Have you set the uniforms to replace clothing, rather than going over?
Hmm, nope, changed all uniforms to "replace clothing" as soon as I entered the military screen. (Does anyone ever find the 'over clothing' option useful
?)
dwarfs equip clothing on their own now, though they are a bit picky about it. Putting all your civilians in military now will mostly just cause a lot of bad thoughts from being unhappy about the draft. For the record, dwarfs now need feet covering, lower and upper body covering.
armor does not count as clothing for this purpose, it seems
So has the old civilian squad strategy mostly been abandoned then? I was hoping to keep my fort full of sword-packing brewers and carpenters again... oh well... What exactly counts as "lower and upper covering"? The wiki seems to be clear that only shoes count as feet covering, and not boots, and I've heard armor doesn't count for body covering, but what about cloaks, etc.? The wiki seemed a bit vague on what counts and what doesn't.
Back in 31.25 I used the trick to put all civilians into squads with basic leather armor and shortswords, which worked great. I just started a new fort in DF2012, and for some reason my civvies only pick up their bucklers, leaving their trousers, cloaks etc. which are also part of the same uniform on the floor and generating tons of unhappy naked thoughts.
The one you were looking at was probably a Miner, Hunter or Woodcutter.
If that's not the case, then you need to give more detail -- what is included in your uniform, and is it set to replace or go over clothing? What clothing is the dwarf wearing? Triple-check that the dwarf doesn't have Mining, Hunting or Wood-cutting enabled.
Yeah, I remember back when I first started dabbling in uniforms I was very disappointed that my Miners and Woodcutters couldn't use uniforms properly (never really found a way to make hunters feasible).
My Civvy uniform is a metal helm, a leather hood, leather cloak, leather armor, leather trousers, any low boots, and a wooden buckler. I have 2 dwarves on mining and one wood-cutter (funnily, my miner who's also the expedition leader seems to have at least worn a cloak). My one military dwarf is doing a good job of wearing everything in his uniform that is available yet (still summer first year), battle axe, a cloak, a hood, trousers, wooden shield. Everyone else is just wearing a wooden buckler, despite a bunch of cloaks and trousers laying about.
I've made sure to set the schedule for the Civvies to Inactive for the full year, and have their alert status as inactive to boot.
Some possible complications are that I've modded out most of the "pointless" clothes like loincloths, socks, shirts, etc that don't have much gameplay function, but my research on the forums in 31.25 seemed to say that the more clothes that exist in the fort, the lower the framerate due to all the wear calculations etc. So even shoes and shirts are modded out, since I assumed I was going to give all my civvies low boots and leather armor anyway. But apparently they won't count the low boots or leather armor as "clothes," you say? Will the negative naked thoughts be bad enough that I'm better off restarting a fort with socks, shoes, shirts etc re-enabled? 2 of my guys are already at miserable
If so, is there any new way to mitigate the 'clothing drain' to FPS that was commonly reported in 31.25?
I suppose I need to make a second sweep through the wiki for all the changes... is there a handy page that details all the mechanics changes from 31.25?