I grouped up with my friend who just started the game recently. I have many questions on how the mechanics work with someone who is lower or high level than you.
First, is the skill point reward for killing enemies static for the difficulty level, or is there any penalty for having someone higher level in the group?
Does content for missions scale to the level of the group members? There seemed to be more enemies and higher level than when I did the content solo.
Is loot affected at all by group level? At Lt. Cmdr. I got a level III drop at PJem, which is an early to mid LT mission. On the other hand, I remember getting Lt. Cmdr. loot while doing solo missions, before I even got the rank.
Explore missions scale to the first person to zone in OR the highest level present during an enemy spawn. Mixing levels for exploring is bad.
For Patrol missions you can enter the system while they are being done with a lower level partner and the mission scales to party size but remains the level the mission was originally.
For Story missions the enemies scale to group size but remain at the original mission level. Unlike patrols, story missions may be shared and rerun by higher level Captains, but at reduced SP and merit rewards but no item rewards.
Didn't notice any SP messages for kills but I generally don't for missions my level either, so can't help you there.
Comments
For Patrol missions you can enter the system while they are being done with a lower level partner and the mission scales to party size but remains the level the mission was originally.
For Story missions the enemies scale to group size but remain at the original mission level. Unlike patrols, story missions may be shared and rerun by higher level Captains, but at reduced SP and merit rewards but no item rewards.
Didn't notice any SP messages for kills but I generally don't for missions my level either, so can't help you there.
Edit-spelling