How to avoid getting killed by taking Leadership?

[zaimoni]

So in my current game #3 for the six-hour survivor checkpoint, the most worthwhile skill I was given was...Leadership.

Getting leadership too early has killed at least two of my characters in the early game. This time, it only almost has (by starvation; I am not used to getting down to ~300 food). Knowing what to do with the guard command has improved things (by keeping the the follower in a "safer place", and allowing directing the follower somewhere else on the main path while I run about.)

Also: a sleeping follower will not leave you just because you leave the level. But reports are (weblog comments) that there's a horrible unit cloning bug if the follower wakes up while you're not on the level. So calculating when he'll wake up naturally is critical.

[nope]

Better clarification of what kills you while under the influence of Leadership

But generally, i do understand a few points of that, I've had plenty of deaths resulting from Leadership, so i'll just toss out a few tips(Or alot, depending on which angle you look at it)

1.Just because you have leadership, doesn't mean you have to start leading people, treat it like as if it's a controllable nuclear reaction, if used successfully, it can be great and beneficial, but it can also go the way of destruction and failure when the attempt at using it is a failure, except that unlike a proper nuclear plant, you don't have Nuclear engineers, so you'd want to keep it under warps until you are confident enough to use it, same for Leadership

2.When leading somebody, don't cuddle them like they are fragile pieces of equipment, aside from stupid AI, every Civilian out there is as capable as you are and can do feats as great as you, and sometimes better, one main thing here : In order for followers to aid in your survival, they have to be worthy, and to make them worth your leadership, they have to actually be able to prove it, or die, whatever

3.Don't take in more followers than you are comfortable with, true, an extra gun is helpful, but an extra gun is an extra mouth, and also an extra consumer of pills, meds, ammo, weapons and explosives

4.Just because they are sleeping while you venture doesn't mean you can't drag them along under protest, Shouting can wake up your sleepy fellows, or if you don't want to wake up the entire neighborhood you can just push them around for a guarantied and silent brutal awakening

5.Protection is the main goal when it comes to leadership, you ain't leading a blitzkrieg or hit-and-run(Go lone wolf if you want to) and if you feel that your little army is getting a little too slow due to sleep deprivation or armor, throw away that feeling of destitute and press on, remember, a three-man party going on .66 can still fight well(Note, A Loner relies on speed, toss this tip away if you are going on lone hunts)

Do know that i have no guaranties on those tips,, infact, they may cause you more deaths, modify it to your likings(Say, you feel that 5 is terrible and wish to swap it around) before you die of Chronic YASD

[zaimoni]

The Leadership-specific cause of death is starvation; that just doesn't happen to lone wolves (unlike, say Bikers/Gangsters/Those Guys, or actually having to sleep at midnight.)

[tons0phun]

Now if it isn't obvious, I must say personally that I find Leadership to me the most versatile and useful skill in survivor. To such a point that typically for my games I usually change the skill.cvs file so that the leadership grants control of anywhere from two to five people per skill point. But even then, the same problems that exist for the 1:1 skill ratio still exist for increased party sized. I also did sort of a personalized study of the matter, but again one must realize that it is influenced by my own configuration of the game's in-game options. I usually like to have the difficulty % between survivors-vs-unded be as equal as possible, and it usually falls somewhere between 80-90% for both sides.

nope, in both my study-post and this very post here, definitely addressed some good points which address both in-game and meta-game qualities of the leadership skill that must be acknowledged to be successful. I would re-read them and really meditate on them for a bit. The one pointed out that I feel is the most prevalent is that every new recruit is another mouth to feed, but to get an idea about it you have to count consumption beyond just individual days. For instance...(with using VERY rough estimates here)

Let's say that, from a base-line value of hunger (that is, at 0hr of hunger, where the white-line sits), that 2 cans of food per day will sustain you. Thus to maintain maximum functionality for a week's time, one individual requires 14 cans of food.
A party of two needs 28...
A party of three needs 42...
Considering that a large grocery store in a shopping district is likely to carry about 30 cans of food by the time you get to it, one must acknowledge that there is an inherent environmental limitation on party size. Every time you bring in somebody new, you are cutting down the total number of days that you can operate without a food crisis.

To that notion, you could be starving because you are not seizing the reserves of food quickly enough. Whenever I start out a game, my first priority is to always close-off a supermarket from other survivors. Once reserves have run out remember that there is a continuous trickle of food that comes with each day's wave of refugees, so you should either be killing or trading for it.

The very notion of starvation in a party just made me conceptualize a new, cruel, but potentially effective tactic...

Goes like this...
1. Setup a base.
2. Recruit somebody, and bring them inside.
3. Bring them to a place where you can trap them with shelves.
4. Unrecruit them, trap them, and let them die of starvation.
5. Cannibalize. ;D

Otherwise though like anything, it will just take time and multiple play-throughs to get a feel for using the leadership skill. To meta-meta-game further, and as no attack against your character, but it could just be that leadership is not your style. So to say, it may just be that you will always function better as a lone-wolf, or as a very small group (1 to 2 followers).

But above all else: experiment!

[nope]

Well, It's about time to revive this useful but undiscussed thread.

As I've already mentioned, Leadership is, in Theoratical Terms, A nuclear reactor, Useful, but it can be deadly, to you and to everyone else in your team.

In practice, however, Leadership actually provides a ton of chances to fix things if you mess up, and it's this part that Leadership puts heavy empathsis on, well, atleast from my standpoint, For instance, dropping a cache of food you thought would not come into use only to later find out that you're starving without said cache, A loner might have to, say, run around in a desperate search for food, whilst someone with Leadership could just get their follower to give them some of their supply, assuming said follower didn't end up eating through his supply first or having none due to an incident or similar.

Not to mention, Followers provide a number of auxiliary features that are often overlooked, but are lifesavers, these include things like closing doors behind you, assisting you in pushing objects, watching whilst you sleep ensuring you don't get ambushed(Well, that is, if the follower doesn't doze off) and even reporting events, so if you end up losing your way, never hesitate to use the orders menu to get a new reading on that supply drop.

And trust me, followers closing doors behind you is important, I could ramble for years about why closing a door behind you will save you, it may seem an afterthought or only nessesary if you're taking a nap, but it's always useful anywhere.

On that technique, tons0phun, although it sounds effective on paper, it isn't as effective practically, It takes quite some time for a human to starve to death, so if you're starving when you use that technique, you're going to end up dead before they fall, not to mention, if you're stockpiling, corpses rot and can only be used when you're starving, so by the time you'd starve and need to cannibalize, the dead guy that you planned to cannisbalize would probably already be gone!

I'd go for some honest food instead of cannibalization if i did fall into something similar to that, because, by what I know(Considering it was actually my suggestion that made it in...or was it just RJ's personal thoughts?), cannibalization is made for, say, you are starving in the streets and needed food immediately, and of course, you ate a corpse and hope it didn't spring out ready to eat your face while you're in the middle of the unspeakable meal.

But, hey, experimentation is key, someone would probably know more than I do in this department, have fun, Survivors!