So I was told that I can increase the number of NPCs on my battle tab, can any one post up how or a link to an older post that does?

There's a mission chain unlocked around rank 215, I think, that will add on two NPC slots.

One of the zolazin missions, 5th in the chain i think, unlocks 2 more npc slots

Zolazin, lazuli and shadin mission chains give the extra slots. I'm on my phone atm so can't post the links.

Mark, can you post our standard answer link for this? Lol

Here is a link to the wiki page , just go down till you come to the boxed part , there are links to the missions.
http://galaxylegion.com/wiki/index.php/Combat

You'll want to get the two extra slots from the Zolazin chain where there's also 3 devices to change your race. It's well worth doing.

Lazuli is the next chain. It takse a lot of energy to et the two extra NPC slots. It's worth doing the mission after the one which gives the NPC slots to et extra attack and energy modules.

That'll give you 6 slots which should be enough for most people. I survived with 2 till about rank 250. I've just got my 5th slot at Rank 466.

The main advantage of lots of slots is it avoids problems of them filling up with lots of shared NPCs so you can't do a full NPC blitz. It's also useful for dealing with NPC effects to save containment cages. It try to avoid hitting Trappers and Shockfightrs or the bosses which have effects until I have a few up so I just need one containment cage to purge lots of effects. (I attack the ships which reduce defence first then the ones which reduce attack to ensure I do the maximum damage per shot.)