Been playing through Fallout 1 for the first time, and I've come across plenty of weirdness in random missions (ex: unfinishable missions depending on the order in which you do things), but this is by far the weirdest thing I've seen yet.

I'm at the Boneyard with Zimmerman, and I have the disk to give to him which , he then gets mad and . However, I have to immediately begin combat manually after giving him the disk, so nothing bad happens to him. After getting rid of all of the enemies (he does 0 damage 90% of the time but actually did 2 or 3 damage to one of them once lol), I get experience but then combat immediately starts again and Zimmerman comes after me now. I would just leave while he's hitting me but Dogmeat or Katja (my only two party members) will kill him at this point.

In one attempt, Zimmerman and I were about equal distances from the town exit. After killing the enemies, I was able to get to the exit just before he got the chance to hit me (he was about 2 hexes behind me when I left). Tried re-entering with no weapons equipped and he still attacks me (then gets killed by Dogmeat or Katja).

Is there any kind of trick at all that keeps him alive? Like any way to trick the AI into not being hostile anymore?

I don't think there any ways around this situation, possibly due to the fact it might be overlooked by the developers or limitation. He would died either way (heck he even got executed in the lore).

Ahhh... what a shame. I've been trying to play so far without having anyone die who I didn't want to die. It's why I kept investigating different methods of the Adytown battle too - I didn't like that Adytowners were dying and I couldn't do anything about it. Turns out, if you show Zimmerman the tape and then instantly attack the Regulator there - only the Regulators get mad - the Adytowners remain neutral and they stay out of the fight - same with Miles and Smitty.

Oh well, I guess Jon will have to die, since I do want to get back into Adytown. He'll have to die right at the main gate of his town (that's where I left him, and he's still angry), kinda fitting place, lol.