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[decius]

Background: New embark, diving for the cavern and trying to make it work. I want a part-time milita of my miners and woodcutter, and I want them to carry and use their picks and ax when off-duty, and keep using them when they go on-duty. I have the three of them assigned to a squd, that is scheduled to be off-duty forever. Whenever I need them, I use the (s)quads menu to issue specific move or kill orders, then cancel the order when it's no longer needed. So far, so good- they go from civilian to military status whenn orders are issued, and return when orders are cancelled. BUT, often, when they go from one status to the other, they will drop their pick or ax at the ground and refuse to pick it up.

I've noticed that if (while civilians) I assign them the specific weapon that they are carrying, they will either not drop it, or immediately pick it up again (I can't tell which). If I assign them "Individual choice", or "Battleax" or "Picks (foreign)", they will sometimes keep their tool/weapon, and sometimes not. In any case, they wait until their status changes to drop it

The reverse happens when returning them to civilian duty. Consistently, if they have a weapon assigned, they drop it and it is ignored, even though there are no other tools to use to do their job. If they have no weapon assigned, they immediately drop it.

Is there any way to have them just keep using the same item as a tool and a weapon?


EDIT: Tried to upgrade  one of my miners to a steel pick. When one specific pick was assigned as part of his equipment, he would only select the assigned weapon when the mining labor was disabled. Once he got the steel pick, he seems to use it, so long as he has the copper pick assigned to him. My other miner and woodcutter prefer to go into combat barehanded unless I reissue their equipment after reactivating them.

[Duuvian]

This is 100% guess, but I'd assume the dwarves check the weapons stockpile(s) for their selected weapon when toggled between on duty and inactive. When you assign them a job, I think it just chooses a random one from the stockpile. I think your best bet is assigning them a specific weapon. Have you tried forbidding all but your desired pick while it is in the weapon stockpile, then adding mining labor so he picks it up, then assigning the pick as their military weapon after they pick it up?

I usually start with an axedwarf who I make into a woodcutter, and he seems to be able carry around his axe if I do it in that order.

[decius]

Initially, I had one ax, two picks, and the same number of woodcutter/axdwarf and miners. I'm working under the assumption now that picks are not considered a 'weapon' by the 'choice' models. I'll post if I find a solution.

[Quietust]

Putting your miners or wood cutters in the military is broken in version 0.31 - miners and wood cutters are effectively assigned a uniform that consists of a pick/battle-axe and nothing else (not even a backpack or waterskin), and this uniform overrides their assigned uniform whenever they are deactivated.

If you have backpacks, this also has the unfortunate side effect of causing them to drop their rations on the floor every time they go off duty - since they're still owned, no other dwarf will touch them, so they'll just sit there and rot.

[decius]

I'm not assigning them anything other than their pick or battleax when they're on duty; I'm not going to try to handle anything more fun than trogs and dralthae until I have a full-time military. Fistfighting trogs takes too long, and has a significant injury rate.

I've had a draltha kick a dwarf in the face and drive his skull into his brain. For some reason the dwarf died.

[Quietust]

It doesn't matter - when they're in civilian mode, they're assigned a pick or battle axe by virtue of having the Mining/Wood Cutting labor enabled, but when they go into the military they're being assigned an entirely new uniform and thus drop their existing equipment before gearing up; the fact that said uniform happens to consist of the same types of items is irrelevant.

[Golcondio]

Moreover, the pick/battle-ax they're wielding will count as "held/forbidden" so the weapon selection algorithm will skip it, choosing another one and causing the inconvenient "drop your weapon and punch the zombie whale" phenomenon...

[decius]

So... if I pause, disable mining/woodcutting, run a few frames to let them drop their tools, assign them their former tools as weapons, then activate them, then unpause, they should grab their weapons before doing anything else?

[Hyndis]

Don't use miners and woodcutters as militia. I use farmers for this. The farmers do the gruntwork of the fortress, and because of this they tend to be very strong. As I often have 100+ farmers the loss of any one is no big deal.

I also do prefer a standing military. Farmers are recruited into the military, given the best weapons and armor, and allowed to train. The only way out of the military is in a box. Occasionally, if a dwarf manages to survive crippling injuries, I'll allow him to retire and given a new title, along with no jobs to do. He's just a retired veteran at that point.



I don't have many retired veterans.

[Satarus]

Dedicated military is the way to go.  1 full timer who spends all season doing drills is better than a few untrained part timers.