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[Urist Tilaturist]

Miners in the military - yes or no?

No weapon is more dwarven than the pick, and no skill more dwarven than mining. It also levels up very, very quickly, especially when digging soil. Therefore, miners seem obvious candidates for a military squad. When exploring a cavern, it is good if miners can defend themselves from the endless onslaught of giant bats and giant cave spiders. However, there are also some problems:

Miners, if assigned picks as weapons, will not use said picks for mining.
Drafted miners are "recruits", causing "complained about the draft lately", which if repeated can lead to !!fun!!. (This seems to be the biggest problem.)
Miners training will not mine, making digging work slower.
Mining does not train discipline, so they must also spar and slay captives.

In my previous fort, I used a marksdwarf squad as both ranged support and the fortress guard (using wooden crossbows so beatings were non-lethal while still being extremely dangerous to forgotten beasts, kobolds and others), kept hunters, miners and woodcutters separate, and had a dedicated squad of close combat warriors who did nothing else. Generally new migrants with combat skills, including hunters, were left civilian if female and drafted if male.

Is is worth drafting miners, especially in an early fort? If it is, how should it be done to avoid repeated complaining about the draft or mining work being too slow? I thought of training my miners as low level wrestlers, but feared that this would cause them to wrestle instead of striking with the pick.

[Larix]

Miners in the military - yes or no?

No.

As you observed, the two uses of a dwarf clash. And there's not much you can do about it: the mining profession comes with a "uniform" consisting of freely-chosen civilian clothes and a pick; the pick is assigned to the uniform and can't be used by a military uniform; and at the same time, a pick reserved for mining can't be used in the military.

You can let dwarfs train mining and then, when they're legendary, retire them from their job and switch them over to the military. This, however, only works in a remotely sane way if you really permanently remove them from the mining force, which is probably not an option in a very early fort.

[martinuzz]

In an early fort. it can be used as an emergency measure, if all else fails. Turn off mining labor, wait for them to drop the pick, draft, assign pick to their uniform, and make them attack. They'll use their mining proficiency as weapon skill, which is likely higher than any military skill you trained in an early fort. If they survive, remove them from the military entirely, then turn back on their mining labour.

[Urist Tilaturist]

In that case, I shall follow my previous plans, only weaponising miners to ward off the kobold ambushes which always seem to come in the first summer, before the fort is properly built.

[Melting Sky]

I always use miners in the military. I consider their original mining job to be training. Once I have a decent number of legendary miners I pick a few of the most suitable individuals and turn them into full time fighters. It is unwise to leave the mining labor turned on for any drafted ex miner since the mining uniform mucks up their military one.

So long as the drafted miners are kept very happy you shouldn't have issues with the negative thoughts they get building up enough to actually do any harm unless they have traits that make them prone to negative thoughts.

Legendary miners are utterly devastating on the battle field once their discipline and other basic combat skills are raised to a decent level. They make axe lords and sword masters look like chumps.