That’s slightly complicated. More below.
Can I just switch tactics off for everyone and trust the AI to do everything, eg Wynne knows how to heal, Alistair knows how to tank, etc?
No. You’ll have NPCs running every which way, in a suicidal frenzy to waste sta/mana as fruitlessly as possible (I exaggerate, obviously… just not as much as I’d like).
Also (and this might conflict with the above), how do I get everyone to focus fire? I notice that much of the time, the NPCs tend to run off to fight their own battles. I’d prefer they stuck together to finish off one foe at a time.
First: go read the DA:O mod thread, for the links if nothing else.
Second: get the mod that gives you some 25-30 tactics slots for each party member.
Third: get the tooltip mod. I mean the one that has actual numbers for stuff in it.
Now you’re ready to create tactics. Tactics are basically rules that always govern PC/NPC actions in a specific circumstance, unless you take control of the party member (and there’s a mod for that too, by the way). Rules like:
Enemy -> Target of Controlled Character = Attack
Which means “kill whomever I’m killing”. The thing to remember is that those rules are applied a bit backwards, so if you, for example, want Wynne to:
Allies -> Two or More -> HP less than 50% = Use Ability -> Mass Heal
Which means “cast Mass Heal if two or more party members are getting their asses kicked”, you have to make sure the heal rule comes before the attack rule. Otherwise she’ll only heal people if the controlled party member isn’t attacking anything.
Other than that, use a combination of the new and improved tooltip info you have, common sense, experimentation, and possibly the manual, to figure out what’s handy.
For example, you could make a bunch of rules to the effect that your dog will rush large groups of enemies and stun them with a howl, if you’re not using a ranged weapon. And you could expand on that with the goth girl casting a cone of cold on the stunned enemies. And follow that up with the remaining members making shatter-capable attacks on separate frozen enemies.
Just keep in mind that you don’t just need rules for combo attacks. Though combos are devastating, those are the rules you need the least. The important stuff is figuring out how to make rules that doesn’t burn through all your sta/mana in the first second, doesn’t make your fragile guys generate a ton of aggro right away, but deals effectively with mages, elites and high-armour stuff. All of those guys tend to either survive or be hard to attack with combos, and all of those guys tend to be as or more dangerous than the rest of a typical encounter.
