I noticed that none of the specialists currently interact with Neptunium. I know Neptunium is the goal but if you're very far behind it might be nice to use some of that resource as a military aid?

The Mercenary could take a small amount of your daily Neptunium, idea being that if you're late acquiring a mine then it could still pose useful to your military.

Mercenary ability could have a very fast approach to enemy outposts (Maybe even faster to enemy mines?) but after a certain mining rate is reach the Mercenary becomes slower. Reason being is maybe he's disgruntled that you're not paying him extra.

How it could work:

Mercenary has full speed when only owning 1 mine.
Mercenary has reduced speed when owning 3+ mines.

Anyway just some ideas feel free to add or adapt the idea or dislike it.

Some other ideas for abilities he could have:

* He adds +10 subs to your total count

* He has an attack modifier when attacking mines

Obviously not both though.

This is interesting for the underdog. I like where it's going. There was an attempt to use Neptunium to purchase specialists, in theory, reducing the top player's neptunium by having them buy specialists but this just made them stronger.

I like the idea of having another option for the underdogs to come back. However, I feel that often if a player turtles at the right time when being nearly eliminated, they can certainly still cause a lot of trouble for top players.

I'm not against the Mercenary idea, could be fun to test. I like the speed increase if you have less neptunium, however this could allow allies who haven't mined yet quite the advantage too. Very thought provoking...

Edit: spelling

Glad you like it stash! In some ways I did wonder how balanced it would be because I've not been playing long.

Well i'll give it some more thought. =)