How can I deal faster with enemy actions on large-scale battles?

Question

I returned to Savage Worlds after a while of playing 5th Edition and Anima, and I'm falling in love with the system again.

I finally understood how the system goes better with many characters fighting each other on the table, and "boss" encounters should be based around a sort of master/minion relationship.

However I'm having a hard time dealing with the actions the enemy groups take between turns, it becomes a chore to make every single enemy unit do an attack, sometimes I don't know which ones should act and which ones should remain idle. An epic battleground becomes my player forces just mopping the floor with stationary creatures.

The core book gives an example of a 200 unit battleground resolving in about 2 hours, my games are usually 10 to 20 on each side and draw longer or characters become static exchanging rolls at each other on the middle of the map because I have no idea of what to do with my mooks, mainly because I'm too lazy to calculate every roll.

Being a fast and furious system meant for large epic battles, I need an answer on how to make things faster without killing the fun or challenge.

Answer 1

Don't control the mooks individually, split them into groups. A group of mooks can act on a single initiative card, move together, and attack together - and because they're Extras, you can roll their attacks simultaneously as a dice pool.

For example if you've got a group of 5 soldiers with Fighting d6, move them all at the same time and then roll 5d6 to resolve their attacks. Most of those will probably miss, so just add up how many hit and how many hit with a raise, then calculate the damage.