Lordus, although i agree with much of what you say you point at Polish players for this "abuse". When it is well-known fact that russian players use mutant swarm the most, not that it makes a difference(because everyone does it to a degree), just don't be racist like that because there is no point your just pointin the finger trying to build up hate.
Sorry. I apologize to every russian and other nation abusers i forgot to name
My point is that player who control merc leader should fight in city/location itself, he should not fight 1 second before he enters the location (= worldmap click 1 second before his artilery spawn at spawn point). He should control his mercs, target their victims, ... .
Current system reducing the merc leadership to 1 click instakill artilery. It is opposite of aproach that PLAYER skills is greater than passive atributes and abilities, multiplied by abusing of simplified existence/construction of cities and whole world wasteland (entering from worldmap into cities).
If mercs would stay frozen for some period, merc leader would need to 1) locate mercs in city before fight itself or 2) support them by real players. This fact would eliminate spawn instakills (because of freeze), it would create merc leaders (chars that could do in 1 fire cumulative average damage cca 350-500 damage, multiplied by area damages by other rockets) as a supportive combat chars, not ultimate spawn killers that are deciding about the winner side. Also one PvP player would chalenge again another PvP player (merc. leader), not his proxy alt (his left hand mouse click) like now.
Another thing i dont understand:
Mercs are mercenaries,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercenary , so they are not slaves, they care about their lives. But every merc leader consumes muties and other mercs like they are basic artilery shell. So i suggest to make kind of "mercs" karma. If you loose your merck, you will lose karma, so you are unable to buy another one... But this aproach needs more coding, testing, it is abusable (lvl 1 leaders, you need only high charisma, thats all), so most effective is freeze.
Freeze 2-3 seconds are not enough. Muties can RL have 40 hex distance.. That is not enough. I have different view. Muties are strong, they have good firepower. In real world, weapons with high firepower are also often very vulnerable, especially in cities (even Armors, Tanks).
So if you want to use muties, you need to do more, check area, clear it first, than enter, they are slow (it is ok, they have big firepower), you need to set them order, where to stay, locate them, you need to control them, before battle, during battle.. Active aproach, not passive 1 click.
I told everything about this, so i dont need to write more. It is devs project, if they want very unbalancing element implement into the game, they dont need to do, they already have it.