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[kwaffles]

5 out of 10 of my mace dwarves have become focused on switching out their armor to the detriment of all other duties. They constantly run back and forth from the armor pile to their barracks. If I tell them to do something besides the norm (training for everyone else/running back and forth for them), like going to the danger room or killing that pesky skeletal cyclops, they'll go halfway to the intended destination.... and flash a big red ? mark and turn back around to change their clothes.

Notes:
Its only 5 of my 10 mace dwarves who do this. The other 5 dwarves and my other squad are just fine.
Mass forbidding the armor seems to work, but I'm hesitant to do this instead of fixing the problem. Also I'd like my dwarves to *normally* change         their armor if they so desire. If I reclaim the stuff the special 5 go back to their indecisive fashionista ways. 

Any solutions?

[JarinArenos]

Sounds like an issue I ran into earlier. It's possible you've assigned an outfit that doesn't quite fit. What is your assigned uniform?

[kwaffles]

Plate mail
mail shirt
gauntlets
high boots
greaves
shield
cape

.... I think. Maybe its the gauntlets (dwarves can't tell their right from their left) or the mail + plate?

[JarinArenos]

I had issues with mail+plate on mine. It tends to have issues when worn over existing clothing. Whatever shirts/robes/whatever the dwarves have decided to wear on their own take up too much space to stack the two pieces of armor on top.

[slothen]

i've had mixed success getting dwarves to wear leather clothes underneath armor
also, for gauntlets and boots, the quality level must be the same, and I suppose they can't or shouldn't be decorated for that reason.
Also they try to grab the most valuable thing available, so my militia commander has all masterwork stuff, and the clothes he's picked out are masterwork embroidered masterworks stuff.

[zephyr_hound]

I'm interested in this issue too. My standard uniform for military is mail shirt/breastplate/helm/gauntlets/greaves/leggings/high boots/shield, plus whichever weapon the squad is themed to (dedicated squads). I have to just leave non-armor coverings up to them. I've tried to get them to wear cloaks as part of the uniform but as soon as I add a cloak or any non-armor covering I get the eternal stockpile dance. Surely you can layer cloaks over mail shirt and breastplate? I thought you could from the wiki page on armor, I mean I've heard of people layering six cloaks for their soldiers.

[Olith McHuman]

Not sure if this is the cause of your problem, but make sure your military dwarfs have the woodcutting and mining labors disabled. Those can cause stockpile dances too.

To answer your other question, dwarfs will normally try to upgrade their armor when better pieces (better quality at least) are made / become available. Try may claim armor that another dwarf is no longer using (i.e., he upgraded), so making one piece of armor can cause a lot of upgraders.

[Fellhuhn]

I love it when the whole milita starts running to a forge because of the new adamantine battle axe there. On their way they keep their old weapon in their hand but not 'equipped' so it is unusable. If they then run into fun they will start to wrestle the enemy instead of using their old adamantine weapons. Always fun to watch.

[martinuzz]

I suspect that your macedwarves have woodcutting/mining, or hunting labor enabled. This would cause erratic behaviour like that.
Those 3 civilian jobs have a 'phantom uniform' that conflicts with armor settings.

Apart from that, I wouldn't know what would cause them to run back and forth.

Your armor set should not cause this behaviour. Only thing it *could* cause, is your dwarves picking up and wearing the breastplate before they wear ringmail, which results in them not putting on a ringmail, but not in doing a erratic back-and forth dance (breastplate can only be worn over ringmail, ringmail cannot be worn over breastplate)

With 'cape', I think you mean cloak?
You can indeed put more than one cloak over your dwarves' armor, without any troubles.
All my dwarves wear gauntlets, highboots, greaves, helmet, chainmail, breastplate, shield and 2 cloaks.

If none of your afflicted dwarves have aforementioned civilian jobs enabled, then I don't know what would cause your behaviour.
I'd have to make a guess and tell you to try and changing their armor settings to 'replace clothing' instead of 'over clothing'. But I've never heard of that causing trouble like this.

EDIT: Jarinarenos might be on to something though. There are certain   pieces of clothing that are 'shaped', as well as certain pieces of   armor.
  'Shaped' items cannot be worn over each other.
Find out all about armor at: http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Armor
 

[JarinArenos]

You may just want to set the uniform to "replace" instead of "wear over" for civilian clothing. Sure, they'll be going commando under that plate, and the chain is going to chafe a bit, but such is the price of proper protection.

[slothen]

One thing I've noticed is that when you're making a uniform, all the items arrange themselves by what body part they go on.  But I've also noticed that when you layer several items on one body part, depending where the cursor is or the order in which you do it, items may be arranged differently on the list, for example your leather shoes may end up above or below the metal boots.  I wonder if this has any effect on weather dwarves successfully layer armor items.