Alex and Victor's plan was simple: lure more troops from the Xister Kingdom Army into the encirclement.
Once the number of Xister Kingdom troops inside the encirclement reached a certain threshold, they would launch their counterattack at the right moment.
And their appetite certainly did not stop at the Xister Kingdom troops caught inside. Once they had devoured those forces, they would attack the kingdom's remaining troops outside the encirclement.
The second element they had laid the groundwork for would also come into play here. By allowing the Xister Kingdom's main force, snared within their net, to keep fighting longer, they would also give the Vela Navy time to fight a decisive battle against the enemy out at sea.
By now, virtually all the fleets of the Vela Navy had assembled. Their ship numbers had essentially returned to prewar levels, and even surpassed them.
Besides assembling its naval fleets, Vela had also mobilized large numbers of civilian vessels to accompany them as supply ships, enough to sustain the steam-powered fleet from Two Rivers County through a longer campaign.
This gave the Vela Navy confidence that it could fight a decisive battle against the combined fleets of the Xister Kingdom and the East Sea Alliance.
However, that combined fleet was simply too large. Even at its peak, the Vela Navy would have found it very difficult to defeat them outright.
But the Vela Navy's objective was not to crush the Allied Army's fleet completely. It only needed to inflict some damage, then tie down the entire enemy naval force so that it could no longer transport troops and supplies for the Xister Kingdom Army with impunity.
Initially, Alex and Victor had wanted to move more quickly. After all, they had no idea how long Vela could hold out against the East