I was thinking about caves, and yeah it's pretty boring. Maybe lootable caves with enemies should be marked somehow? In Fallout 2 (not sure if in F1) there was a message telling something is in the caves "You hear noises coming from the cave." or something close to it. On city maps lockers are almost always visible, and in caves you need to look in every corner of it, and still it's easy to miss some stuff, and mostly there is nothing there, just time wasted. Caves should be an alternative for lockers, and IMHO there are few simple solutions:
-increased drop rate of useful stuff, along with challenging enemies (claws and stuff)
- leave it as it is, but add a mark telling there is something in the cave, message like in F2 or rock on the ground near the cave, could be anything
-make big caves less common but with much higher chance for good loot (making cave maps less common would make encounters maps more boring and to avoid that, we could make small caves always empty and leave them just for maps variety)
I found cave with 11 deathclaws attacking in two groups and the reward was 2x buffout... madness.
Yes you are right, "You hear noises coming from the cave." - I remember it now!
Perhaps it's good idea to create more diverse caves like:
1. "Remains of the impruded travelers indicate that you found Riders hideout. Beware of the Khans!" - there could be heads on the stake near the cave, with few guards aroud the entrance. It's normal that the cave contains chest with loot obtained during raids,
2. "During you travels through the mountines you found an ald abandoned mine. Wonder what's inside?" - 2/3 lvl mine, like Fallout 2 Klamath mine (rats, ghouls, DeathClaws etc.) - you can find HQ resources,
3. "The moans coming from the nearby cave aroused your interest. It's seems that the cave is still occupied..." - there cane be an old private Vault - it would be normal that rich people could built their own Vaults to store goos or survive the blast. Vault can be located inside the Vault - it can be occupied by ghouls or supermutants (supermutants found Vault and captured all humans), then when the Master army fallen they moved to this cave...
Just a few ideas to diverse the cave hunts, what we need is tools to create maps, some folks willing to help with a little of their time thats all...