Hey, OK, there's a lot to digest here, hopefully this helps;

The rando attack from HN:

You must have a human male with you. You must have the holy flame on someone in your squad. You must talk to the squad leader bothering you with the male.

The last part is key, if they talk to someone that is not human or male when they come to say their shit, they'll attack.

If you do not talk to them when they call, they'll attack if you're breaking their rules (i.e. having a shek in group) without talking to them to explain things (the slave ruse for example).

Pay attention to the 'DIALOGUE' panel in-game.

There is constantly shit going off you might not see, but that panel captures it all.

20$ a paladin asked to talk to you, you didn't see it, kept going, he went hostile.

There are a lot of factions that start neutral, that go negative. It's normal. I.e swamp ninjas or red sabres. - If you travel through the swamps, they will eventually end up hostile. Normal. Nothing wrong. There are a lot of factions like this, even the basic Dust Bandits.

(a) Too much tedium and need to micro-manage.

You learn to get quicker/better at it over time. Trust me. I promise.

(b) Too much rando zap your dead so now you can either ditch all those hours of play (if you are like me and like to play "Dead is Dead") or you learn to save incessantly and save-scum like a pro.

So, I've got 2k+ hours this game. I died a few times at the start ofc, but after that, I have never died. You're trying to go too fast. Sorry, prob not what you wanna hear, but Kenshi is a very slow grind game. The only way this kinda stuff will happen is you go off somewhere unprepared/too early. There's no need to save scum in this game at all, the key is to always be prepared. Have sleeping bags for all your guys, always. If you get in a fight, and your stats aren't like 50+ and you took no damage, find a place to sleep. Like, priority #1. Don't keep going. Stop, rest your guys up. Always. Don't camp out in the open unless you absolutely must either. Any ruined building, old ancient location etc. you can put sleeping bags down in. Even ancient labs or whatever. Then close the door, and you've got makeshift bases all over the place. Anyway, always rest after fights. Don't sleep outside, always have sleeping bags.

Don't go around without good gear. Get armor smiths going, or buy it. Gear in this game is not optional, and gear is 110% form over function. A piece of trash with no coverage won't do jack. Coverage = chance for armor to work at all. It's a paramount stat.

Again, this all might not be things you wanna hear, but getting a smith going, light skirmishes until at least 20-30 stats with resting after every fight etc. is how to play this game and not die. Approach things realistically, not like a 'game'.

Once you figure it all out, trust me, you have to play extremely deliberately careless etc. to die. Most people put their own guys in things like the peeler to lose limbs and such, because the game itself will never have that opportunity.