Hi Brian, I'm afraid I don't know the answers to most of your questions there, other than if Flow will bend the links, which it sounds like you've already figured out that it will by default unless you enable the "rigid" mode. The rigid mode only does a move and rotation of the objects to be flowed instead of fully deforming the shape. It basically just flows one sample point at the center of the object's bounding box. With something that needs to be placed somewhat precisely like the 2 ends of a chain link it may not quite do exactly what you need though.

- Michael