Yielding

In Fallout, the player may yield in order to stop accidental combat. Yielding will only work against actors who are not aggressive towards the player, i.e. they are fighting only because the player attacked them.

• The player yields by putting his weapon away within the first 10 seconds of combat (Gamesetting: fCombatYieldTime (default: 10.0)). After the timer has expired, the player can no longer yield. When combat ends, the timer is cleared.
• After the player yields -- meaning that ANYONE stopped combat with the player because of the yield -- another timer starts (Gamesetting: fCombatYieldRetryTime (default: 600.0)). The player cannot yield again until that timer expires. This is intended to prevent the player from using yield as an exploit to repeatedly attack/yield/attack/yield.