I've been exploring Flanking companions a lot more with my second "main" pirate. Flanking requires movement to work. It seems to trigger when a melee unit with Flanking moves to the opposite side of an enemy from an allied melee unit, or if an enemy moves into an already-flanked square.

I'd thought there was an update to Flanking awhile back that would let it work when a Flanking unit pairs up with any other allied unit - that a Flanking Monkey King could move across from Bonnie Anne or Old Scratch and flank just as well as if he'd moved across from Ratbeard or El Toro - but I've only been able to get it to trigger when paired with other melee units. Is that a bug, or am I misremembering that update?

My second question is, how does Flanking 2 work compared to regular Flanking? My Inoshishi swashbuckler has Flanking 2, I'd thought that meant he would double-flank and get 2 additional attacks when he moved to flank - but I can still only get it to trigger once per turn.

Could someone please clear this up for me? I feel like Flanking is often overlooked and I'd like to be able to use it more effectively.

As for your first question, I think you misremembered. Although, when they did change the flanking mechanics it wasn't included in any update notes.

Careless Chris Eas... on Feb 15, 2013 wrote:

Flanking Dynamics:

In order to maximize your flanking abilities you have to move your characters around and through your enemies, simply staying in one spot and hoping the enemy walks into a flanking position is not going to be enough to get full use of the flanking talent.

I have learned flanking is very hard to maneuver on small battle areas most commonly with battles on ships and narrow paths on land as the flanking talent requires 3 diagonal squares to activate. Thats right! 3 diagonal squares.

Careless Chris Eastwick
Level 50 Musketeer
Swashbuckler in Training

Any three squares will do. As long as you line up MELEE<>ENEMY<>MELEE you'll be fine.

They can be in a straight line, too.