The npc could also be controlled by the commander or chapter master if he is not on the field.

You mean like a War Councilor? Because that's also okay with me, since they have to come out and help with the war effort eventually.

That's a lot of work to pull off.

One things that gets me thinking is the fact that a NPC were to die would he take up one of the tickets.

Naw, Tickets shouldn't be linked to NPCs. They're much easier to kill and it's exploitable.

What if I want to play the game instead of a RTS?

I said "could" not must, and anyway how else is any leader going to command an attack efficiently?

A small RTS component would allow a commander to get real time updates on the position of his forces and issue new commands on the fly with out have to yell them over the mic and hoping that he has been heard. He give a command on the RTS device and the order comes up on screen of all affected players. The RTS device would show the location of your team on the map with green dots and only the forces engaged with your team would show up as red dots, and of course any strategic locations on the map.

So I'm going to take it that nobody even read my suggestion on npcs? We really don't need a swarm of npcs helping the player controlled Factions, not even if it's to help with base defenses as they'll easily be caught off Guard and they can't learn to Improvise on things like Human Players can. It just wouldn't make since to me. Though a better idea for base defenses would be for Players to litter the place with Traps and automated Weaponry like trip wire bombs, Lasgun Turrets, Trap doors, etc. Not to mention that players themselves could mount Powerful, but perhaps somewhat Inaccurate artillery Turrets that can fire far away at incoming Enemy hordes and use Com relays to request help from any nearby Friendly forces. Trust me bases could just as easily be well defend with normal Human players than with lazy,weak,poor thinking npcs.

Except that human players won't always be there. With NPCs their purpose would just be to slow the enemy down. You can't just treat them like you actually expect them to do anything serious. I suppose the main reason would be to stop 5 man teams running around and capping unmanned places. Lets be honest you can't have everywhere on the map garrisoned by players but it is completely stupid not to leave something there at all. Having traps and turrets is all well and good but it doesn't actually put something between the enemy and their objective.

I do not think they should be player controlled at all. If there's someone there with a high enough rank to command them then there will almost always be plenty of players there and the NPCs should just fade away. They needn't be complicated and they needn't be powerful and all they have to do is stand there.

It's not like it stops 5 man teams from going round and capping undefended places completely, they should be able to. However what it would combat is 5 man teams just strolling in and walking over to the objective(s) and hanging around for 10-15 mins. It would force them to use an actual stealth or surprise element to achieve their goal. It would also free up pc players from base defence against these kinds of attacks.

No reason not to include the traps and turrets though. However these would rely entirely on players and the organisation to put this into place and then check on them etc. (At least at any level of even hoping to delay the enemy.) In the long run the traps thing seems more complicated to implement and make sure it's not broken, than just having a couple of hundred bullet bags wandering around.

It would be good to se guardsmen to hold the line while we flank or counterattack but if it will do any harm to the game, no.