."

"I agree. I think our best bet is to work an active defense. Send out patrols, intercept the enemies, set ambushes, then try to find their main body and **** an engagement." Baila suggested, "We have the town as a secure command hub, as long as we can keep the momentum on our side we'll win through attrition."

"Unless the enemy is better at our strategy than we are. If we set up in the town our patrols will have to cross an open field before getting out into the woods. If we haven't cleared out all enemy observers, they'll be intercepted easily. Plus even if it works we'll suffer moderate casualties." Tess pointed out. "If instead we set up a heavy perimeter with quick reaction forces in the center of town the enemy would have to attack and we'd be able to respond to any breaches."

"That goes back to my first point. If we do that the enemy can launch an attack on all sides. We'd have to respond to all of them but they could easily make one significantly stronger than the others. We would have to guess which one that was and if we guess wrong we'll be overrun." Sierra pointed out.

"But if we guess right the enemy will be badly battered. Its the best way to **** a quick end to this, if we win we can revive our downed. They can't. They'll probably be too weakened afterwards to launch another attack so they'll have to leave or we'll be able to go out in **** to mop them up." Tess countered,

"Good point but if we're wrong there will no way for us to retreat without a breakout. Even if we manage that most of our forces will be lost. I admit this plan would end the battle the quickest but not necessarily in our favor."

Amelia chose that moment to jump in zooming out the map a bit. "We could do a bit of everything. If we deploy small elements out to the woods to act independently, say, platoon strength. They'd be able to launch patrols and engage the enemy without having to worry about being spotted on their way out. It puts them at risk of being defeated in detail but if they play it smart they could cause a lot of damage. If we keep that up then they'll have to **** a fight on our terms."

You looked around the room, nodding carefully to acknowledge all that was said before finally speaking up. "All right, here's what we'll do."