Love the idea of indirect control! Think we were a little afraid of whether it'd be annoying but looking back now, it would've been more aligned with the theme.
Ah yes. We wanted to make formations more integral to the game. The melee guys were supposed to take less damage from the ranged attacks and stuff like that. We even had our artists made pretty animations to reflect that.
Both really cool suggestions! Maybe we'll implement it if we do another iteration. Thanks for the great feedback!