You sometimes spawn right next to them (e.g. VC patrol), when it is a big encounter (e.g. Slavers+VC patrol+ghouls encounter), so they (e.g. VC patrol) might start to attack you.
Oh come on, with these resources that spawn, wasteland is hello kitty online again, that was nice when you got all resources from dismantling only, mines are breaking whole game. If NPCs are killing you only because you're unlucky and appeared too close it's ok! Anyway it's the only aim of that feature - to kill players for fun sometimes, because there's no other explanation to this, if they wanted to do something with stealing, then it would trigger when you use steal on them, if against point blank bursting, then it wouldn't trigger if you're unarmed, if against dynamites, then they would act like guards, etc. But they make that you can't even FA them and sometimes they run to you themselves when using their "snipe tactic" when fighting with someone and shouting on you to keep distance, or, like you said, you can just appear in encounter near them. And I'm not talking about TB, they can walk to you in TB, you can appear near them in TB, and you can't do anything with this. Take it easy, imagine that all these caravans and patrols are evil PKs who always trying to find a reason to kill you, nothing bad in this.
