Also dying as a ranger doesn't make the other rangers look good, so why don't you give a negative bonus for that just like dying as a slaver?
Ooops, I've just forgot that part
Thanks for pointing, death penalties are in their place now.
And being a ranger looks extremely rewarding, free ammo, free armor. A possible NPC partner. Just wow.
Just wow. But the ammo isn't free. You have to work for it and if you are just taking items every time possible you will never get higher than 10mm ammo and leather jacket. Some power.
Generally Rangers have a lot of obligations and are more likely to have a big reputation drop if certain events will go bad. In case of Slavers, apart from dying you just get back a step or two - loosing slaves you just loose the rep you got by enslaving them. So, as long as you're selling slaves and doing quests for Metzeger, your rep will slowly raise.
If you're a slaver with a handful of slaves following you and get ambushed by PC Ranger(s) you can loose up to 15 rep (the worst scenario). If you are a Ranger and get wasted by Slavers you can loose 45 (!) reputation points (-10 for getting wasted by a PC Slaver, -15 (x2) for follower Rangers and -5 for the trainee (he doesn't even have to die). Do I really love Rangers? Yes, but this is a tough love ;]
I guess slavers need some serious backup from enclave to counter balance Rangers
Well, only implementing that would show for sure, but I think that in case of some harder PvP action between slavers and rangers the conditions of victory wouldn't be much different form any other PvP fight. Besides I'm rather afraid that the penalties (-10 rep) can prove to be too harsh and will possibly encourage players of both groups to keep away of each other... On the other hand there must be some bigger penalties to not make NPC factions another simple leveling scheme, when you just keep going up and up no matter what.
Do not think that I believe my propositions to be perfect. I'm positive that if they were to be implemented, balancing would have to come next. The point now is to get the devs to implement that stuff at all ;] Without something like a flexible faction reputation, all NPC factions will be a few dead quests. Dead like raiders faction is now, only a damn obstacle to get that SGIII profession - that's the only thing I'm absolutely sure of.
and also why there are not so many interesting quests for slavers?
It may sound funny for somebody who made a 10 000 signs post in this topic, but I'm trying to be as brief as possible
. Slavers are a loose alliance, they do not need each other to do their job. Metzeger don't give a damn if you sink or swim 'bring me those slaves or GTFO' Rangers on the opposite, are a tight-knit clan. Ones reputation is based on his ability to help the whole organisation running. That's why simple whacking slavers couldn't be enough to make a sound way of advancing within such organisation. And that's why I prepared those quests. Slavers SHOULD have a lot of quests, Rangers MUST have a lot of quests.
"-to help slave trainee" - nope, I don't think that 'a sunday school for heartless bastards' would fit into the slavers image.
"-to enslave certain number of certain type of slaves
-escort certain type of slaves to Enclave/Mordinos/VC
-retaliation to raid ranger outposts"
These tree looks cool :] Yes, and I also think that more selling points would be cool. Point is that my suggestion is LOOOOONG and needs a lot of work to be implemented, so I try to omit everything that isn't needed (to keep this working and avoid exploits) and thus rise the chance that somebody "up there" will decide to get it implemented. Once this is done, expanding quest/features shouldn't be a problem
and also slavers should care less about there slaves than rangers to their followers. For example you get 5 points to enslave and you only loose 4 points if he/she gets killed.
Imagine that a slave is an item (it is an item for a slaver). If you get the item and loose it right after that, is it makes you more efficient item-finder than somebody who didn't found any item at all? I don't think so.