Thank you for responding, I will address each paragraph in turn. To begin, would you be more specific? There are after all more Hard Times than there are ambushes, so do you mean to say than one should be used for any particular encounters? Seeing as one of the big fights is just a trainer fight is that a situation where Hard Times is intended to be used, since if so in my initial playthrough I did use one for each ambush and those fights. Though further elaboration leads into the next paragraph.
You cannot prevent it from backing you into a corner and forcing a loss if you cannot avoid it. This is why I was asking specifically for the "rate" you expect the player to go through. I would absolutely recommend playing the way the player does. To break down the combat from my experience:
1) For standard encounters you have one turn before they start building up submission (sub). If you defeat none that means they can catch you as early as that turn, but that is not usual. If you have 180 TP for three Hard Knocks there will most likely be one or two sub triggers on you, but the enemy will be down to one injured, and you can defeat them before they provoke a serve. If you can only afford two Hard Knocks (or miss multiple times with three) then one or two will survive and they will provoke a serve during your Focus or the following turn.
1.5) Either two or three standard fights are hard-coded to cause a stun on the beginning of your second turn, or its on some sort of invisible encounter timer. Didn't experiment much so don't know. Importantly its on "your" turn, interrupting your attack while all the enemies go as normal, and you take two turns to recover so that's three turns the enemy can do as they please, and since its the second turn that's when they begin building submission. Fortunately they can't hypno you even at 100 as long as you're stunned, but since you use a turn to lose daze they can just hypno you immediately following and provoke a serve. Either you use a Hard Times and take out one or two while you can, or you take the L.
2) Strikers, easiest to deal with since two basic mobs can't usually build submission faster than you can clear the encounter even with the Guard delays. Ideally you take out the basics since the striker never builds up.
3) Trainers. If you do not defeat the trainer on your second turn you will be made to serve. This requires hitting four hits (3/1, 1/3, 2/2) which is at a guess and incredibly low percentage chance. Hard Times reduces the odds considerably, but since that can miss-target or just plain miss as well it's not a guarantee.
4) Ambush. You will need a Hard Times to avoid serving, but from what I've experienced it's mostly safe after that as the subsequent Hard Knocks will take out enemies easily.
5) The final mob fight. If you do not have Hard Times it will be difficult to beat serving or otherwise, if its even possible (untested on my part). I used my Hard Times on the trainers and forgot to collect the one in the fridge so I was one short, though that wouldn't have helped much because...To avoid serving if you have one Hard Times you will need to reset many times since you absolutely need to defeat one of the strikers the first turn, low odds even with the extra attacks due to the extra spread. The strikers cannot do their combo a second time or it will be two late and Hard Knocks is too unlikely to finish them in the one turn you have to attack. With two a second Hard Times can decimate them.
6) Final boss. If you have somehow saved two Hard Times as I did through liberal resets then you can beat the boss without the musk item. It's possible that the final boss functions by HP thresholds so save your Hard Times until you hit 50-75% to maximize their value. With only one the musk item was used, but it came down to the wire.
Theoretically it would be possible to calculate exactly how many defeats the player will on average take based on mobs, but that does sound like a hassle. I wouldn't say it's excessive much since I was only on my second sub defeat in the soft lock.
Do you mean to say that regardless of my submission stacks it would have resulted in an instant defeat? If so I would say that's just going to far. You say its for players who "screwed up their item management", but from my experience it only takes a single mistake, which is a mistake the player has no way of knowing to avoid. I can go through the first game reliably without being defeated once. Conserving Hard Times I cannot see going through this without liberal resets and/or being pushed to the absolute brink, so even with item management the room for error is practically binary.