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[Immortal-D]

For example, if I set 3 Patrols & 2 Stations in a single month, would this give my Dwarves variety (trying to avoid 'long patrol' bad thoughts), or result in them not doing either task for a useful amount of time?

Oh, and while I'm thinking about it; will the Station Schedule cause Dwarves to starve/dehydrate like if I Ordered them directly?  Or are they smart enough to resupply when needed?

[Montieth]

I find that when they're split between patrol routes and areas, they don't seem to complain about monotony as much. Though I haven't looked at it as closely.

I do also note that they seem to go off post and get food and drink. So I've made a point of putting their own rooms as close to the barracks location as possible. Especially for my high skill elite Marksdwarves and Axe/Mace/Sword Lords.

[PatrikLundell]

You can only count on about half a squad on a station order, since the rest are off to resupply, eat, drink, sleep, and get new socks (or a slightly better piece of gear than the one dropped at the last station point).

[Sanctume]

Backpacks, waterskins/flask, and supplies are suppose to help bring those provisions for lesser food stockpile trips.

[PatrikLundell]

I think "supposed" is the operative word. They spend 99% of their time training, but they still feel a need to stock up when sent on station and just arriving, so I suspect they abuse those stocks to avoid having to break off training rather than keeping them stocked for real action.

[TruePikachu]

I keep reading the title as "spitting"...

IIRC it doesn't do any damage, from experiments in Adventure mode, FWIW.

[SyrusLD]

I normally just have each of my squads do one month of patrol/watch duty, than a month of training and then a month of offtime. I rarely have any full squads and prefer to keep them at 6-8 dwarves each. So far I have not once seen any dwarf complain about being on station for too long, then again, they had been training for quite some time before they ever saw patrol/watch duty assingments in Violentlash, because I just sealed off the fortress whenever a threat arrived in the first years.

By now I have 5 melee (2x5 and 3x8) and 3 archer squads (2x6 and 1x8). I have one room for melee watch duty, just in case I need a quick response team ready (though the room's access to the surface has become a bit long lately, I might want to give them a new exit, just in case some were-creature attacks or something), and 5 towers for marksdwarves to keep a look out for ambushes and such. The "defense room" is staffed by one squad each month, rotating through the squads, with the 5-dwarf squads taking 3 turns and the others 2. Before each "station" order they have one month of training and afterwards one or three months of free time (12/5 doesn't really work).
The marksdwarves on the other hand have split orders for the towers, as I only have 3 archer squads but 5 towers to man. As already mentioned before, it is safe to assume that only half of the dwarves ordered are at their post at all time. My orders for the marksdwarves look like this: "station-station-no order", with the first station being a split order for three towers, two dwarves per tower at least, and the second being a station order for the other two towers with 3 or 4 dwarves.
Overall that works quite nicely.

Anyway, I'm going away from the topic. The main point I figured out so far is that one needs to give the dwarves some time where they have no order. I had problems with my military getting stressed out, because they'd always see / get in fights in the caverns (before I closed them off) and their stress would never reduce because they'd always be stationed somewhere. Since I have quite a decently sized fortress, I just made a new squad and added offtime to the schedule that way.
From what I could see, this time away from duty is very important, both to not get bad thoughts for being on duty for too long as well as having some time away from fights and having some time to enjoy the good things of the fortress to reduce stress.

Dwarves will always be running to get food and water. Even if you forget to remove a station order given via the squad menu, they will run to get something to drink if they get too thirsty. I'd assume they also go sleep as well, never seen that though.

[Immortal-D]

I keep reading the title as "spitting"...

dammit, now that's how I'm gonna read it too.