I just got Fallout New Vegas a few days ago. I am taking the good path and have defended Primm from the Powder Gangers. As a result, I hate them, they hate me, I kill them, and well, they try. I just tore through the NCR Correctional Facility and noticed all these ammunition boxes and goodies scattered around the prison. I'm fully aware everything has an owner, the Powder Gangers, but they vilify me and I view them as walking ammo and weapon caches that shoot back. If taking things from their corpses doesn't entail a karma loss, why should taking things from their lockers and safes?

This is a question I have for you at Bethsheba: Would it be possible to patch in zones for each area a faction occupies? If you are vilified by a group then looting things from their area would entail no karma loss or the status of everything in that area set as being owned would be switched to having no owner. To further improve this, these zones would only apply to 'bad guy' factions. The reason for this is that if they idolize you, chances are that you won't care about the negative karma and will be doing far more serious things to loose karma anyhow. If you're playing as a good guy, your character is in a post apocalyptic wasteland and probably wouldn't mind looting a Powder Gangers safe because supplies are supplies and they don't have owners because he killed them all.

I remember playing F3 and I never lost karma from stealing from raiders or any "evil" faction. Isn't the point of karma that what goes around comes around? Powder Gangers are thieves who raid caravans, sometimes shooting them up. But when you steal from a thief, you lose karma? I thought it just balanced out what the PG did?

Actually, Obsidian did most of this game, as Bethesda was working on Skyrim.

I havent found this problem myself, but a similar case in FO3 was Slavers at the Lincon Memorial. If you killed them they obviously hate you, but inside it was still 'stealing' so you lost karma, until the boss and the gate guard were both dead. Then it is open season on their stuff, and yu lose no karma.

So kill Eddie and all named characters in the Correctional Facility, and you may not lose karma.

I think it's because you are basically still stealing from them. I know what you mean about changing when your Vilified and all. I slaughtered all of The Fort and when I steal get the Rep loss even though I'm vilified, It's kinda weird.

Its not really who its against, but rather the act of stealing itself.

But besides, stealing barely puts a dent into karma.
I took everything of value from Goodsprings at the beginning of a playthrough, then strolled down the road and killed 3 powder gangers.
Checking my status, I was already in good karma.
I gained more karma from killing 3 powder gangers than karma I lost from stealing loads of stuff from Goodsprings.

It's probably to make up for the fact you can regain Karma by killing Fiends and Ghouls etc. on a regular basis, thus making it easy to keep your Karma saintly.
Karma doesn't really do much in NV anyway....a few things here and there (Cass doesn't like it if it's low I think?) but yeah...hard to keep an evil Karma.

But I do agree that roleplaying wise, I consider taking stuff after winning a battle as looting/spoils of war. I don't get bad Karma for stripping their corpse down to their undies, so why should I get bad Karma for then turning around and taking the mutfruit off their table.

I initially assumed that since the Powder Gangers took over the Correctional Facility by force, none of the items/containers within the facility actually belong to them. It, and everything in it should technically belong to the NCR.

But that doesn't explain why you can't steal from one of the Powder Ganger camps without incurring a karma penalty. It's furthermore ridiculous that you can attain positive karma from either giving Med-X to Boxcars or killing him.

I think it's simpler than any philosophical reason, and it's actually just a gameplay mechanic. I think behind-the-scenes they've marked the boxes as owned by the PGs, so that if you take something from one it'll trigger their "been caught stealing" script and turn them hostile. I think the game engine consequence of this is that stealing any owned item is to give a karma penalty. So it's not that you're being penalised for stealing, but rather it's an unintended side-effect of making them care if you take their stuff in front of their faces.

Thats right I think
To take the NCRCF as an example the PGs will be hostile if you take stuff, but after the NCR retake the jail the NCR won't care if you take the stuff, although you will still lose karma
In general the system works quite well. You can't sell to a merchant belonging to the faction you stole the item from but you can sell the stolen item to any other merchant
Its just annoying when Cass throws a wobbly because you've been stealing from Legion scum

I don't think it is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe all the items in the Silver Rush can be stolen without incurring any negative karma, even though these items are also marked as owned and the Van Graff's will definitely go hostile on you if they catch you stealing.

You're right about the Silver Rush but I'm definite that stuff in the NCRCF and Legion camps always costs me karma to steal. I don't know why they did it 1 way in some places and another in others :shrug:

Another odd place is the Vikki and Vance Casino. Initially everything in there is marked as owned and costs karma for stealing but complete .

It looks like someone decided that stealing from the Van Graff's shouldn't result in negative karma, presumably on the grounds that they're "evil", and yet the same logic wasn't applied in the case of the Powder Gangers (even though you get positive karma for killing them). I'm guessing it's the result of different people working on different areas of the game and not being on quite the same page, but who knows?



I've noticed that too.