And there I was foolishly worrying that I might have made it too easy. :)
The formation mechanic is definitely intended to have a lot of depth to it; unfortunately I didn't do nearly as good a job of tutorialising it as I wanted to, so it's pretty opaque to most players (and as you say, the game asks you to deal with a lot very quickly). It really needed more careful instructions (and pausing) to make sure players were ready before they moved on to the challenges ahead.
Thanks so much for playing, and good luck with the rest of the jam!