You know how regular combat in the game attacks the player characters.
But there are some things that "attack" players. Like the death of their character involves the player doing things they dislike, like start with
a new character that has fewer levels, fewer connections, less money, or incurs some other loss. Another "attack" I sometimes experience is when character creation takes a very long time. Then fear of character death
turns into fear of replacement character creation.
If the party is powerful and the opposition is strong but clearly less powerful, then frontal assaults "work" but at the same time the session
only lasts for a certain number of hours and endless fighting killing
many dozens of goblins turns out to be somewhat boring.
Similarly, countless waves of weak opposition are boring and sap away
time. These are challenges that attack player entertainment somewhat
like character death or long character creation, I feel.
If it is clear that the opposition is no match for a party I don't see anything wrong in cutting the fight short, maybe making it less about
every single roll, but having the attacks determine how long and with
what effort or expense they manage the fight.
It depends on the situation, but if a fight drags on too long and new
forces arrive this might change the tides of the fight. If there is no
help coming and no problem, maybe just roll for some appropriate damage
for the PCs and cut the whole thing short.
You want to keep the game moving.
While I am also into the simulation aspect of the game, sometimes the
time drain is really not worth it.
I come from this from a different perspective: rolling the dice puts the
fate of the player characters up to random chance, and if this roll is inherently meaningless (because barring a series of very unlikely
events) why would I make them roll all this?
Now I am only speaking about play procedure, of course there still are consequences. A prolonged fight with no chance of losing might trigger
random encounters, might deplete resources, and decrease stamina of the characters. I just think as a GM I'd rather have them progress further
to another challenge than spend my time with a fight that's already won.
Death is always something to dislike in the game, easier character
generation makes it easier to get back into the saddle though.
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