Pro: It gives a nice feel of realism and action. SWATs patrolling through a large office floor just looks cool.
Contras:
-It's hard to catch all messages with NPCs moving around the whole mission area, especially if they change as the mission progresses. Problem increasing with NPC number.
-It can be inconvenient to even track one single NPC. Problem increasing with mission area size and complexity.
-Patrolling NPCs can leave the mission area. I've never seen one actually opening the elevator and disappearing (like I've seen hostile NPCs doing it), but a few still magically disappeared, after last being seen suspiciously near to the exit.
-Two or more NPCs can merge into each other, when stopping from patrolling. When that happens, mostly only one of them is targetable, the other ones either extremely hardly or not at all. Again, very frustrating if you want to get the whole content out of a mission and can't talk to certain NPCs.
-The information on the mission map becomes useless and irritating.
Conclusion: Remove the patrolling!
Contras:
-It's hard to catch all messages with NPCs moving around the whole mission area, especially if they change as the mission progresses. Problem increasing with NPC number.
-It can be inconvenient to even track one single NPC. Problem increasing with mission area size and complexity.
-Patrolling NPCs can leave the mission area. I've never seen one actually opening the elevator and disappearing (like I've seen hostile NPCs doing it), but a few still magically disappeared, after last being seen suspiciously near to the exit.
-Two or more NPCs can merge into each other, when stopping from patrolling. When that happens, mostly only one of them is targetable, the other ones either extremely hardly or not at all. Again, very frustrating if you want to get the whole content out of a mission and can't talk to certain NPCs.
-The information on the mission map becomes useless and irritating.
Conclusion: Remove the patrolling!