After a bit of thought, I've come up with some enlightened guidelines for creating your own first four party members:
1. Get as high intelligence as you can on everyone - more skill points mean an even better party with diversified skills. Strength is good if you want to wear advanced armor or going for melee and at least STR of 4 will give you a good carrying weight. If you're going for a group of ranged weapon users, than Co-Ordination is a must as it gives more AP and ranged hit %. Speed is a good all around stat to invest points in for combat purposes as is Awareness. Charisma is needed for getting certain PC's, but if you don't care for them, then keeping it at base level is fine. Luck is ok for the odd lucky miss and crits, but again I haven't really put much faith in it.
2. Make one member a Hard Ass, one member a Kiss Ass, and one member a Smart Ass and put as many points as you can in these as quick as you can. These dialogue options open up entirely new ways to finish quests and get what you want quicker.
3. Have only ONE person with Perception, and max that out or close to max. You don't actually need perception to see traps and alarms on doors/boxes/safes as you can see those by using the Alarm and Demolition skills, but high Perception will help you spot hidden landmines, skill books on bookshelves, and hidden passages/treasure.
4. Absolutely have one person with a Outdoorsman skill and get it up to about 7 or 8 (you get a trinket later that does +2 Outdoorsman). This will help you avoid all random battles on the map, and those random battles are just time sinks that aren't very interesting.
5. Having played a majority of the game (nearing 50 hours now), you do get PCs that come with demolition skills, mechanical repair, computer science, etc. If you get
from the Ag Center, you don't need Computer Science on any of your created party members (same goes with
). Having those two mentioned NPCs in your party in the second half of the game to Computer Science robots is a beautiful thing. You can take these particular skills if you wish, but just know that there are named PCs with these skills.
6. Have your "leader" with leadership with at least 4 points in it. At skill level 4, that's about a 20% reduction in PCs ignoring your orders and it also gives a good amount of hit%. You can go higher, if you wish, but maxing it probably isn't worth it.
7. I'm at odds at diversifying your weapon skills, as I thought it would be a good idea to have one or maybe two weapon skills per character. My leader is a Shotgun/Heavy Weapons guy, but the rest of my party only uses one weapon skill. I regret using SMGs on one person as Assault Rifles ('specially the M16) seem to be better all around and possibly the best weapons to use. Handguns aren't too bad as they have low AP costs, but their Armor Piercing and damage seem on the low side. Heavy Weapons have a huge problem with jamming, and while there are a few shotguns that are pretty sweet, some are just absolutely terrible. Having one person with Sniper Rifles is pretty good. Energy Weapons are good as long as you keep up with the Armor thresholds. Blades, Bludgeons, and Brawling doesn't seem to be great in the first half of the game, but there is the odd weapon in the second half of the game for each of these that you might build a character around.
So in
my experience Assault Rifles = sniper rifles > shotguns = handguns = energy weapons > SMGs > Heavy Weapons > melee. Your mileage probably varies, but that's just my preference so far. Oh, and absolutely invest in purchasing grenades and the odd rocket launcher as they're pretty much the only way to doe AoE damage in battle and save your ass from grouped up enemies.
8. Have at least one dedicated Field Medic. My dedicated Field Medic also has a few points in Surgeon just in case my dedicated Surgeon (the really good Computer Science PC) goes down. Field Medic is absolutely a must in order to get any decent healing done.
