My first post was pretty bad and confusing, so I'll try again, with 100% better formatting and some additional points:



Idea 1: Sends are often impossible to balance between players



As a simple (but extreme) example, consider the case where 1 Kraken is sent, along with nothing else. Maybe the team was planning on coordinating, but one person did not get the memo. This is clearly impossible to distribute in a balanced manner among players, so any system should plan on handling such distributions of mercenaries.



Aside: I should note that in a certain sense, the current proposed system is completely fair: due to randomness, the expected mercenary value received by each player is identical. However, as has been pointed out, the resulting distribution of mercenaries is not balanced, in the sense that one player will potentially receive a far larger mercenary value, even when it is possible to distribute the same value of mercenaries to all players.



Idea 2: Randomly assigning sends might limit play/counterplay options



In the previous example, someone is getting a Kraken. Who should get it? The development team's proposed solution is to choose a random player. This is certainly fair (in the sense discussed above), but there is room for more strategic choices, at the cost of minor complexity. Suppose the player who will receive the highest mercenary value is declared during the building phase, or is chosen in some deterministic manner. Then, that player can adjust his build using this knowledge, and his opponents have more of an ability to target certain players with certain mercenaries.



Squadron TD uses such a system: an order is chosen for the players on each team, and then the 'wave leader' rotates between players in that order. On each wave, the wave leader receives the heaviest sends. After receiving the heaviest sends, he then receives the weakest sends, and builds up the ranks until he is wave leader again, every 4 waves. Otherwise, the system is very similar to that proposed by the developers of Legion TD 2.



Idea 3: How to design a more balanced mercenary distribution (if desired)



Suppose we wish to keep the constraint that if up to 4 of the same mercenary are sent, then they all go to different players (could be relaxed to 4 of the same auras, etc.). How do we design a system that produces a more balanced distribution than the simple clockwise approach? Here is a 'waterfilling' algorithm that could work:



For each kind of mercenary, sorted from most expensive to least expensive:

For the first 4 of its kind:

Send the merc to the player who has not received one yet and has received the lowest value so far ​ While there are still more to send:

Send the merc to the player who has received the lowest value so far ​