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[Deepblade]

Once you kill a Forgotten Beast you should have plenty of bones to train up a bowyer pretty well. Last fort I had was swimming in Bone Crossbows. Elves trying to raid my steel clad Dwarves riding on horses, boars, and bobcats is just ridiculous the amount of materials I had.

Like others have said, caps are a shaped item, so without removing that tag in the raws you can't wear another shaped item.
A nice light suit for a militia/civilian outfit would be metal high boots,bones greaves or leather leggings, mail shirt, Leather Armor, metal helm, and metal gauntlets, and a wood shield.
Metal boots, gauntlets, and helmet are very light for the protection they offer. A mail shirt by itself will help you not get chopped up, Leather Armor is cheap and easy so it's sort of icing on the cake as far as upper body goes. Bone Greaves are technically better than Leather Leggings would be, if they're made from the same animal, but due to a minor bug you can't specify bone armor in a squad's equipment. So, if you had greaves listed you'd have to have no superior greaves available for upgrade.

If you're looking at full time professionals a full suit of plate is tops. Start from the militia set up and as you get the resource upgrade your greaves and breastplate. Shield Material isn't all that important defensively, so don't worry about that. Offensively they may try and bash with it, so heavier shields means more bashing damage for slower Dwarves. You could also add in cloaks and hoods to the sets. It's a little bit extra protection, and the mental image is awesome. Even better mental image if you have access to sliver barb and dye the cloth cloaks and hoods black.

If you can only have one metal armor piece on a Dwarf I'd make damn sure it was the helmet. Enemies go for the face every chance they get, especially if your guy gets knocked out somehow. I had a Dwarf stunned and repeatedly bitten in the head by a GCS survive simply because of his helmet. I'm not sure a leather one would have saved him.

I personally mod in a chain coif so I don't have to make more hoods.

Spoiler: coif raw (click to show/hide)

ITEM_HELM:ITEM_HELM_COIF]
[NAME:chain coif:chain coifs]
[LAYER:COVER]
[ARMORLEVEL:2]
[COVERAGE:50]
[LAYER_SIZE:10]
[LAYER_PERMIT:100]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:2]
[HARD]
[METAL]
[STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_CHAIN_ALL]

add ARMOR:ITEM_HELM_COIF] into ENTITY_DEFAULT.txt under [ENTITY:MOUNTAIN] or you won't be able to use it.

I think civilians may try to claim 'em too cause their layer isn't armor, not sure.

[slothen]

How does this look?

1 Steel Helmet
6 Leather Hoods
1 Steel Breastplate
3 Steel Chain Mail Shirts
6 Leather Cloaks
1 set of Steel Gauntlets
1 set of Leather Mittens
1 set of Steel Greaves
2 sets of Leather Trousers
1 set of Steel High Boots
1 set of Leather Socks

looks like entirely too much steel for a fortress that is just starting up steel production.  I don't even think any science has shown 3 mail shirts to be more protective than 1, and the speed hit (in this version) will make them attack slower as well as run slower which is bad.  Socks + boots should be fine, I personally don't bother with a second pair of trousers, any mittens, or more than one cloak/hood, although i do always include cloaks/hoods.

Wooden bolts are only OK for training up newb squads that won't see combat.  Wooden bolts are godawful (they're often very light, unless using goblin-cap, and will bounce off copper breastplates).  Bone bolts at least inflict serious damage.  If you're using magma forges or have an abundance of fuel, just use iron/bronze/silver/copper bolts for both training and combat.  No need to worry about running out of metal, stacks of 25 mean they won't run out so fast (you won't see that one marksdwarf carrying only 15 bone bolts), and if you recover spent bolts, you can melt them for a net gain in metal (in fact you can put archery targets next to your smelters and duplicate metal forever I believe).

[Oaktree]

I wouldn't quite discount wooden bolts quite that much.  Metal ones are better in combat, but a marksdwarf squad can still be useful in a fight even with wooden bolts.

Consider that the most common targets are wildlife, goblin snatchers, kobolds, and goblin sieges.  The first three wear little or no armor and wooden bolts generally work fairly well except for some beasts with massive armor (though I noted in another thread that rolled up pangolin are apparently almost immune to wooden bolts - so there are exceptions.)  For goblin sieges there are two things to consider. 

First, assuming it's goblin cavalry attacking, at least half of the invader force is essentially unarmored and vulnerable to wooden bolts.  Shoot up a goblin's mount and it will sit there on a crippled steed.  Kill the mount and the goblin might opt to retreat without fighting.  And unmounted goblins are generally easier to fight with your melee troops since the mounts are not there to be meat shields and make charge attacks to keep your dwarves off balance.

