As the title suggests. It's something I've been thinking about recently. For a casual player, it is totally feasible to play the whole game and only know them as the guys from Anchorage, as no quests that I recall send you to Fort Independence, and even if you *did* go there, it's basically just an upscaled vendor where you sell stuff to Casdin.
But... Like... They are actaually very interesting to me, as they are so undermanned, and of course are much closer to accurate classic Brotherhood of Steel representation (Even if you haven't played 1 or 2, I'm sure anybody would agree the Mojave Chapter would like Casdin a lot more than Lyons).
I mean, despite the game marking them as evil in karma terms, they aren't, they are flawed people who want to believe in their mission, and believe that everything they did in their journey from Lost Hills and the Capitol weren't a waste.
I mean, look at it from Casdin's perspective, you lost dozens of Brothers to get this tech and go home, and suddenly Lyons decides to give up on getting the tech, or going home, and instead decides to pit them against an endless army of supermutants in defence of a bunch of disparate communities. I can see why he would turn against them.
Are the Outcasts right, morally, or just like, in general? No I wouldn't say so, but it's a defensible position from people raised in Lost Hills.
And how are they used? An unmarked quest and a DLC where they could well have just been the regular Lyons Chapter Brotherhood of Steel for all it matters. They don't need to be involved in the main story, but you'd think there would be a wealth of sidequests which utilises them in one way or another.
I mean, hell, they basically win against the Lyons Chapter ideologically by the time of Fallout 4 with Arthur Maxon taking over.
But I'd be curious to hear what anybody else thinks. In my opinion, there is no faction in Fallout history that's so far from reaching their potential.
EDIT: I don't want to confuse anybody looking at comments I'd like to retract saying "I mean, hell, they basically win against the Lyons Chapter ideologically by the time of Fallout 4 with Arthur Maxon taking over."
What I meant by that is that the Outcasts are more in line ideologically with the Brotherhood from Fallout 4 than they were with the Lyons Chapter, and that they rejoined under Arthur Maxon as they saw him as a return to compromise.
It is noted they were convinced to rejoin, and I'd imagine the more conservative stance of Maxson contributed to that.
And I suppose it's up for debate who out of Lyons or Casdin is really a true succesor to the Brotherhood of Steel and their philosophy, or are closer to the Brotherhood as they appear in Fallout 1 & 2, I don't know if its fully clear what the Outcasts were planning to do about the Enclave or if they even knew that they were around becore the battle at the Jefferson Memorial, but this is the kind of discussion that could have been explored if they had a little extra content.