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[Rowanas]

I've noticed that my dwarves have been consistently upgrading to new and better types of armour. Is this an acknowledged feature? I hadn't heard any mention of it, but only recently a group of goblins in iron turned up instead of the usual copper shite they wear, and my military has all iron gear on, even though their preferences are set to metal. What's up with this?

[Valdus]

If it's set to just "metal" dwarves seem to pick the best they can find automatically.  I find the same with weapons, if I set it to swords but don't specify a material the dwarves will grab steel first.

Miners and woodcutters don't seem to autoupgrade their tools but you can "force" them to do so by turning off the labour.  Once they drop the old tool re-enable the labour and they will go grab the highest quality tool in the stockpile.  Steel picks are nice for when a miner gets cornered... mine regularly slice wildlife in half with the pick.

[Nameless Archon]

Steel picks are nice for when a miner gets cornered... mine regularly slice wildlife in half with the pick.

I'll second this. I had an idle legendary miner doing some hauling get herded away from the fort entrance by an ambush of goblin lashers. Being faster than he was, they chased him down. Every time one caught up to him, he'd land a hit, and then walk away, while they trailed along and eventually bled out from the strike. He killed four goblins this way before he managed to get a pond between them and him, and then made a break for the door and safety.

Civilian miners: Unarmored, but not unarmed!

[Burning_Iceman]

They will automatically upgrade to more expensive armor, not necessarlily better.

[Rowanas]

Ahha! So, I need to make sure that I don't buy any of that super-pimped-out copper they seem so intent on hawking to me.

[FleshForge]

You also need to be wary of items collected from enemies, although there are some interesting options in enemy gear that you can't get otherwise (iron masks e.g., which apparently can be worn along with helmets).  Sometimes enemies will come in with some masterwork decorated gear that is otherwise garbage and your dwarves will prefer it over steel.

[Rowanas]

Well, I unforbid items dropped by enemy corpses, so if I see some terrible copper decorated item, I'll just keep it forbidden until the moment I want it melted down or traded.

[FleshForge]

The thing is that can end up being a lot of items to pick through - imo it's a lot less work to define a custom uniform and force the material to be steel (or whatever you have, if e.g. you have bronze or adamantine) even though the interface is pretty painful to work with.

[lordofhyphens]

The thing is that can end up being a lot of items to pick through - imo it's a lot less work to define a custom uniform and force the material to be steel (or whatever you have, if e.g. you have bronze or adamantine) even though the interface is pretty painful to work with.

Honestly, I've never found the equipment interface to be much trouble myself. My stock uniform tends to be leather trousers, leather shirt, steel {helm, breastplate, mail, greaves, high boots, shield, gauntlets}, and a leather cloak

[FleshForge]

Once you get familiar with it yeah it's not too bad, just the process of getting familiar with it is difficult, although I think Toady did a good enough job with the limitations of a strictly character mode/hotkey interface.

[Rowanas]

Everyone wears metal all the time in my fortress. I decided to make it that way when I discovered that shell and bone armour counts as metal. Now my initial military starts with shell armour and gets to work their way up as goblins kindly drop off their copper and iron wares.

[uggi]

I've been wondering this.. does the default "metal armor" uniform include both mail shirts and breastplates or should I add them manually?

I have tried using the default template and then a modified one, trying to get my dorfs to use the shiny brand new iron mail shirts and breastplates that were manufactured just for them, but they insist on wearing a stack of two or three crappy copper mail shirts stolen from dead goblins, and no breastplates (nor pants).

Sometimes they just stand over the armor stockpile, stuck in the "picking up equipment" job, while one member of the squad goes fighting the invaders alone.

[celem]

metal armour seems to cause them to stand on the stockpile and flip-flop, ive watched a guy repeatedly swap between steel mail and a cotton candy breastplate forever (.16 with 1 instance of 'metal armour' in uniform)

I assign specifically metal mail and metal breastplate

[Rowanas]

Ditto. Just to be safe.

[candylord]

metal armour seems to cause them to stand on the stockpile and flip-flop, ive watched a guy repeatedly swap between steel mail and a cotton candy breastplate forever (.16 with 1 instance of 'metal armour' in uniform)

I assign specifically metal mail and metal breastplate

For the record, you guys know you can specify materials with [M] right?
like, specifically steel breastplate and no other, so if theres no steel then they'll either go down a level or just go without (depending on exact match or not)

Not trying to be condescending, I only discovered it myself a couple weeks ago
seems to fix the problem of them trying to equip goblin stuff when theres masterwork cotton candy/steel armor to be had