Most useless waste of caps to ever waste.....there are all of 2 free side thugs that will bother you. My level 1 character killed off 2 thugs with a baseball bat. Not to mention you have companions.

Can someone please explain why I would waste my caps on such garbage?

Flavor?
Other people hire the bodyguards because they're not as fortunate as the PC is.
And since it's there they might as well let players use them as well.
Even though it serves little point.

I think it's purely there just for the kings quest I've never seen an npc with a bodyguard unless it looks like a robot that is more of a body giver (FISTO!!!!!!).

gabriel: I understand it's there for the NPCs, but I still don't see how Freeside is dangerous, since it has all of 2-3 thugs. 3 other thugs are only hostile if you fall for their trick.

You have to understand that game rules and realism are two different things.
Realistically, if a trader walks into a bad part of town and is stabbed by a local psycho addict then he might die.
You on the other hand does not follow this realism.
The Courier is blessed with having game rules, which means that with a good enough armor he could be stabbed 1000 times by this psycho addict.

Realistically, freeside is meant to be a bad part of town, a place where you might get killed by some addict.
But in the game we can stroll in with a multiplas and goo'ify every resistance.

Also, realistically Vegas is suppose to be one hell of a lot bigger.
So there being 2-3 thugs there is because it wouldn't make much sense to have 50 thugs there around every corner.
That would make Freeside into a warzone.

And hell, maybe the thugs are lying in dumpsters high on jet. :laugh:

Because not everyone in New Vegas is armed. Some people don't want to be attacked by thugs. Some people may have enemies they want protection from other then the thugs. There are also drug deals and junkies in freeside.

And think if your a traveler coming from somewhere to go to the strip and your carrying three thousand caps, your not going to want to walk through the slums if you dont have to when you can just give somebody a handfull of them and get through safelly.
Plus if they hadn't put the option in there to hire them you know somebody would have whined about it.

I'd say purely as an immersion detail it's got it's place, I mean I got the idea that Freeside was meant to be a dangerous slum for the average non-godly-chosen-one wastelander. It's a shame the freeside thugs are so predictable but they did go to some effort to mix it up with the scripted events such as thugs bursting into Mic and Ralph's when u enter on occasion.

Maybe if they had made it so if you decide to wipe out the Kings it might trigger more frequent and numerous thugs in Freeside ?

As for the bodyguards in particular, yeah I've never bothered with them outside of the quest but I still appreciate them there as a detail.

Wow, really well put.

Like Gabriel said, the NPC's and the PC are different. The npc's are just modest townspeople.

If I had 3000 caps, I'd buy myself a decent sidearm. Better than hiring Orris, eh?

I understand the whole idea to make Freeside "appear to be a dangerous place" but it would have been nice if Obsidian actually made it a dangerous place by having constantly respawning thugs. Even still, If you were to get ambushed, you have the Kings on your side and anyone with spare ammunition. All thugs carry melee weapons so it isn't hard to run and cry for help.

LOL, I just let the dog deal with them.

Freeside has lots of friendly NPCs (who are also involved in quests). More thugs would make them constantly flee or die. I'm not even happy about the occasional spawns. It's not like they add a sense of danger, they just grief my game.

I agree the NPC's pretty much have normal lives and need the protection while the Courier is lining up shots with the Anti-Material Rifle or some other Awesome Sawyer Inspired Gun.

My main use for .38 Specials is to economically plug Freeside Thugs with Lucky or a Police Pistol.

Just treat it as donation to those poor people in Freeside

Freeside Thugs are the radroaches of new vegas. They're harmless to even a level 1 character naked with only fists for weapons.

They need power armor, mini-guns, or massive cheating to be worth the CPU clock cycles.

IMO the guards, or one of them at least and the thugs are two sides of a protection because making certain choices gets rid them.

i was once attacked by 6 thugs in a row so it is dangerous and even if they did increase the number it would make it way to inconvenient to travel as they are really really easy

Other than Orris, all the other bodyguards are Kings. So they give the appearance that Freeside can be a dangerous place, and the King is in control by having his men dealing with it. Orris is there only to play a bit part in the overall King's questline.

If I run into any Freeside Thugs on the side with the entrance into New Vegas I just make them chase me to the New Vegas gate and let the Securitrons take them out. Then I go to their lifeless bodies and take their stuff, go into New Vegas and sell them at Vault 21.