I suggest making mercs just as players, that means that they should be bought weak, lvl up, without loosing their lvl on death, just the items, getting perks just as players do(we all know the common builds, bg should get BRD, BROF and so on) There should be an option to get your mercs back after death (players can be replicated, why mercs cant?) All in all these implementation should not lead to mercs and merc builds unbalanced, they will always loose to players that don't just dumbly shoot all the time standing in an open area, but will force players to use tactic so that not to be out-gunned. In case these suggestions get implemented, cha system should be changed for mercs, that is something like cha-3 / 3. Right now the merc system sucks, the only purpose that most mercs have right now is just guarding(tents, bases) The super mutants are way too healthy and expensive to loose. A leader guy with 5 mutants that runs into a group of top geared players will loose for sure. Anyway mercs right now are just a dumb and expensive piece of meat.