It may in fact be a blessing that Kitsune's AP remains at 9, never going to 10. Why? Because if one gives her a gauss rifle, and if she's spending 5 AP per unaimed shot, then she may hopefully often do aimed shots (6 AP), and those deal so much more damage per bullet. While Jules would possibly do 2 non-aimed shots, ending up doing possibly about the same damage but spending 2 times more 2mm ammo to do so. But this is just a guess, i have no idea how often her / his AI would go aimed shots and why. I just note that now and then that my NPCs do aimed shots, as obvious from occasional crippling effects on their targets.
Another thing about EPA NPCs stats: the link given just above by SnapSlav does NOT provide correct stats for those NPCs. I just checked it in RP 2.3.3, getting Cat Jules and checking his combat settings: he actually starts at 80 HP and 9 AP, while the guide through the link above says he starts with 80 HP and 8 AP.
Another thing is that in one of old threads, i found a discussion about giving those NPCs perks, possibly at their highest level. Killap was participating in that discussion but i did not find him ever saying he implemented any perks to those new NPCs in the RP. Any idea if he ever did? Killap also mentioned he's considering changing their SPECIAL a bit once they level up enough. Again, no idea if he ever implemented it. Last but not least, he said he implemented different crit rates, being 10% for Jules, 20% for Kitsune and 30% for Dex at their max levels (+1%, +3% and +5% per each level up correspondedly, he added). So that's one more thing to consider when choosing whom to go with.
So, we still don't have clearly correct up-to-date stats of those new "EPA" NPCs, at least not anywhere i could find so far. Please, help?
P.S. This post may be seen as "necro", but it's not: i am now facing very same question as in the 1st post here, so it is still very much relevant. And i recon it'd be worse if i'd just start a new topic about it.