For as long as there has been Fallout 4, mankind has asked:

"Why does everyone seem to hate Radstags so much?"

There have been attempts to answer it in the past, mostly meddling with the faction relationships to make them friendly, but that fix has never satisfied me. I don't want the Radstags to be passive, or friendly, they're not pets but wild animals. Plus, only the low level Radstags are unfairly persecuted this way, the higher-level ones deserve to get shot, since they are all too happy to take the first shot themselves.

So, after some experiments, I've come up with my own solution, a slight tweak to the AI of the Yearling, Doe, and regular Radstag, without any changes to any factions, and without touching the AI of any other Radstag types.

Yearlings, Does, and regular Radstags won't provoke attacks just by standing around in the woods.
Yearlings and Does are still skittish, and will flee if approached or attacked.
Regular Radstags originally had the same AI settings as the Does, but I made them less cowardly, they might give you a little fight if you attack them, but still shouldn't engage on their own.


Added a second file with custom AI tweaks to all the commonwealth Radstag varieties. It contains the changes from the first file too, so use it instead, not in addition. Sorry Far Harbor fans, I didn't feel like the crazy Island deer needed a change at this time.


Screenshots are naturally not great, since the Radstags run away.
Conflicts with anything that edits the same AI settings, I don't know of any, but it's possible.
Let me know how it works on your end.