Has anyone heard of a way to turn the down the frequency of the bloody wilderness encounters?
I went out for a mission with 200 rounds for each character's main & secondary weapons which I thought should probably suffice and by the time I'd fought my way to the mission area through what seemed like a thousand stray dogs & radscorpions, I was down to half that and somewhat wounded which put me at a major disadvantage for the mission.
I don't even want to turn them off, I just want to avoid a minimum of 1 random fight per grid square and without wasting all my character points on outdoorsman...

Yeah I was afraid of that, might have to do a bit of savegame editing just so I can GET to mission 2

I know how you feel. I hate those random encounters with a passion, usually I just drive away without fighting.

I cant remember so many special encounters in original FT, I changed Outdoorsman skill to 300% for all my squad using Save Editor, but window with encounter question still appears about 5 times per 1 map square.. This is kinda annoying.

Yep, this is a major PITA.
I tend to use the "run off the edge of the map" routine.
It really is annoying and breaks the continuity, but does keep your ammo up for the main mission.

While the fequency was really high, i never had a problem with those cause you start with a squad member with the outdorman skill tagged. 120% should be enough to avoid normal encounters. (you cannot avoid special, but there are not many anyway) I kept that one till the end of the game cause a sniper is always good. if you really want to swap her out, i didnt saw any other recruit with that skill tagged, you will have to find another way to get a member with enough outdoorman skill.
Also, you can run from encounters.

I'm sure this would've helped a lot, long time ago. 6 years ago, to be precise. You need glasses, urgently, my friend.

Why? You think people don't play this game any more? I was looking for a solution and found it here. I put it here, so when people google this problem they can find a working solution.

I just think that, if you think this is so important, you could've created a new topic. Nooo, you didn't found a solution here lol.
There was no reason to bump a topic, from 2009.

If you want to help, you can follow this example:
http://www.gog.com/forum/fallout_series/fixing_fallout_1_2_tactics_3_and_new_vegas_once_and_for_all/post1
^This person made something really good, unlike you.

This is the first thing that comes up when I Google this problem.