Which NPCs would you recommend recruiting as followers, Crudblud? In both games.
In F1 I generally just pick up everyone I can, iirc they're pretty useless in combat by the end, so make sure you're well equipped with power armour and energy weapons. In terms of companion variety F1 is pretty limited, F2 is much more complex and you have quite a lot of options both for party build and how the NPCs operate in combat.
To get the maximum party size in F2 (5 NPCs in vanilla) set Charisma to 8 and get the Magnetic Personality perk. Sulik usually dies because he's a melee fighter, but he's helpful enough in the early game. In combat, Cassidy, Goris and Marcus are my preferred crew. Dogmeat is the best dog ally, K-9 is also good, but avoid Robodog (K-9 with lower stats) and definitely avoid Pariah, if you fail the luck check and he joins you, you should just kill him (he can join over the party cap). Skynet is good in combat but bugs out some NPCs, I don't use him very often so I don't know if the restoration patch fixed that. Lenny can be useful if you're not levelling up your healing skills, but he's mediocre in combat unless you give him power armour, similarly Vic is good if you aren't levelling your repair skills, but if you're specialising for combat I suggest taking Myron as a support because he can make drugs and stimpaks (including super stimpaks), he also has some of the funniest dialogue in the entire game. Davin and Miria are both more like flavour characters than anything, and pretty useless in combat. I think that covers just about everyone.
tl;dr: F1: Get everyone you can but make sure you're not relying on them too much. F2: Max out the party cap and get Cass, Goris, Marcus, Myron and Dogmeat. Kill Pariah if he joins.