How to spawn units in formation?

well my situation is that i want to spawn units that spawn in a formation...for example, like when u highlight a group of units and move them to another place, they will go in a uniform order, rangers in the back, melee in the front, ect..but they always go in a nice orderly fashion,

so i was wondering if it was possible to spawn units in this way...and if i have footmen , how can i make the comp activate the defend ability and deactivated when they dont need it


my second problem( not sure if this is trigger related) is that i want to have units weapons stay after they attack , to not decay...example, like in tides of blood when jimmy throws the cleaver , his cleaver stays on the ground for a while so i was wondering if this i done with triggers, if not , what does it and how can i change the length of decay of the weapon....or like if an archer fires an arrow and it misses, how can i make it so that it is visible where it lands and that it stays stuck on the ground for a whiel....thx

Formation order can be tinkered with using formation rank(0-1 for melee, 2 for range), set in the object editor for units. Pretty self-explanatory on that. Then i think as long as you order them to move in a group, they'd follow that formation.

Footmen would automatically use their defend ability if they needed it. In the AI.