Print

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

[DG123]

Seems there's a big problem with trying to make military miner squads in normal Dwarf Fortress.

Can I do it in Masterwork somehow?

Basically I just want armour on my miners so they die less easily. They do not need to actually be active military.

[Brilliand]

The discussions of this on the vanilla forums actually touch on whether this can be done by modding... it can't.  DFHack appears to be close, but I don't think anyone has actually figured out how to adjust the miner uniforms with DFHack.  In any case, that applies equally to Vanilla and Masterwork.

One possible workaround is to give your miners metal skin... in Masterwork, there is actually a way to give a dwarf stone skin (close): transform him into a Stonebound at the Hall of the Mountain King.  This would mean him not being a mason, though, and thus not being immune to warpstone and coal dust.  The Hall of the Mountain King is also not particularly easy to build.

The only other option that I know of is to make metal clothing... in Masterwork you can make clothing from mithril, which isn't terribly scarce but is still too rare to clothe all of your dwarves.  Reserving the mithril clothing for your miners would be very difficult.

[smakemupagus]

The advanced leathers in masterwork provide really good protection too, so if you can make enough clothes / cloaks etc. from shellplate or lamellar it can give some nice protection to civilians.

[Repseki]

Does having them in a military squad, with no active scheduling but uniform on when inactive, cause problems normally? Never attempted myself.

I'm assuming there would need to be some major overhaul to add a way of assigning clothing to specific non-military dwarves. Just keeping mine from shedding everything and sprinting outright to the tailor whenever I try to make sets of leather for my own military seems a challenge in itself.

[Meph]

Miners, Woodcutters and Hunters have a "civilian uniform". They cause issues when added to the military, I would advise not to do this.

Using rigid scale/shell/chitinplate clothing or lamellar leather is a good idea.

[dead]

Wouldn't the metal clothing be better than advance leather for that purpose? I was under the impression that was why Meph added them.

[Hefateus]

I make cloaks out of Lamellar and it i frequently protects against falls, sharp cuts from nasty hiding assassins and all kinds of other badness. It will however, not stop a determined attack by an well armed individual bent on killing a dwarf. In my forts I dont make any silk, wool, or cotton cloaks and my civilians happily put on the lamellar ones. On another note they make great trade goods if you have excess.

[DG123]

Well, I tried a workaround posted elsewhere. Basically just selecting "specific weapon" when arming the miners. It does seem to have made several of them armour up and use the right weapons.

However, some of my miners are wandering around wearing single pieces of armour (or less) with no pick or shield.

Whyyy!?

There are spare bloodsteel picks in the stockpile and I have specifically told them to use one of them each.

Using "specific weapon" no less.

Recently I saw some of my miners go into the stockpile and drop off picks. Something clearly is not working right.

[Meph]

They have two uniforms assigned. One is civilian, the other is military. No way to fix it, so dont try. ^^ They cant decide which one to use, so they randomly drop of items from each, and fill it with items from the other.

[Black_Legion]

One thing I always do is draft the miners into a militia squad but set them to be inactive but able to equip their uniforms. They wander the mines and caverns decked out in mail, greaves and breastplates if they are available. The only problem I've ever run into with this approach is having to have 2 picks for each miner... they're odd in a way:

Urist McMilitiaMiner: "Oh that, no I can't use that pick for military work. It's the mining pick you see. *points to other, identical pick* This one's the military one!"

Overseer: 'Urist, they are exactly the same... identical... here *assignes previously chosen mining pick to be used for military work in equipment screen*"

Urist McMilitiaMiner: "Oh my ancestors what the hells am I doing! This one is the military pick... why was I trying to use my mining pick to dig that wall? Well, better go swap it out."

Overseer: "..."