I think too many people think just handing new toys to rebels will fix rebel life or greatly improve things. It really won't. Rebel life is plagued with a meaningless endgame. You get money, you get gear/trucks, repeat until enough, get guns and start fights. The issue is that every gang that has followed this route has ended up being banned or left due to bans.
Yes some of these bans were just (things like racism, cheating, mass RDM etc.) but plenty others have been blanket banned because they played the last stage of the endgame, use gear. In my opinion the use of blanket bans have been way too liberal. Back in the day we had 4/5 substantially sized gangs at a time, but many have been removed for lesser rule breaks resulting in blanket bans (EXP blanket ban for example, a whole group banned because of a grey area in the rules at the time).
In my opinion, the grave has already been dug and filled, and is waiting to be covered up. But, if the community wants to survive (as rebels are or should be a servers bread and butter) an intensive focus needs to be held on rebel endgame. Not new runs (people have money already), not shiny new toys as the novelty will expire (cars, jets, gear, guns), but activities that remain interesting each time it is done (major crimes, activities for base builds etc.)
The last time something has been done about it was the viper license, which is atm useless, and has been since its been release a couple months ago. A sponge uniform is going to do nothing to bring rebels back, but will likely drive some existing members away due to frustration when facing them. Try keep fights balanced firepower and armour wise (ignoring the lvl 5 vest only civs get) and then give rebels activities instead.
