I have been using 'take back city' instead of finding my companion and asking them to follow in order to prevent a city level reset. I wasn't aware that I needed to find the companion to prevent this. I have about 4 level 3 settlements reset to 0 now
. Given the crashes I have been experiencing it was too risky to search the whole city looking for the companion.
I understand the team is exploring even more City leaders, might I suggest the city defaults to a particular leader with no traits (or few) when 'unmanned'?
Ie Sanctuary defaults to Sturges as leader. Sturges has no, or few, traits (to inspire using proper leaders) but is simply there to keep the settlement functioning? Most settlements have a unique leader already present, and for those that don't, there is the vault tec rep, the drunk in diamond city and the woman at the radio tower that can be found to man other settlements. Essentially, they become the Deputy Mayor for their respective settlements and act as a fail-safe for when a settlement loses their companion leader.
Obviously mods will come out bringing in more leaders than we know what to do with, and mods will (already have) come out that allow for the aforementioned to be leaders, I'm referring to the base game utilising them as a means to prevent settlement wide level resets.
That way to avoid confusion, the menu could say instead of 'Take back city':
Promote [Name] to Leader (releases companion)
and
Dismantle settlement (removes all items, plots and scrap added)
Could even have it so that a Deputy cannot take control until at least level 1 or 2, and settlement levels are slowed down by 50%. That would prevent people just throwing their companion in and promoting the deputy straight away.
It would also add a more realism to the mod, if the leader is removed, the void will naturally be filled by another.