Moba minion formation strategies

Didn’t know a better way to describe it.

The game is a mmo/moba hybrid of sorts. You have a main character and minions. Minions are smarter and stronger then in a typical moba however.

Minions have a few different modes depending on if they are in your group, patrolling, guarding, etc…

Anyways the focus of this question is on formations for when you have a group of minions. The specific mode is for being able to bring coordinated fire on a focus point, normally a group of enemies. The main goal is to allow some playing around with pre battle configurations but keep it fairly simple.

For example you can pre designate battle groups. So I’d like to be able to have a battle config to setup formations by class. That specifically is one area I’m looking for ideas on. Like what would be a fun and simple design there.

The other part of it is you will be able to trigger when your group ‘drops the bomb’ on the target. So in the battle config you would be able to specify say a list of skill sequences to be used when dropping the bomb.

Dropping the bomb doesn’t necessarily mean focus on a single point. Like it could mean drop it in front of you at the same distance as the player has their mouse at when the command is given. that’s the kind of thing I’m trying to brainstorm more.

Minions have a more ‘normal’ ai mode where they don’t all act as a group, or at least not to this extent. This is a special mode that I kind of want to add enough depth to so that it’s like creating a character build/spec.

As an example of how I see something like this playing out. Say you are charging a keep entrance after taking down the door. So you activate a formation that is appropriate (narrower for example), you mouse over the middle of the entry way and activate the group command. Melee characters leap/run to the location attacking everything there, at the same time other minions drop slows/stuns over the area, and ranged units bombard it. Most likely you blow all cooldowns in a coordinated move like this.

After that you switch back to normal group mode, which is basically just a standard formation of keep within a certain range of leader. And then at some point you switch to weapons free, which is basically kill everything in sight and the minion tether is much longer.

So any ideas you think would be fun/cool to add would be appreciated. Currently I’m at the point where I have standard ai and standard group ai, no special formations but I do have some basics like group in tight formation vs weapons free.

It sounds like you’re conflating multiple things like positioning and attacking as the same type of setting. It’s been a while since I played an RTS, but back when I did those were usually two different things: I’d select a group of characters and select a formation, and also select their firing mode. So you may want to consider separating those things out to two different settings.

They are the same thing basically in this type of game. Not at all like an RTS it’s more a mix of GW2/ESO large scale pvp with moba.

Gotcha. As I mentioned it’s been a while since I played anything like that (I still barely have any idea what MOBA means), so I may be out of touch there.