It seems to me that there's much more that could be done with the bandits than is currently being done, other than using them as cannon fodder for various respawning ruins and dungeons.

These bandit organizations could serve as mercenaries for all sorts of nefarious activities. A few random ideas:

1. The Thieves guild could utilize various bandit groups for raids on farms or caravans, much the way the comanches and comancheros cooperated with each other in Texas before and during the American Civil War.

2. Competing jarls could employ bandits to infiltrate other holds and mount guerilla attacks in campaigns of harassment.

3. The stormcloaks, imperials and thalmor could all use bandits to their advantage.

4. Necromancers and other menacing characters could employ bandit groups to further their own ends, up to and including the takeover of holds.

5. A particularly charismatic and powerful bandit might try to organize his own underworld organization, either with or without the cooperation of the Dark brohood, TG, Maven BlackBriar, one of the Jarls, or even outside forces such as the imperials, thalmor, dunmer, morag tong, and even akaviri. This could be a POWERFUL DLC and series of questlines.

6. What if a group of bandits actually managed to make contact with the Forsworn and agree to supply them with needed materials - weapons, armor, medicines, food, etc - in exchange for support in bandit raids? Or, perhaps, the Forsworn would serve as Comanches to the bandits role as Comancheros.

7. Even better: what if some very unusual group of bandits managed to establish contacts with........THE FALMER? All sorts of mischief could be organized around that.

8. How about joining a bandit raid, perhaps led by a powerful bandit chieftain that was either a warrior or mage, into a dwemer ruin? New areas could be excavated in existing ruins to support this adventure. Perhaps this bandit group is being sponsored by someone - the Thalmor, some dangerous mage, or another sinister force.

Anyone else have thoughts or comments along these lines?

Bandit DLC's would be relatively 'cheap' to develop as well - there's no need for new areas or dungeons to be built up, just scenarios that need to be created with NPC's and existing landmarks.

Anyway: comments are welcome and encouraged.

Like actual gangs? That would have been awesome if it was included on launch.

I like 5 a lot. I was surprised something wasn't done with caravans: you'd find destroyed ones or groups like the khajit at dawnstar but to actually see a bandit attack occurring would have been cool. Could be how the dlc starts: you approach the attack and either help the caravans fight them off, at which point they tell you a certain group of bandits have been attacking with alarming regularity, or you join the bandits who agree to share a (small) portion of the spoils and invite you to join them.

At the very least I feel bandits were lacking interest. Although there definitely should be some peripheral groups of bandits dotting the landscape an organised group of two would have made things a lot more interesting.

1. The Thieves Guild doesn't raid farms, thats not thier style.

2. I really don't think that Jarls would send bandits out to attack other Jarls, the politics of Skyrim isn't one where the various Jarls are still trying to expand/conquer more land for thier holds.

3. I dont see The Thalmor as wanting to use bandits, they are far more about manipulating Jarls, and other powerful figures. The Legion is too "nice" to use bandits, nor would be it be good for thier image if it turned out they were, and Tullius implies the stormcloaks do use bandits, or at least hired thugs, in his dialog.

4. Necromancers so use bandits..... as test subjects, and thralls.

5. The skomma dealer quest to be made Jarl is already about this really, most bandit groups that "get big" get destroyed by the guard. Staying small is really the only way to survive.

6. The Forsworn too deranged to make allies with normal bandits.

7. Same with the Falmer, but they are just too primitive, and lack any real devloped language to be able to make allies with them.

8. There are several bandit groups in Dwemer ruins, many with Mages, and the Dwemer machines kill them off fairly quickly.

There's a lot of unique dungeons with some backstory, like the quest with the Pale Blade etc. But indeed, as with so many things Skyrim, it isn't REALLY all that it could've been!
Bandits are some of my favourite foes to fight though, and there ARE some very unique dungeons/quests related to them already.

DLC material, don't really think so, but for future games, yessir!