What's your favouroute minion build?

[Tallowick]

For some reason I always gravitate to builds that amass summoned units or pets.
Whether it's making the biggest skeleton army possible with a Necro in Diablo 2, getting every pet and summon charm in Hollow Knight or maxing out Shadowling spawn rate with a Torchlight 2 Outlander. There's just something that appeals to me about having your own small personal army, but even better if there are ways to boost your minions through auras or buffs.

My personal favourite is probably the D2 Necro, but I also love stacking Meepo in Dota with items that buff his clones (yes I know it's probably the worst way to play him, but it's so much fun.)

[Ziea Halleluja]

The XENON large destroyer "SPACE CONTROL" H

Or as I call it... the HARKENER OF LEGIONS!

I do enjoy using swarms of fighters in X4 Foundations. Lil swarms of "minions" to help fight for me. Though in most cases this sometimes runs into issues...
Most destroyers only have enough landing pads for like 4 to 8 small fighters so can't really have a hoard following me about... they can also carry defence drones, tiny lil unmanned ships with no shields but have a single pulse laser.
But in most cases you'll only carry 8... cause the max amount of drones most L class ships can carry is 10 and you want 1 drone to be a repair drone and 1 drone a cargo drone.

The Xenon H doesn't have such issues...
She can carry 70 drones!
She can carry 14 small fighters too!
And... unlike many other ships... she has special launch tubes to allow for rapid deployment of drones!
But not just drones... laser turrets too... portable, small, stationery, just a little beam gun with a gyro and a desire to shoot... can be launched in rapid succession out the launch tubes... and she can carry 200 of those!

Attacking one is almost always a nightmare... I remember shooting the engines out of it whilst flying a medium corvette... and hiding in a blind spot so its artillery cannons couldn't hit me, only for it to launch 20 drones that all swarmed me in the blind spot and tore me apart!

Screening assaults with a mass of 60 drones at a time with 6 fighters equipped with torpedoes, supported by the two artillery cannons on my "harkener of legions" I can quickly turn any fight into my favour! Even though some times the cannons blast radius kills a few drones... though losing drones to friendly fire or enemy fire is a lot less expensive since defence drones are relatively cheap... and if not enough I can just slam the "deploy laser tower" button 200 times and suddenly I am surrounded by 200 turrets that can quickly shred enemies.
Other dedicated XL carrier ships in the game can carry anything between 40 to 70 fighters and can repair said fighters, but they tend to be slow, heavy, expensive... really only affordable and fun in the much much MUCH later late game...
But since I have played the X4: timelines dlc there is 1 xenon H that is available for "free" whenever I start a new game.
free as in 'if you can sneak into the area where it is floating abandoned and damaged and can bring it home and fix her up then you can have it'

and I always do get her and make sure to give her a full set of drones and fighters~
Cause she deserves to do what she was built to do! Bring the legions to the front line! Deny enemy movement! SPACE CONTROL!

if I were to equate it to terms in diablo 2... imagine the max amount of minions a necromancer or druid could summon... then double it... and replace them with a sorceress with a max level fire ball spell.
This is a minion build that not only has MORE minions than any other... its also got a decent bit of bite!

I do like the idea of "minion" builds... but sadly many video games usually leave me feeling... wanting... unsatisfied...
Skyrim/oblivion had trash summons... just trash... and even a lot of mods that claimed to make summons/hoards of followers better tended to be just... not worth the time and effort or just plain bad.
Diablo/torchlight/path_of_exile the hoards never felt... immersive? probably down to the scale and comparison in fighting... cause your usually fighting hordes. (If every ship in x4:foundations had 70 defence drones I'd wouldn't have had any speciality or dazzle to it...) I do remember having a nice setup in Torchlight 1 with my golem and imps I could summon, but I grew bored of it and... honestly I never touched torchlight again, and the experience ended up leaving me not wanting to play torchlight 2 or diablo 1/2/3 or path of exile 1/2...
and then there was games like overlord (1 and 2) where... idk... it was just... just bad. Controls, management, upgrading, story, effectiveness, immersion...
and in Elite:Dangerous you had a maximum of only 1 sodding fighter you can launch that instantly dies the moment someone coughs... so... can't do a minion build if all you got is 1 sad little lone fighter...

I have yet to get a nice "minion" build in warframe, there is one specific setup I want to try, I doubt it will go well... but I still want to give it a shot one day to see how well it plays. Will need me to get hold of Uriel, the newest warframe, which will take time since I tend to play warframe slow...
Nekros lets you summon a hoard of minions but they only last a pitiful amount of time and are dependant on what you kill... which... usually means you'll be better of just shooting the enemy yourself and dodging instead of hoping your minions take the hits for you...

Sorry this is a very long rambly post and I saw this just as I finished playing x4:foundations! I was going to go sleep but ended up typing this out XD

[Tallowick]

Ooh, thanks for that one!
I'll definitely try it out if I ever check out that game.

And I get what you mean about most of the times it feeling a bit lackluster. One thing I liked about Diablo 3's necro was that they actually gave you the ability to direct where your skeletons go, which made the whole summon build feel a lot more engaging.
Also you reminded me that I also like spamming drone harbingers in Dawn of War 1. Good times, lol.