So I know you can have 12 NPC's in your party which follow you around and fight with you. If you have and Infantry Command of say 2, you are allowed to control 2 more squads. Do they follow you around and fight with you as well, or do you send them off on there own to "patrol" and gain experience themselves? Cheers.

The latter in most of the galaxy, but they are able to use their squad combat actions on Derra where pvp is being tested and that functionality will be expanded to the rest of the galaxy when pvp is as well.

“If you have and Infantry Command of say 2, you are allowed to control 2 more squads.

- Thwim
 ”

That's incorrect. With a 0 in Infantry Command, you still have one additional squad to use, in addition to the private 12 slots of your immediate squad.

Each point of Infantry Command provides you with the option of another squad, so that IC 2 means you have 3, not 2, additional squads, up to 6 squads for IC 5, all in addition to your immediate personal squad.

I see I see. So in terms of hunting for loot, an ideal set up would be just your immediate squad, preferably all level 10 and well equipped?

Yep, that would be a good plan.

Cool beans. In terms of leveling up squads, once you have them set to patrol can you leave them be to gain xp by themselves, or would you have to stay on the same terrain? Also, is there a maximum number of squads you can have patrolling a single terrain space?

There's no limit per space, it's all just dependent upon your infantry command skill. And you don't have to stick around, you can go off and do whatever you like (getting NPCs from level 1 to 10 will take several months at least).

Ok cool. When the squads are patrolling, do they gather xp randomly? And do they need to be well equipped to stay alive, or is there no chance for them to die from anything?

XP gain is distance based, so they gain XP at the same rate as you would walking along the surface. The higher their speed, the faster the gains will be as they will cover the distance more quickly, but NPCs are very limited in the skill points they have and will ever receive, so allocate their per-level gains wisely because there is no reset.

Without extra points in speed, the average rifleman takes about 12 months to reach level 10. Using them in combat is considerably faster, so you can cycle them into your party at some point to speed it up a bit when they're high enough to have some points to allocate. A safe means of combat leveling is to fight against creatures and ensure that your party is outside of the creature's attack range when you attack. Most creatures have very short ranges.

Provided they are not located on Derra (pvp beta location), your squads cannot be attacked or killed, so they can patrol naked if you like. Even atmospheric effects will not harm them.

I see. Thanks for all the help.

Also, you can do the math and see how much HP all of the NPCs will have depending on their race multiplier.
The Abyssin and Almani have a race multiplier of 2.5x
So if you take an otherwise standard rifleman (strength 2, let's say level 10 max) his HP would be 198 at Level 10.

Compare that to a human (with same strength of 2 and level 10) with Race multiplier of 1.0.... and you get a max HP of 115.

So the race of your NPCs makes a HUGE difference in how long they can last in battle (or if a single misclick against an enemy would get any killed).

You could spend a year training NPCs that would last half as long as someone that trained ones of a more sturdy Race.

I mean, that is why Gamorreans were so commonly used as guards. They are much more sturdy and strong than measly humans.

If you are going to spend a lot of time training some warriors, you want to give thought to WHICH warriors you want to be training for all of that time.
--Arch, out.

HP is pretty underpowered, though. If you want to stack defense, dodge is much more effective.

Effective HP is a very common metric in MMOs used to optimize builds for damage absorption, and is based on a combination of HP and dodge (and armor but that won't work for SWC until the next combat patch is released). I'd recommend using that instead of straight HP.

Well riflemen nearly all have the same strength, dex, projectile, and dodge stats (Gamorreans have 3 str instead) so you can identically raise every skill as a human you can as an Amani. And they can all wear armor. And all can get to level 10.
So the only effective difference is HP (higher/lower race multipler than others).
You can give humans and Amani the same defensive skill points (all races come with the same number) in dodge, and give them both Heavy Battle Armor, but as it stands in the game now, the human will have about 42% less health.
That was just the point I was trying to make. You can spend the same year getting 12 humans and 12 Abyssins to level 10, but one will naturally be superior in combat due to much larger HP, since all other variables (armor potential, skills and skill points, Level) can potentially be made identical.

But yes I also agree that a human with high dodge will likely beat an Abyssin without, even with the HP difference.

Racial bonuses still apply to NPCs. If the NPC race shares skill points with the rifleman template (for example), that NPC type will have extra skill points to allocate. That's the trade-off for RM, based on the 7-point system used to develop new races. Many of the races don't have any useful skills for a specific NPC class (such as humans, whose skills are worthless for riflemen), in which case naturally it would be more advisable to select an NPC type that does or those extra skill points around which races are balanced are rendered useless.