Did you manged to do it without loosing any followers? I was wondering because not being able to give them armor like in the second game greatly hinders them latter on. Right now I'm at the LA vault and I lost the women with the green mohawk to those robots on the third floor. Unless I send them home I don't see any other way not to loose anybody to the mutants at their bases. Sure you could use a rocket launcher or grenades on groups but the mutants still have powerful weapons that can fuck them up. All it takes is a mutant at close range with a minigun to blast them. 

But to be honest, like a lot of games like this, I leave the followers at home, because I don't like losing them...

Same here I went back on a save a few times because I kept loosing someone at that vault. After so many times I realized no matter what I'm going to do I'm going to loose someone to more powerful enemies. With the weapons I have and having no skill in big guns and throwing I'm not going to be able to take out any groups to increase their chances of living. What doesn't help either is that instead of staying back they go off and look for something to fight which gets them killed. 

I could never get past the first few minutes of FO1.

Vastly prefer the gameplay of the newer ones.