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[point08]

Hi all!

  I've been doing the tutorials and learning a bit about the game, so I decided to start my own fortress up to help keep my memory fresh.   Well, there's a pesky fox running around in my fortress that keeps forcing dwarves to abandon their tasks.

  I want to draft someone into the military to take care of the fox, however I don't seem to have the option to draft like I did in the tutorial.  I checked the wiki and it says the option should be v -> p -> A ... but all I get on the v -> p menu is l (labors) or e (dogs).

  Does anyone know where I can find the draft option?  I looked in the military menu but everything there is awfully tough to read (it says ctrl + f10 all over in that menu).

Any help would be appreciated!

[GuudeSpelur]

I'm assuming that you're playing the most recent version of the game here, but the problem is that the tutorials on the wiki are for an older version of the game with an entirely different military system.  In the current build, to draft a dwarf you need to appoint someone as the militia commander in the Nobles menu (press shift + n).  Make some random person you don't plan on making fight be the commander.  A new position will open up called "arsenal dwarf" and "militia captain."  Fill arsenal dwarf with someone you don't plan on having fight, and have the militia captain be someone you DO.  Then, exit the noble screen and press "m."  Go to the squad labeled "militia captain" and press "c" to create it.  Then press "a," make the squad active, then exit the military screen.  Press "s" (squads), "a" (picks that squad), "k" (attack order), then either "l" to pick from a list or just put the "x" over the fox at hit enter.  Then, press whatever button it is to confirm the order and then watch as your militia captain turns the fox into blood and a corpse.  When you're done, go back to "alerts" in the military screen and deactivate the squad so the captain can work again.

There, that's how you draft someone to kill a fox in DF2010!

[CppThis]

Also, once you get a few guys drafted you need to set up a barracks for them, and in q-menu options assign it to the squad in question and enable all 4 options.  This way they will do individual combat drills to raise their skill--unskilled dorfs are about as dangerous as a wet kleenex.  Do not set them to active training via alerts or schedule because it's way bugged.  They will spend lots of time doing this so you might want to be sure you don't select anybody whose civilian skillset will be missed.

Oh, and you might want to focus on pumping out steel equipment before assigning them any gear.  There are more bugs in how squad equipment is chosen (did I mention .31.x military is totally fubar?), and dorfs don't handle upgrading to new armor very well right now.

edit: Speaking as a relative DF newcomer myself, if you decide to restart your fort for some reason I suggest editing data\init\world_gen.txt to grant more embark points so you can afford to bring along some steel bars, and then regenerating a new world to make the changes go into effect.  If the bugs with appointed nobles behaving oddly get to be troublesome, this would be a good opportunity to fix that too.  Apparently the 40d version dates from around 2008, the new version adds lots of features but it's only been out a few weeks but there's a couple of potentially showstopping bugs to be aware of.

[Sidhien]

If you're still new to the game, you might want to switch to 40d. In addition to being the version most of the tutorials are written for, its also a lot simpler in some ways (*cough*military*cough*) and doesn't have nearly as many bugs. The learning curve is still a brick wall, but at least the way up isn't spiked and trapped with serrated blades.

[o_O[WTFace]]

31.04 seems more stable and functional then earlier releases, but yea 40d makes it easier to get simple things done. 

Anyway, in 31.XX, to draft things you go into the military menu (m), appoint a militia commander, put anyone else you want drafted int the squad.  Then leave the menu, push (s), (a) and then either (k) or (m) to give an actual order to do something.  CppThis has good advice for anything more long term then 1 fight. 

[point08]

Ok, thanks guys.  I'll try that when I get in to work.  I would switch to the easier version, but I got a really sweet site for my fortress, volcano and all....Any idea why the military screens all have "ctrl + f10" written all over to the extent that I can't read the options?  Am I using a bad tileset or is it a known bug?  I can attach a screenshot if anyone likes.

[tps12]

In the current build, to draft a dwarf you need to appoint someone as the militia commander in the Nobles menu (press shift + n).  Make some random person you don't plan on making fight be the commander.  A new position will open up called "arsenal dwarf" and "militia captain."  Fill arsenal dwarf with someone you don't plan on having fight, and have the militia captain be someone you DO.  Then, exit the noble screen and press "m."  Go to the squad labeled "militia captain" and press "c" to create it.

You can create a squad directly beneath the militia commander without appointing any captains. Is there some reason not to?

[point08]

Aah, I found one of my issues.  I was using an old interface.txt and it assigned ctrl + f10 to all of the commands that weren't defined in the older version.  I fixed that and now I've got the commands as people listed them.  Now to kill that fox!

[GuudeSpelur]

You can create a squad directly beneath the militia commander without appointing any captains. Is there some reason not to?

Yes- the commander commands the captains.  You'll eventually have several squads, and if the commander falls in combat the captains get very confused.  Or at least that's what happened in one of my fortresses- the commander died and my military suddenly became ineffective until I made the captain I had into the commander.  Could have been a coincidence.  I just do that now as a precaution.

[CppThis]

Probably something to that, as several of the tutorials I've seen suggest setting militia commander to be somebody that doesnt fight.