Battle Sprites are hungry hungry robots. They'll assimilate almost anything into their "tummies." Let's give them something more to eat so they continue to not view their owners as food:

I propose a new pickup, called a "sprite snack," that reduces the cooldown of sprites - typically one snack per cooldown caused by ability usage. (I've always found it silly that using one ability causes all three to cooldown, but whatever, I guess the sprite is just tired?) This will balance that a bit and provide more fun as well as make sense! Like other pickups, you can carry up to three of a kind. You'll only find them randomly from mined minerals. Mined minerals will still drop their regular stuff, don't worry - this new pickup will have a chance to drop in addition to the mineral chunk we normally see and carry around on our backs.

The snack is the same for all tiers (like remedy capsule), but the type of snack you use can be better or just "okay, that's a snack. yep. I mean I'd rather have cake but it's something." Oh yeah...Please do not add these to the prize wheel of elevators.

Minerals in sync with your sprite will provide "preferred" noms, and preferred noms will provide better effects. Blue snacks and green snacks are well...there. Anyway, a luminite snack will completely elliminate the cooldown of a seraphynx if used, while red/purple/green/blue will only reduce cooldown of the seraphynx by 50% of the current cooldown count (so half half half if you spam usage). Hurray! Or you can choose to tote them around in your pickup belt like other pickups (vials/barriers etc). The pickup can be used up like a remedy capsule if you don't want to carry them around. Obviously, if the sprite isn't cooling down, the snack won't to anything except poof, just like remedy capsules do...poof poof.

These "snack" pickups will have no effect on appetite, heat, default cooldowns, sprite leveling, or anything like that. They only affect active cooldowns in the field.

I feel that this will encourage the usage of sprites as well as the mining of minerals to some degree (I've run into plenty of knights who won't mine minerals for the squad because 1) they don't understand that they're shared and 2) they're sprite is "done" and they don't care about reskins so why bother) or 3) they are NPCs and seem unable to mine minerals, oh well (joking here)

This will change a lot of combat that involves longer levels but not so much for shorter ones. For example, the tortodrone fight will not be affected at all, but the arcade and certain long missions will see a lot more sprite ability usage, especially if the drop rate of the snack from mined minerals is as high as other pickups from enemies/treasure boxes. Other missions that don't have minerals, like certain danger missions, will retain their difficulty levels - or OOO can just make the drop rate from minerals in areas intended to be rather difficult much lower than the casual arcade. Ideally, I'd carry around as many as I could find, preferred or not, and spam my sera's 3rd or masker's booster cloak a bunch of times right in a row (cause I always carry pills). OP? Possibly. Adjust drop rates or effect of snack on cooldown (instead of half/eliminate, remove cooldown of other 2 abilities unused?) to balance. Thoughts? EDIT: I cannot math at this hour.

This will also have almost no direct effects on gameplay for those who choose to venture without sprites. Hurray for big changes that are optional!

Icon for pickup could be colored versions of the little icon on the sprite food alchemy machine screen, but with a little bit of difference. Here's an image of a "snack" pickup icon I threw together.