At least in the beginning. I would say it's just a case of me being underpowered and going after enemies I shouldn't go after yet, but I've had the same issues since facing down geckos back in Arroyo.

I'm in the gecko cave now, searching for Smiley I believe his name was. I understand I'm underpowered and should expect these golden geckos to be tough to take down, but this is ridiculous. If I do a targeted shot and it says that targeted shot is 83% or even 90%, why am I missing almost every single time? My small arms skill is at 101. Not great by any means but I don't remember that being some worthless level in Fallout 1.

Same goes for my spear attacks. Always a miss, and my melee skill is close to 100 as well. Does the percentage a targeted attack tells you not matter at all if your other skills aren't high enough? It def seems this way.

I'd say regardless of whether I'm doing a targeted shot, regardless of the high percentage it gives me, I miss a good 70% of the time. It's very annoying and makes every single enemy a lengthy, arduous battle.

Def a much rougher start then the first Fallout provides.

The golden gecko cave is pretty rough. You should be avoiding combat as much as possible there. Focus on grabbing Smiley and getting back to Klamath in one piece. You can return later to finish exploring the cave after you've made progress on your Chosen One task: finding out where the water flask came from.

The percentage, as far as I know, should be your chance to hit. That doesn't mean you can't miss many times in a row though - 83% just means that on average you'll hit 83% of the time. You may have to attack at 83% 1000 times (or more) to actually get an 83% hit rate - just because you miss 10 times in a row doesn't mean the probability is wrong, it just means the random number generator decided to screw you over.

If you really want to make things a little easier, if you have some flares you can use them to light up the area where you fight. Those caves are pretty dark and the darkness has a significant effect on your accuracy, especially at the start. Most people don't bother though (and you might not have any flares at any rate).

Another way - which is the easiest IMO - is to take someone with you.

Personally, I tend to avoid fighting these things as much as possible in this level, since you don't really gain anything (apart from XP) from killing them. You'll most likely want to return here at some point once you're better equipped - and I don't mean weapons. ;)

Once you find Smiley, you'll find that he's surprisingly tough for a guy with a bum leg who until you find him was too scared to leave the room he was in. So you don't need to be quite as careful on the way out.