The Loners are kind of a catch-all term for all stalkers who are unaligned with other factions. It's a not a group with clear, coherent goals - there's various subgroups within it which have different goals and ideas.
Bandits (the guys you were shooting at) are supposed to rely more on robbery and extortion, kind of operating like a local mob. In that first mission, they're holding a guy hostage for information, and later on when you enter the Garbage you'll see them robbing a guy, and trying to lure you into a trap. In Clear Sky, they also do a whole lot of robbery, including a bunch aimed at you, and in Call of Pripyat there's side-quests related to them holding a guy hostage for ransom and doing loan-shark schemes.
I'd say that having this clear Loner-Bandit distinction is kind of weird overall, and the lines ought to be a lot more blurred, with some Loner groups also using similar methods, and the Bandits not being a unified faction but rather separate gangs that sometimes fight over territory. And of course it's rather impractical for the Bandits to have their own uniforms distinct from the Loners so you can tell them apart. But there's some design considerations here - representing the scenario I proposed would be a lot harder to actually do than just having 2 clear factions, and while it might sound cool it can end up frustrating in practice (there's a reason games do actually try having distinct visuals for enemies - it can be very frustrating to get shot by someone you couldn't identify because they weren't visually distinct).
As for the other factions:
Duty is a faction that believes the Zone is an existential threat to humanity, and is dedicated to containing it in the short-term (by hunting mutants, and establishing order in the Zone), and somehow destroying it in the long-term.
Freedom on the other hand believes that the Zone is a wonder and ought to be studied so it can benefit humanity. They want this to be a free process however - as it stands, the Zone is being studied, but specifically by Ukrainian government agencies, while Freedom want the whole region to be open to everyone, not subject to a specific state.
As a consequence, these two factions are in conflict - Duty thinks Freedom are idealistic idiots who would unleash mutants on the world, while Freedom thinks Duty are militaristic morons who would destroy something wondrous that can spit out artifacts which can heal any wound and render one immune to fire.
other factions are:
the Military, who are pretty self-explanatory - they're trying to control the Zone on behalf of the Ukrainian government, and as such are opposed to all stalkers (except for ones they've hired) since simply being in the Zone is illegal.
the Ecologists represent those government agencies I mentioned - they're the ones officially sanctioned to study the Zone, and typically cooperate with the military.
the Mercenaries are an enigmatic faction - the mercenary part is pretty clear, but who hired them isn't, with it being implied that it's some outside party (perhaps Western intelligence agencies) with an interest in the Zone.
the Monolith is a faction of religious fanatics, who worship the Monolith/Wish-Granter (a supposed alien artifact in the center of the Zone) and violently oppose any attempt to penetrate deep into the Zone
I think the big distinction between Loners and Bandits is that Loners, most of the time, will leave you alone and have a loose fraternity with each other. They don't work together, and they won't go out of their way to save you unless you have a personal connection, but they do have a loose code of conduct and mutual respect. They're the survivors, the guides, the people who map the zone and understand and respect it's secrets. Their goal is to exploit the zone for whatever they can find that is of value, and survive.
The Bandits, on the other hand, are mostly petty criminals with very little experience in the Zone. Whereas the Loners want to find riches in the zone, the Bandits explicitly want to take from other people
The Loners are kind of a catch-all term for all stalkers who are unaligned with other factions. It's a not a group with clear, coherent goals - there's various subgroups within it which have different goals and ideas. Bandits (the guys you were shooting at) are supposed to rely more on robbery and extortion, kind of operating like a local mob. In that first mission, they're holding a guy hostage for information, and later on when you enter the Garbage you'll see them robbing a guy, and trying to lure you into a trap. In Clear Sky, they also do a whole lot of robbery, including a bunch aimed at you, and in Call of Pripyat there's side-quests related to them holding a guy hostage for ransom and doing loan-shark schemes.
I'd say that having this clear Loner-Bandit distinction is kind of weird overall, and the lines ought to be a lot more blurred, with some Loner groups also using similar methods, and the Bandits not being a unified faction but rather separate gangs that sometimes fight over territory. And of course it's rather impractical for the Bandits to have their own uniforms distinct from the Loners so you can tell them apart. But there's some design considerations here - representing the scenario I proposed would be a lot harder to actually do than just having 2 clear factions, and while it might sound cool it can end up frustrating in practice (there's a reason games do actually try having distinct visuals for enemies - it can be very frustrating to get shot by someone you couldn't identify because they weren't visually distinct).
As for the other factions:
As a consequence, these two factions are in conflict - Duty thinks Freedom are idealistic idiots who would unleash mutants on the world, while Freedom thinks Duty are militaristic morons who would destroy something wondrous that can spit out artifacts which can heal any wound and render one immune to fire.
other factions are:
I think the big distinction between Loners and Bandits is that Loners, most of the time, will leave you alone and have a loose fraternity with each other. They don't work together, and they won't go out of their way to save you unless you have a personal connection, but they do have a loose code of conduct and mutual respect. They're the survivors, the guides, the people who map the zone and understand and respect it's secrets. Their goal is to exploit the zone for whatever they can find that is of value, and survive.
The Bandits, on the other hand, are mostly petty criminals with very little experience in the Zone. Whereas the Loners want to find riches in the zone, the Bandits explicitly want to take from other people
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