It's often a better idea to just take the ammo instead of the guns themselves, since the guns are so heavy. You can unload guns you find on dead enemies so that you just take the ammo. A very useful feature.

Early in the game, though, carry as much stuff as you can so you can sell it later for lighter and better stuff.

Try and take on those raiders in small groups. I've found *ideally* you can take out the guy in the first tent and only draw one of the guards from the door. If you're just starting out, they have much better armor, and you can loot them for enough stuff to get the 100 caps to hire Ian, which will help when you come back. Also, with these guys, I've found it's pretty easy it hit them in the leg to cripple them, or in the arm to routinely cause them to miss turns.

I think I had a character with 9 or 10 strength, so could carry quite a lot of equipment. But bear in mind, you can store loot in a container if you need to and come back for it later. When I finished the game I had tens of thousands of caps worth of equipment stored in a couple of bookshelves in Adytum which I never got to sell. Yes, I'm a huge hoarder. Having companions like Ian to use as pack mules is very handy too.

As for combat, I believe I initiated the fight by killing the gentleman in the easternmost tent, and took full advantage of doorways and sightlines so only a few could see me at once. Grouping them up together helps, as they will sometimes miss you and shoot one of their group.

One easy solution to this is to have a character who is designed, by various means, to be very poor at bartering. If you need to barter every bit of equipment you have for what you want, you'll probably still never run entirely out of things to barter, but you'll certain litter considerably less.