So, I got screwed over in my quest for a perfect game in fallout 3, I accidentally traveled near a caravan route and got Doc Hoff killed and deleted my back up save file. So I'm curious, I'm aware everything in the game isn't rendered at the same time (enemies don't spawn near vault 101 if you're all the way in rivet city)

But what exactly is the area for a map cell? By that I mean, what is the farthest away from you an enemy/random event or whatever can occur from you?

My guess is that it's the size of your local area map in the pip-boy...Next to the world map. Because it's a pretty large area and I've heard explosions from pretty far away while walking around the wasteland.

So my goal is to keep relatively important npc's alive, I'm aware you can reverse pickpocket better weapons and armor on them, but are their particularly vulnerable npcs I should worry about before I get to far in the game? (Joe Tinker comes to mind, he dies easily and gives you a follower).

With that said does anyone have any tips for dealing with npcs before the game get's too dangerous? Or just general survivability for them? And if anyone understand what I meant by the size of a map cell, clarification would be appreciated. Thanks.

On Xbox I just lived with it, but on PC I will resurrect them if they're important, deal with it if not. Wasteland's harsh, people die. I have heard most people will give leather armor or raider armor to small npc's while big ones will get maybe combat armor or metal armor.