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[RoboGuardian]

I know from a few of my friends that it's popular to make a Hunter a Militia Captain and so on and so forth.   Assigning two of your first dwarves to the task of being in the military is both a good and bad thing.  It require micro-management from what I've personally discovered.  Using the (u)nit, c, and removing the dwarves from their squad (after they are created)  will set them back to their original assigned tasks.  This is both tiresome and worrying but...Perhaps it'll be fixed in a future update to where we won't have to do so.

Note:  I know this is the questions board but I had stumbled into this problem and found that any info pertaining to this was from a post in 2010.  I'm really hoping this helps anyone else.   Also if a threat comes up, you can assign your dwarves back into their squads. Though...They'll drop their equipment again.

[Hatake Kakashi]

I think theres a conflict with making a miner part of militia. The conflict is that due to a bug or design, the miner, when assigned to a squad with no uniform definition, will fight unarmed rather than with his pick. The obvious solution of assigning the pick as equipment for the miner in military screen does not work, as the miner will refuse to use the same pick for his mining and as part of his military equipment, resulting in him dropping the pick as soon as he is called to military duty by for example a kill or move command.

This is also true for a dwarf that has Hunting enabled and does hunting with his crossbow, he will not use that crossbow that he hunts with no matter whether you leave his equipment definition empty or whether you try stuff like equipping him with the specific crossbow, generic crossbow or individual choice selection.

So the problem really? You can't seem to make effective first response military by utilizing dual roles for Dwarfs that use Mining or Hunting. If you do, you will need an extra dedicated crossbow and pick per miner/hunter, and it will be awkward because usually the first thing these guys do before anything else when they act on Move or Kill commands is they drop their weapon, and perhaps quiver, instantly and go pick up the ones that are available on a stockpile or ground elsewhere.

When I embark on Untamed Wilds, I usually want someone who has several skill levels in Crossbow (Marksdwarf) and someone who is good in a melee skill (I like Speardwarves), armor use and shield use and then I make the Speardwarf the militia commander. I assign the Marksdwarf in the same squad as a member. I forge out a basic set of Iron armor and Spear and Shield for the militia commander and maybe create a bone or wooden crossbow and some bolts for the Marksdwarf. What I also do is I give the Marksdwarf Novice Axedwarf and Novice Woodcutting, so he can be useful while not needed to defend the fortress. He will this way always be equipped with a weapon in all cases, either with a Battle Axe and a Novice Axeman skill or when called out to action with the Crossbow and Crossbow Skill. The commander I make my secondary miner, so he can help out with mining when times are calm. I stockpile their military gear on the ground near some leashed dogs on a small stockpile that is near the most propable entrance/point of defence of my embark site. Then I just carefully let them be on the Inactive schedule and do Woodcutting/Mining while I don't need defence, or when I do need for example the Marksdwarf to shoo off some hostile creatures I invididually issue just him a command from the Squad interface and usually things work smooth and swift this way, provided I micromanaged the requirements such as quivers, bolts, the crossbow, backpack and so on in advance correctly.

I don't like to have dedicated military in the first seven dwarves, even if embarking in Wilderness because I dislike having anyone being just a Hauler/Idler ever.

What I would like to see is maybe the change of design/thwarting of this bug and actually making the Hunter/Marksdwarf dual role happen naturally, instead of for example having 2 different crossbows that the Hunter/Marksdwarf will foolishly run to swap when given official Kill or Move commands as now seems to happen.

PS. (Is this the same experience others are having as well in the current version? Just checking... )

[RoboGuardian]

Thanks there Hatake!  That really narrowed out the issue and even expanded it for me.  This is exactly what I'm facing, dual roles are desperately needed especially in the beginning.