DESCRIPTION:
It always annoyed me that when you chose to side with Goodsprings during the Ghost Town Gunfight quest, you would become Vilified with the Powder Ganger faction, preventing you from completing several other early-game quest lines.

Many other mods have addressed this issue, though in different ways. Some add the Goodsprings Powder Gangers to another faction, others alter the quest scripts, remove all the NPCs from the sniffer faction or even add the player to the PG faction.

I set out to do achieve the same result as these other mods without editing the player, various NPCs or scripts by simply removing the Powder Ganger reputation from the Goodsprings Powder Ganger faction. This means that if you side with Goodsprings during the battle, you will not lose Powder Ganger reputation for killing the NPCs, only the reputation you lose as a scripted part of the quest. This means after the fight, you will only be Shunned and not Vilified by the Powder Gangers, allowing you to use one of their armor suits to enter the NCR CF to recruit Meyers for Primm or to complete the I Fought the Law quest series.

The advantage of this approach is it will not conflict whatsoever with other mods, such as NVCE, AWOP, EVE, etc that modify the Goodsprings Powder Ganger NPCs in various ways. For example, AWOP changes the difficulty of the NPCs and their weapon loadouts. EVE adds energy weapons to Joe Cobb's gang. NVCE changes their appearance. All of these will be compatible with this mod.

Another advantage is that this mod causes less bloat, by altering less entries. This mod only alters a single entry, the Goodsprings Powder Ganger faction, and it only alters one setting of the entry. Other versions alter scripts, several NPCs, or even the player.

Is my mod better than the others? No, not really. It's all about personal preference. If you would prefer a fix that allows for more compatibility with other mods, then this is the fix for you.

Is this mod lore-friendly? Sure, why not? Many have argued that becoming Vilified by the Powder Gangers upon completion of the quest is intended by Obsidian for balance, or that you could always pour a ton of points in Sneak and hope to get a silencer for the Varmint Rifle early at Chet's. However, in my play-throughs of FNV, I have noticed several Powder Gangers who are out on their own, and not tied to the main NCRCF Powder Ganger faction. For instance, some of the PGs in the outlying NCRCF camps are not flagged for PG rep, and the Vault 19 PGs aren't flagged either. I see no reason why Joe Cobb wouldn't have struck out on his own, against Eddie's orders, to attack Goodsprings. Just my two cents on the matter...

SPECIAL NOTE FOR FOOK AND NVEC USERS:
Both FOOK and NVEC add in the Evil flag for the Goodsprings Powder Ganger faction, so I have included a version of my fix with the Evil flag toggled on as well. Both FOOK and NVEC users should use this version instead of the basic version, in order to maintain those author's vision of the faction.

CREDITS:
Though all work on this mod is mine, I would be remiss if I did not mention the several other modders who have fixed the same issue, though in different ways.

Malinthebeast for Powder Ganger Reputation Workaround
t1amat for A Ghost Town Gunfight Side Quest Fix
Madamxx for NCRCF I Fought the Law Quest Helper
LtRhapthorne for I Fought the Law - NCR Start