Freedom vs Duty?

[SomethingSalty]

Which is the superior faction, and why?
(Not asking this for any in-game purposes, just lore-wise.)

[Milk]

Duty.

Duty Stronk.

[bobes sponja]

while not shown , freedom guards the zone from the monolith and all duty does is shoot pigs

[ImHelping]

Main gameplay PRO/CON of Duty is this.

Their armor can not use artifacts. They get a wide spread of generic performance enhancers at the end tiers of their armor, but none of them come with "Removes radiation" which at the end of the day is my top QoL pick for artifacts rather than carrying 30+ anti-rad meds. That's more a personal preference thing, as by the numbers Duty armor beats freedom armor (The much vaunted Wind of Freedom is basically a "Sunrise suit +1". It's a wonderful looting suit, but it still takes bullets like an old trash bag compared to even "Bad" armor like the Berill vest that not even Mods can fix it's broken "get an artifact upgrade" slot).

Duty focuses on hipster weapons you will essentially need to buy your ammo for regularly to keep using. Avalanche, tunder, and Vintars are good guns AFTER you upgrade them, but you won't be looting that ammo off of 90% of the corpses in the zone. Plus they are super easy to get without Duty anyways.

However. Duty is the only faction to sell the ammo for the machinegun.

Again. ONLY WAY TO BUY MACHINEGUN AMMO.

So ignoring people dickwaving at eachother over pretend politics. Duty is what you pick if you want to buy stacks of LMG ammo and go full exo-suit rambo with your rich boy wallet.

While Freedom is what you pick if you want more bulk access to "All the stuff I use 90% of the time anyways". They sell spare GP-37 and FT-200M assault rifles. They sell a better per stock amount of sniper rifle ammo than running back to Owl every five minutes if you actually like using the SVD and such. Their faction armor isn't all that great, but it can use artifacts if that is your preference.

Though from a reputation standpoint. It's easier to metagame to ensure neutral freedom after joining duty, than it is to metagame for neutral duty after joining fredom.

I can see the asthetic appeal of Duty as it feels more "Special" to run around using 9x39 guns and throwing money at Hawaii to feed your LMG. Compared to using the incrediby good, but still "Normal" by stuff like the GP-37 that uses ammo you can find even on bandits most of the time.

EDIT: If you want a full spread color coded listing of what guns and ammo Freedom Vs Duty will grant access to, you can check this out.

Keep in mind a good reputation with Owl means he will sell all ammo types (except the machinegun ammo). But that involves a trip back to Zatov to buy ammo for your SVD or Avalanche when that runs low.

http://cop.zsg.dk/Traders.php

Though I personaly feel it's a bigger pain in the ass to stockpile sniper ammo without siding with Freedom, compared to stockpiling 9x39 without siding with Duty.

Which is why to me, the big deciding factor is "Do I want to buy Machinegun ammo this run?"

[ZonaMasterX]

Duty just because they are red and have style