Mercenary rogue forces, charges, cooldowns and special units

[WaikinDN]

Summary of a discussion from the discord:

Rogue Forces

Talk point
There is some concern that this item is too powerful, to the point that some players choose to disable it.
Notes
Making it a progressive upgrade that adds charges, with the Rogue Forces we know being the last step should work. One must be careful with giving too many charges. Otherwise, it wouldn't make a difference in practice between having the Rogue Forces and a lot charges.

Cooldowns

Talk point
There's been suggestions for an item that may reduce the cooldowns to call mercenaries. However, there is no agreement on how much is a reasonable amount.
Notes
A flat amount benefits shorter cooldowns while percentual amounts benefit longer cooldowns.

Special Units

Talk point
Some desire the possibility of having mercenaries that are good "out of the box" and be more than just a "unit with better stats". The amount of each type of special units should be limited to one per map (like a mothership).
Notes
Some want to move existing mercenaries (Jackson and Jotun) to this category and give them some changes. Note that a unit type (for example a Battle Cruiser) could have both a Special (ie. Pride of Augustgrad) and Regular (ie. Sovereign Battlecruise) rmercenary variants.

[MatthewMarinets]

Discussion goes through these topics around here:

I'm still not a fan of Rogue Forces, it is one of the upgrades I always exclude. I think that one upgrade completely destroys the balance of the mercenaries and significantly limits their design space

--Alice

[Ziktofel]

The thing is that Rogue Forces essentially adds 1-2 charges for the most of the missions

[MatthewMarinets]

The thing is that Rogue Forces essentially adds 1-2 charges for the most of the missions

On live, yes, and I agree that's a nice place for it. If you get more than that, it's because the mission is going long enough that you could probably use the extra power and still have fun.

With the other upgrades added, it adds a lot more. Fast Delivery essentially adds 1 to all Rogue Forces cooldown, bringing us to 2~3 charges depending on money and the unit. Rapid Reinforcement at 50% doubles the effectiveness of Rogue Forces, which is way too much. Changing Rapid Reinforcement to -60s makes it far more reasonable, essentially adding ~1 charge effective value to Rogue Forces and allowing you to scale up faster without Rogue Forces. I think Fast Delivery is reasonable as it is now as you tend to be money-limited at the start of a mission anyways, though I haven't played enough yet for that opinion to be final.

I would like to make Rogue Forces not apply to "ultimate" mercenaries like Jackson's Revenge, Wise Old Torrasque, or any future BC mercs we add. That means having multiple of them is more valuable, we can have upgrades for them, and can keep their hiring cost relatively low without Rogue Forces breaking the balance again.