Coreth

There's actually two recipes for Alpha boosts now; you can either make the boost with the shard recipe, or now you can use a recipe that utilizes threads. Don't have the details in front of me right now, but I'm pretty sure that the shard recipe doesn't require components from the Trials, nor does the thread recipe require any of the components shards build (unless you count building threads out of 'em).

Could go with the Revolver temp power for that.

Just to cover the obvious bases: was this the first morality mission you ran with that character? The first time you complete a morality mission for a character, he gets 50 merits; it's the second and succeeding morality missions that award the Hero merits.

Thematically, it works if you view the MM more as a leader of men (or whatever) than as a master commanding his minions.

You've already pointed out the Mercs as easily viable, who work just fine as operating under a military commander. Thugs can easily be seen as the street-gang gone legit; working with a leader (hero) who wants to clean up the streets. It does two things: it gets people doing positive things with their lives, and it cuts into the pool of thugs tapped into by the Skulls, Hellions, etc. A ninja leader may be using his ninja as his own squad of "Batmen". Robots are easy to figure: they're nothing more than another weapon a hero might use, like a sword or dual pistols. Demons are the only one that takes a bit more work, since demons are usually (but not always!) portrayed as Evil; but one can imagine that a hero might see using them prevents evil sorcerers (or other origins, for that matter) from using them in their schemes. Could be that his will is stronger than those of the demons; or perhaps they're simply shapes he's created for a mystic force under his control. I can think of a few other ways to spin it.

The big key here for most of these is the nature of the hero-the AT lends itself to the idea of a charismatic man or woman as a leader who will have people who *want* to follow him/her. This is something that can apply to any spoke in the morality wheel, as the "pets" could be loyal to a leader whether he descends into the depths of villainy or chooses to lead them against the horde of evil that seems to infest Paragon City.

Afraid I can't speak for the gameplay questions, but I would imagine that this wouldn't be a major issue; after all, they've already worked with heroes in the RWZ and in Cimerora. And mechanics-wise, the redside missions aren't really all that different from the blueside ones.

Just my random thoughts.

Edit: Completely missed zombies, but not too hard to work them around too; I can see a concept of the zombies being chained to unlife for failing in some great task, and they've chosen to follow the hero in hopes of redeeming themselves-a perfect theme for Going Rogue.