Second, look at the armor sets the goblins are wearing.  If it is something like breastplate and cap, then the goblin is leaving all of its legs and arms exposed, plus part of the head as well (caps only block 50% as compared to a helm blocking 100%).  A few wooden bolts in the legs and arms will essentially incapacitate the goblin enough to make him easy meat for the melee dwarves.  However, if you're looking for kills via bolts alone, your marksdwarves will waste a lot of rounds on cripples until a lucky hit gets in or they bleed out.

[Girlinhat]

(Didn't read the whole thread.)

Your most important items, in rough order, are:
Chain Shirt
Helmet
Breastplate
Gauntlets
Greaves
Boots

Why?
Chain shirt provides adequate protection, but it covers the upper body (chest), lower body (stomach/pelvis), upper arms, and upper legs.  It's not a "chainmail vest" but rather "full hauberk".
Helmet covers your head.  Headshots are the biggest clusterfuck your dwarves will ever face.  A lucky body shot hurts.  A stray glancing headshot shatters skulls, because dwarf skulls are made from paper machete.
Breastplates are hard armor.  Most shots go to the upper body.  Getting solid steel in the way is crucial.
Gauntlets protect the hands and forearms (NOT the upper arms) and help prevent dwarves losing their arms or suffering nerve damage to prevent gripping.  Note that chain shirts protect the upper arms, so you still need those to prevent limb loss!
Greaves cover the upper legs, lower legs, and (I think) the lower body.  Helps prevent leg injuries, but in these days of crutches it's not so vital.
Boots at that point become fluff, but worth it.  Foot injuries can still lead to pain and passing out.

Of course, ALL of this pales in comparison to the defensive prowess of a single wooden shield.

You also only need one of each.  Yes, you can wear 3 chain shirts, but the weight isn't worth the redundancy.

[VerdantSF]

You also only need one of each.  Yes, you can wear 3 chain shirts, but the weight isn't worth the redundancy.

So much this.  Adequately protected, but relatively unburdened troops respond to emergencies AND mine goblinite faster.

[Girlinhat]

You also only need one of each.  Yes, you can wear 3 chain shirts, but the weight isn't worth the redundancy.

So much this.  Adequately protected, but relatively unburdened troops respond to emergencies AND mine goblinite faster.

Agility is actually your single most important attribute.  Being fast results in a lot of dodging and attacking very quickly - this will change in the next update when combat speed is separated from movement speed, but for now agility is boss.

[Deepblade]

Agility should still be pretty boss, just less super duper sweet jebus it's a radioactive giant flying mutant ant dinosaur platypus hybrid monster, and it's flying right at us!

Headshots are the biggest clusterfuck your dwarves will ever face.  A lucky body shot hurts.  A stray glancing headshot shatters skulls, because dwarf skulls are made from paper machete.

Hehe, paper machete. I think in the next version it'll be fixed rigged. I remember hearing on DFTalk #21 that he made skulls HUGE so that he wouldn't just be able to one shot everyone in the head with his pinky, IRRC.

[Rogue Yun]

3-5 wooden shields per dwarf does wonders. Especially useful for saving your dwarves from archers. Each shield blocks individually.

Wait... Is that really true? Is more than one shield per dwarf effective?

[Deepblade]

Yes. Currently you can hold a lot of stuff in your hands at once. Each shield in your hand has a chance to block, so 5 shields mean 5x the blocking chance.

[Sutremaine]

Bone Greaves are technically better than Leather Leggings would be, if they're made from the same animal, but due to a minor bug you can't specify bone armor in a squad's equipment.

You can specify colour though, and without modding all bone is white. This is also how you specify leather shields -- all unmodded leather is brown.

Spoiler: coif raw (click to show/hide)

ITEM_HELM:ITEM_HELM_COIF]
[NAME:chain coif:chain coifs]
[LAYER:COVER]
[ARMORLEVEL:2]
[COVERAGE:50]
[LAYER_SIZE:10]
[LAYER_PERMIT:100]
[MATERIAL_SIZE:2]
[HARD]
[METAL]
[STRUCTURAL_ELASTICITY_CHAIN_ALL]

I think civilians may try to claim 'em too cause their layer isn't armor, not sure.

It's the [ARMORLEVEL] tag that affects whether or not something is armour or clothing. Those coifs have a level of 2, so they won't be claimed by civilians and also won't wear away.