1 About condition of these npcs stuff
Ok these npc's you can encounter have different abilities to obtain stuff, thus condition of items they have should differ not be totally random. For example vc patrols or enclaves or bos shouldnt have a problem to get new stuff, have enough scientist and specialists to keep their gear at fine condition. Now it looks kinda silly to find someone having APA which you never seen before and gun with 84% detoriation... So my suggestion is poor strenght of npc or group - poor condition of their equipment and vice versa.
2 Strong slavers and vault city relationship
strong slavers same as slavers are not hostile, but once you get a little closer they shot you (and its still quite far distance). But as i understand strong slavers are looking for potential servants to vault city, and if im vc citizen they should defend me not hunt me same as vc patrols or caravans.
3 Unity patrol rework
In f2 Unity patrol was united ghouls humans and mutants forces to patrol around bh (
http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Broken_Hills find unity patrol), so i would suggest to add them near bh as they should be (since fonlines unity patrol looks very similar to them) and make them bh faction instead of cathedral. And expand area of remains of masters army from v13 to mariposa as it was in f2, since its 2238 between f1 and f2 they should be in this area. Also i would suggest some deathclaw encounters around v13 for similar reasons. Cheers.
4 Resistance/Attack or something. Story play encounters
So most of us have many dialogues in game, fallouts stories in web and so on. We do know that for example raiders are hired by bishop to attack vault city, brotherhood vs enclave or unity are biggest enemies, new reno is reddings drug dealers. So according to story, we have many different problems between npc factions, but what we have in reality of fonline? Every faction just "patrol" in their area, and no conflicts fights or something like that happens and my suggestion would be to change that by adding special real time encounters (tb could be possible too, but i think it would lose all impression then and would be just a regular encounter). So for example you enter special encounter "Vault city caravan trying to resist raiders attack) lets say in VC-BH area. Something like 3-4 guards 1 merchant, all of them have a little increased stats comparing to normal vc caravans you can meet, and like 15 raiders attacking them. You have option to leave, help fight one or another side, or try to kill all (well in this encounter helping raiders would result in last option since they are hostile). And if you for example help vc and vc wins, they go like "hey thanks for help man we couldnt have survived without your help, here is some shit to you" Rewards should be kinda small (for example assault rifle, mentats or something and minor reputation changes both with vc and raiders) since the action should be biggest reward, and of course you can try to loot something. So other encounters could be like "BOS soldiers trying to drive out hostile remaints of mutants)", "BOS soldiers fighting ENCLAVE troops for get their hands on Mariposa technologies", "Slavers meet trappers resistance while trying to enslave them", "Redding citizens trying to get rid of new reno drug dealers", "Enclave dealing with deathclaws of unsuccessful experiment" "VC trying to break ghouls of gecko" and etc. I think it would add more colours and fun into the game.