update: fortress got its first migrants, a metalcrafter and a fisherman, both at great status in their professions but with no relations besides their one god. i've carved out a small underground tunnel, no actual buildings beside some basic workshops up top to tide me over for awhile. the automations, not having to eat or sleep so far, have made it INCREDIBELY easy to just focus on jobs more than anything else.
the only problem is that i have no female assembly automations, so i need to get some serious cash before the next caravan arrives.
edit: just ordered my militia squad to kill an animal as a quick test of their combat abilities while being "unarmed".
the target, an armadillo *rather hypocritical, but still* gave a quick charge at my first trooper, before the poor animal could react, the first shot of its single-fire cannon actually TORE OFF its entire shell, before it even hit the ground the fresh, no-skill soldier fired his next scattershot, the first couple of bullets (no joke) got covered in the still spraying blood of the armadillo before striking the innocent little creature, hitting almost every body-part and tearing it apart before the last shot from the scatter-blast struck it square in the skull, spraying its brains across the floor.
it appears the little Damnations can really mess things up in a pathetic amount of time, the armadillo couldn't even MAKE a single move before a half-blind, half retarded machine with no training ripped it asunder in two shots. I look forward to stirring shit up with a tribe so that i can get these little shits some REAL combat training. i'm only going to give one of them any upgrades though, it seems it would be about the same as having a megabeast in my ranks at this rate.
although, i'll admit it seems that even the automations are not invinceable, it seems a bronze collosus killed forty or so of them during world gen before being killed by a lowly dwarf, Again, i'll be testing out their abilities, hopefully i can find out exactly WHAT it takes to bring them down.