So I am about 5 hours of gameplay in (yea, trying real hard not to look at the other threads here) and I ran across the NCR correctional facility. I remember that it was supposedly overrun by powder gangsters (which it was), who should hate me (which they did) after saving the Goodsprings town from attack (which I had done).

A brilliant idea poped into my head, and remembering I still had some powder gang armor I decided to equip it. The guard at the front door of the NCR CF stopped me and began dialouge about how he didnt recognize me, blah blah. I paid him the 100 caps to get in but as soon as I got closer he turned red and started attacking. I shot his head off and walked through the door.... where all the other powder gangsters just looked at me and went on with their business - LIKE NOTHING HAD HAPPENED. Now heres the weirdest part, I walked outside into the main prison grounds and had 2 or 3 special NPC's, who's names I didnt recognize, charge at me. I killed them but after doing so a message appeared stating that I was truely "vilanized" by the Powder Gang and everyone descended upon me. I went rambo on the entire place and wiped everyone out. However, when I entered cell block B, all the generic NPC's just looked at me and did nothing. I went into cell block A and immidiately got attacked by another special NPC who held a key. I literally blew him apart as another generic powder gangster sat and watched.

Its pretty obvious that something with conditional triggers got messed up to the point where only the special NPC's hate me, and only occassionally would the generic NPC's attack me. Wtf is going on?

Most named character would saw through disguise, and attack you if you are on bad standing; HOWEVER

The Powder Gangers' AI around NCRCF is pretty mess up. Unless you really want to complete their quest...just blast them all,

not much is screwed up, some NPCs can reckognise you even though you are wearing their armor, the leaders probably can, and when the guy attacked you and nothing happened, that is because he attacked you first, it was justified. I think it could be an error in the dialoge

I think the AI has a problem, ive had the same problem kinda and had an issue where i went in like you and got attacked by the named NPCs but not the generics then about 2 minutes later its like they tried to surprise me and the one who didnt attacked all turned hostile. I had the powder ganger armor on so i chalked it up to being full of bugs like all the other issues

While wearing faction armor (such as Powder Ganger outfits) you are considered part of that faction by the rank and file members and they will not attack regardless of reputation even if they logically should start lighting you up on sight.

Any dogs belonging to said faction will not be fooled (they don't recognize your smell), nor will guards or "boss-class" members (better training and/or know everyone). Named individuals within a faction are boss-class by definition, so having one in the cell block meant your disguise failed which triggered an attack due to your very negative rep with them.

I haven't examined the dynamics of faction gear vs. Reputation, but I can make a pretty good guess as to how they work. Faction-specific clothing probably has a script effect attached that adds the character to the faction in question, while Rep is a sliding scale that affects people's disposition towards said character. If disposition gets low enough they will attack on sight, however faction membership apparently overrides this. Since dogs/guards/bosses are not affected by faction clothing, it is likely they are in a separate sub-faction that is affiliated with the one to whom the clothes belong and that the player-character is not added to when the clothing's script triggers. As a result their actions are governed solely by the Reputation level, and if it is low enough they will fire at the character on sight.

EDIT.. Nevermind.