I have several Mr. Gutsy's and they are set be be in ghost mode. Yet, when I attack one of their faction members who is not set as a ghost, they engage in combat. The wiki clearly states that while in ghost mode:

The second is holding true, but the first is not. I know that they are in a Ghost state as I checked with the console. Anyone else ever experienced this before? It sort of makes the ghost state useless.

		damageav fatigue 1000		setghost 1		setunconscious 1

That's the core of how I keep Phalanx followers on the ground if I want to during fights. Buuuuut, it's on the ground... collapsed... heh.

If you cannot have that, you could try setav assistance 0?

Wouldn't just setting them to unconscious do the same thing? Why damage their fatigue and set the ghost state too? Then again, I'm setting this up in an OnLoad block, so maybe that's the difference.

So the Wiki does have a caveat that AI Data can override thier non combatative state, eh?

it's what I ended up doing to achieve the effect I wanted. I recall it being touchy.

I donno what the wiki has, I just know that the AI hates being attacked and it perceives an attack on a faction member like an attack on itself. Initiate combat is a different thing from being attacked and defending in my experience.

To say the least...