What can NPCs do on their own? Can they run our economic nodes? Can we take them on away missions, and will they automatically heal us if we are down?asked by The Colonial Movers

Well, the standard things we've talked about, whether you're gunner or whatever, but one of the specific things they asked was about whether they can run your factory node, and that's kind of the way it works. You're sort of the upper-level management of a factory, and you kind of pull the levers and decide how it's going to run, but then the NPCs do run the factory. It's not like you have to be there on the floor walking around smacking people in the head.