Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Troas]

Now that I've gotten my military started I'd like to get them trained up without slicing/bashing each other to bits.  Per suggestions in other threads I've made them steel plate armor and shields and set them to wrestling for now.  But next season I'd like them to start weapons practice, so I plan instruct a peasant to use my small supply of silver (only galena and tetrahedrite so far) to make silver practice weaponry while my legendary weaponsmith is plastered from the river spirits I bought from the human caravan.

But next time the goblins come knocking I'll be wanting them to use real steel weapons.  Is there an easy/elegant way to handle the switch?  My current plan is to forbid all of the steel weapons once they are stockpiled to keep them using silver for now.  When the next siege arrives I'll unforbid the stack then go to each dwarf and forbid the weapon, deactivate the squad and reactivate it.  

Will this work?  Is there an easier/better way?

[ricemastah]

Should work

[BurnedToast]

Quicker to forbid the silver weapons from the stocks menu, rather then point to each dwarf, but otherwise that's the best method I know of.

[PTTG??]

Wow, that is many, many times better than the old way. (stockpile weapons in room, set stockpile for other weapons, Station squad in room, lock door, unactivate, recativate, unlock door, put your left leg in, take your right leg out, reformat the hard drive, insert the red key, give Atrus the white page...)

[Troas]

Thanks for the advice about the stocks menu - I hadn't thought of that.

[Durnheist]

I use a mix of forbid and special "armories".  I have a custom stockpile of steel and rock weapons (obsidian swords) in a room with a door.  I have another stockpile of silver weapons in a room with a door.  The silver weapon armory is closer to the rest of the fortress than the steel, so new migrant recruits will go there to pick stuff up without my forbidding access to the steel room generally anyway.  Forbidding a single door's access is still really fast and easy though.

Then when I want them to switch weapons I set them to unarmed, forbid their weapon once they drop it, lock the silver armory, and set them back to armed and they go to the steel armory and grab a new weapon.  Then I unlock the silver armory, reclaim their weapon, and someone hauls it off into the room and stockpiles it.  There's no need to station them in the individual armories that I've seen though.

If you wanted to do it en masse you could just set all the dwarfs to unarmed at the same time, lock the silver armory, and designate forbid the entire barracks and meeting area.  That might be a little faster than using the stocks menu, but then you might also miss a dwarf or two drinking or eating.  

This is basically the "old method" with a little forbid tweaking mixed in and minus the stationing, but it works really well for me.  If you use the stocks menu then you don't know what weapons your forbidding and what weapons you aren't, which is fine if your going to field your entire military but if you want to let the latest immigrant dabbling weapon skill dwarfs keep sparring you'll about have to micro manage something like this.

Personally I only have a few dwarfs in good enough gear and with enough skill to take on the goblins in open field anyway, everyone else is still too high a risk of death or severe injury.  I find that well placed high quality parts ballistas behind fortifications along the map edges where the goblins show up, a long with a stockpile of ballista ammo next to them and a highly experienced siege operator or two, is probably the best way of dealing with them though.

[ December 11, 2007: Message edited by: Durnheist ]

[Troas]

As a follow up - should I have used high quality silver weapons instead of the cheap stuff for practice?  Even though I had exceptional/legendary quality steel plate and shield available for all soldiers I had several injuries due to sparring.  this thread and the Quality Article from the wiki archive seem to indicate that I should have used higher end silver weaponry but I was wondering if anyone has any personal experience on the subject.

[Torak]

High quality means more damage.

More damage = Worse Injuries when the guys who suck at using the weapon fuck up.