Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[wierdoom]

Greetings. I read on the wiki that pickaxes use the mining skill not only for digging, but for combat as well. Does this theoretically mean that you could have Legendary-grade warriors purely by telling them to dig tunnels?

[Girlinhat]

Almost.  Legendary weapon skills but with no skill in Fighter, Dodger, Shield User, Armor User, etc...  They can score hits, but go down like flies.  Shield, Dodge, and Agility count more for a soldier than anything else.  Seriously.

Also bugs exist where you can't assign a miner to use a weapon, as the mining job has an invisible uniform.

Protip: You can give your soldiers picks, and they'll become legendary, but only count as recruits or wrestlers, and thus never become *lords and never get a bad mood from being put to civilian duty.

[Naryar]

But the pick is still an awesome weapon. Even a standard quality copper pick wielded by a legendary miner kills gobbos pretty easily, and with a high quality iron pick the miner becomes deadly. Seriously, pick blows rip off members like nobody's business.

And yes, if you don't train them in defensive skills they become glass cannons. When they don't mine, you can set your miners to train, danger room, or kill things. But miners are by far your best bet if you have no military and want to kill something the old-fashioned way.

[Loud Whispers]

In a pinch, disable mining labours, wait for miners to put picks in stockpiles, recruit to military, assign picks and point in direction of enemy. Generally don't expect much, because you'd have to be in a dire position anyways to have to draft your miners.

[Quietust]

You can give your soldiers picks, and they'll become legendary, but only count as recruits or wrestlers, and thus never become *lords and never get a bad mood from being put to civilian duty.

Bad thoughts about going to civilian duty have nothing to do with being *lords - it has everything to do with leaving the military and becoming a Peasant (just as the "draft" thought comes from entering the military and becoming a Recruit).

[Loud Whispers]

I think it's more to do with entering the military without any military skills - my knife user is only shown as a recruit, and doesn't get any bad thoughts from going in/out of the military.

[Girlinhat]

Lords have issues with civilian jobs.

[Nan]

But they express their issue by simply refusing to do civilian jobs. For a lord, all professions are greyed out and cannot be activated. Of course using miners does negate that. Not sure if it's a meaningful benefit though - my weaponlords are so valuable while my immigrants are so cheap, I can't imagine wanting to use the weaponlords for any kind of civilian duty.

Since it's not been mentioned, miners do have one defensive benefit - they can use their pick to parry extremely effectively. Parrying will only stop about 90-95% of incoming attacks (I've not tested it but that would seem about right), meaning they can kill a single enemy and probably wont get harmed, but if they're attacked by say, 10 enemies, a few hits are bound to get through and cripple the miner. In contrast, a dwarf who can both Parry and Block at a legendary level, can take on multiple enemies with confidence, add in a bit of dodging and quality body armor, and it's almost impossible for unskilled enemies to land a damaging blow.
So it's not that legendary miners have poor defensive skills - their defensive skills are excellent compared with say a legendary cheesemaker, it's just that their defensive skills don't compare with a properly trained weaponlord's.

[Alestom]

Unless you plan on training them before-hand in dodge, shield user and such, they are basically shock troops. They can cause immense damage but get dropped 4-5 enemys quite easly.... Unless you have a fuck ton of them, then you are basically set for life

[Splint]

I personally have a personal "Order of battle" I use determinign this, with miners as the second to last line of defense, after them being the cobbled up milita.

Traps
Dogs
Line troops (For me this is ussally (pikedwarves)
Specialists(*lords/masters)/support(Marksdorfs)
Miner Auxilliaries -> If I call these guys, it means I'm fucked and I only have my glass cannons to work with/ the soldiers are spread too thin.
Conscript zerg rush -> Fortress going down kicking and screaming

[Hyndis]

A legendary +5 miner with a masterwork steel pick can do a tremendous amount of damage.

You still need to train them up with defensive abilities so they can avoid being hit, but thats easy enough to do. Just set them up for sparring or use a danger room.

A legendary +5 miner with a masterwork steel pick, and also legendary +5 in block and dodge is an absolute murder machine. I've had dwarves with hundreds of kills to their name and to their mighty and elevated to artifact mining pick.

You can't have a dwarf be both a miner and militia at the same time. They can only be one or the other. Train them up with mining first, then draft them into the military.

[luppolo]

confirm the deadlyness of legendary miners, about a dozen of them in full cheap copper gear and no training (aside from mining) is enough to stop most non ranged threats, even megabeast and dragons when ganging up

with a small marksdwarves backup, war dogs for each miner, proper iron/steel equipment and basic training you're set for almost all threats

[Alastar]

From my experience (which includes a fair bit of testing), steel picks are the finest general purpose weapons if we don't have candy. Blunt hits and stabs need to hit something vital to do much, slashes struggle to get through armour or very thick bones. Pick strikes straddle the line, having enough power to dig through anything we're likely to face and large enough contact area to remove limbs.

If we only have copper and silver there is no adequate allrounder, adamantine favours axes.

[simonthedwarf]

Can you have squads of military miners? It doesn't screw with their jobs?

[Splint]

Can you have squads of military miners? It doesn't screw with their jobs?

Just assign them to wield picks. Normally mine ditch the civvie gear and grab armor and will alternate working with individual combat drills.