The way NPCs are in missions, they are only there for the atmosphere, for the ambience. At best, you can pull up one set dialogue per NPC in missions. The geoknights serve no purpose in being geoknights, you can't help the scared knight stop shaking or something, you don't actually bring supplies for the prestige missions (the salt one is just the player "sprinkling" stuff on a small salt pile...), you don't even have to save the knights in the Candlestick keeps.
For example, players could use abandoned camps in the clockworks as rest points. players could hand-deliver supply boxes to field camps. players could drop their minerals off at geoknights in field camps, players could talk to scared knights to get them to stop shaking 24/7, players could help move items around Haven, make it so that players can fail the mission if they don't rescue all the knights before getting to the Elevator(this could tie into deconstruction zones with the Recon knight "working" on opening the door).
In a slightly unrelated note, OOO pokes fun at their own dialogue in one of the comlink missions. They add dashes to prematurely end the NPC's dialogue to simulate players spamming "action" and not reading the dialogue at all.
NPCs should enhance the player experience with their behavior and actions, futher fleshing out the world. They should not be the mere mission triggers and shallow characters they are now.