The wildlife shouldn't be inherently hostile to begin with, as animals only attack if sufficiently provoked/threatened. Once they do attack, however, they don't stop until either they're dead or the threat is gone.

Human opponents, on the other hand, will attack for any of a number of reasons, and may/not choose to bail if things 'go south'. As such, it would only make sense if some of them, upon realizing they haven't a chance in hell of winning, chose to get the hell out of Dodge. Those beyond sense (cracked-out Raiders, for example) would probably not flee, as their drugged state would put them past caring and/or even knowing in the first place, however most opponents should flee in such situations as self-preservation would naturally kick in at that point.

Robots should neither flee nor surrender, as they do not know fear or pain, and absolutely will not stop until either you or they are dead. They should also not attack in the first place unless programmed to defend their location, since they will only do what they've been told to. This even applies to malfunctioning ones, since even the most severe malfunction wouldn't write new code.

Ghouls and Super Mutants are something of a mixed bag. Feral Ghouls are completely insane, so would almost certainly attack anything/one that got near them, as would most Super Mutants due to being too dumb to tell the difference between 'friend' and 'foe' (or, for that matter, to even understand the related concepts). Some SMs, however, should act more 'human' (for lack of a better descriptor) in this regard, since it's been shown that they can (albeit rarely) be capable of the proper reasoning.

So it's a negative "knee jerk" response?

Good to know.

Gotta love those blanket statements.

Depends on how smart they are.

Love how volatile people are getting over this. Anyway, I think it's a good idea from a realism perspective, but that it would likely get annoying over time. Grinding enemies would turn into a major pain when they all scatter instead of fighting like mindless robots. Now if they retreated in a group while still attacking...that could be interesting.

It is really a function of which weaker enemy you encounter.

Mindless or insane enemies probably should attack since they are not properly equipped to evaluate the threat you pose.

Enemies whose job it is to attack you and supposedly are trained for it, like an Enclave Officer or Trooper, should attack.

Enemies whose job does not include combat, like an Enclave Scientist, should probably take cover or run away. (Most of these run, some don't).

Anyone who thinks you pose a threat to their home/family, whether trained for combat or not, would be expected to fight back.

I have mixed feelings pertaining to weak raiders. My thoughts are that some should attack, and some should not unless supported by other raiders.

Just about all enemies (except the mindless or insane) do run from you after attacking if you cause them enough damage.

Well... Skyrim did the fleeing thing a little bit better from previous TES games, so there's a good chance that Fallout 4 have an improvement.

~Edit~

Mind you, I've seen Bethesda's AI pull off some smart moves.

If the enemies gave up and never came back I'd let them go. That never happens though. They just give up for a couple minutes and come back shooting.

I'd let a lot of enemies go if they didn't return.

Maybe get better at killing?

On a note semi-related to the topic, if not FO4...... who was the idiot who came up with the "Chance to make enemies flee" affix for melee weapons in ARPGs? It's like a giant flashing Don't Wield Me sign on the thing.

If they disappear from the area or totally remove from the map, then it's ok. If they run away and come back to back stab you, it is annoying. Sometime I just want to "clear the area" for own safety and safety for other NPC.

Damn! Enclave and Talon Company spawning AGAIN!.

Hmm, I'd have thought the "and then come back" thing would be the preferred method, since you don't have to run all over creation tracking them down.

I would like them to throw their guns on the ground saying something like, "screw this" and run away.

For maximum annoyance, enemies who surrender should swear loyalty to you and follow you around to 'help'. Soon you'll have a mob of adoring sycophants dogging your steps, telling you they're hungry and have to go to the bathroom.

The problem with either sparing someone's life cause they surrender, or letting them run away, is that so far they haven't stayed surrendered or fleeing. As soon as you turn your back and they've gained back a bit of health, they start shooting at you again, leaving you little other choice than to finish them off immediately or chase them down.

If the AI was changed so they would actually stay non-hostile, give up their weapons, or run away and stay away, it would be an option to let them go, but so far I've never seen that happen in any Beth game.

From a realism stand point this would be a pretty neat feature to have. The only problem is balancing it to suit everyone, which you can't really do as everyone will want something different from it.

Personally, If I was a high level character (and obviosuly well equipped), ie wearing power armour and carrying enough armaments to start world war 3, I would love it if much lower level enemies tried to avoid or evade me when they noticed me. I find killing low level mobs a chore in most games, especially towards end game, and after a certain point stop looting them even. Having to fast travel back to dump all the crap gets old fast.

Obviosuly having drugged up fiends, feral ghouls or sentry bots etc run away wouldn't be that realistic, but normal raiders? I think that would be fairly realistic.

If you were wandering around with a pool cue or tire iron and a 7ft tall walking tank came into your base armed to the teeth, would you attack it? I wouldn't.