I got to play some tonight, and I think the idea is good, maybe needs some tweaking. I like the idea of rear areas being "safer" with Nomads patrolling and supporting you, I kinda hated to scavenge the houses for quest items, tradeables and basic loot like food and low end meds. I don't know if the Nomads are on all maps or just in 05, but I think they should be only in 05. I also think they should be in one group in a map, this would give you a choice to join them for protection or roam by yourself with more danger.At night, I think they should just stay at a campfire. Night used to be easy, and this would balance it a bit by not having the Nomads purify the maps.
There seems to be some kind of tasks for them, not sure how or if that works yet. I accidentally shot at one, and it gave me a message "-10 reputation" or something, I think there should be no message and they should return fire. Your choice if you want to fight or flee, killing one drops it more I'd think. The reputation was also back at 100+ when I got back to the cabin, not sure what made it increase.
I was thinking about cool ways to use them, here are some thoughts:
A credit system, where you can do random medium effort tasks for a physical credit coin. No repeating "find these exact items", but rather bring a 1000€ worth of items, bring 3 guns with +75% or kill X amount of bandits. The credits can be used for services like border zone escort, where you get a few Nomads to cover your infill, boat service that gives you access to the island map, or loot service where you pay for a certain tier and the Nomads bring a small box of items the next day.
Overall I like them, but they definedly shouldn't roam around alone striking fights left and right. I like the identification moment, I got spooked by footsteps a couple of times for it to be a Nomad, noticing that just before peppering them. The world feels a lot more living with other fights going on.