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[Loud Whispers]

Edit: On second thought, masons don't bring any equipment. What skills should I choose for maximum equipment for my immigrants?

Carpentry for battleaxes, marksdwarf/ambushing for a kit out of ranged weapons. Most hunters just bring cloth quivers though, and they can't be used to shoot from so be sure to make your own leather quivers. And miners of course, but meh.

[Tryble]

A side note on this effect...
If you embark with a full set of military dwarves, the migration waves you'll get are...a tad underwhelming.

I tried heading out with a team of seven 5 Axedwarf/5 Shield User dwarves, and most all of the migrants showed up with 3 in a random combat skill (either in a weapon, or in something such as Striking) and then 1 in the defensive skills.
Very, very few of them had any nonmilitary skills at all.

Keep this in mind if you need to embark with a bunch of warriors to fend of starting zombies or whatever.

[mdqp]

I think Toady talked about this in a recent DF talk or FotF post, but I can't find it right now. Generally, migrants are weighted towards having skills that your fortress lacks. However, if an overwhelming majority of your fortress has the same profession, the game makes the assumption that you have that many of one job for a reason and sends you more of them to fuel whatever insane project it is that you have in progress.

Does it check only for the skills or the job designations have a weight in it, too?

[Muddy Mudstone]

I haven't noticed any pump operator immigrants in my current fort, which has 80% of the population up to master or better in pump operating. Weird.

Maybe toady realized there aren't many people who want a migration wave of trained pump operators, even fewer people than want a migration wave of train fish cleaners?

How is word supposed to get back to potential migrants about employment opportunities in the fortress, anyway? Particularly about things that have happened since the last caravan departed. (Then again, I guess I could also ask how a creature can sense that a door is open on the opposite side of the map.)

Seems to me that ideally the player ought to be able to somehow advertise for desired skills, much the same as requesting certain goods from the trade liaison. Some skills would be more likely to turn up when requested than others, but at least you could make your intentions known and it would be much better than this ham-fisted attempt to guess the player's preferences by induction, which is about as feasible as programming a strong AI.

[Milcheax]

Maybe toady realized there aren't many people who want a migration wave of trained pump operators, even fewer people than want a migration wave of train fish cleaners?

It must be random or there might be other factors involved, because out of the last 4 migration waves in my last fort, which was a forest/mountain/volcano embark with a fish-less stream, ended up with 11 fishery workers of one sort of another and 3 pump operators.

[Loud Whispers]

Keep this in mind if you need to embark with a bunch of warriors to fend of starting zombies or whatever.

In the later years when your military Dwarves are actually good for something, you'll start getting the big historical figures who survived the big wars.

[Snaake]

Well, had to break my lurking (first post!) to reply to this. I've noticed some oddities in past forts, but I think the masses of novice farmers (including cheesemakers and such) and rangers and fishermen is something most forts have to deal with. However, in my current fort, the first in it's world (started in 34.10 I think), I've had crazy amounts of military-trained dwarves.

I started with my usual (1 axedwarf, 1 marksdwarf). First time I started out my new starting gear of 6 picks (7th guy is the woodcutter) but no mining skill for anyone - it levels up pretty fast. I now have 177 dwarves, of which 48 are babies&children = 129 adults, of which only 30 *didn't* arrive with something like speardwarf 3/shield user 1/dodger 1.

More precise figures of the adults who have survived (I've lost a few dwarves, only 2 in military service though):
1st wave: 6 alive now, 1 without military skills (I'll call them "civilians" from now on)
2nd wave: 8 alive, no civilians
3rd wave: 25 alive, 5 civilians
4th wave: 9 alive, 1 civilian
5th wave: 10 alive, 5 civilians
6th wave: all kids (DT quirkyness in tracking which wave babies belong to, I guess?)
7th wave: 34 alive, 7 civilians
8th wave: 31 alive*, 7 civilians
*(remember, adults - the 8th wave arrived with 52 dwarves, now are showing up as 63. Just not stopping with popping those babies.)

So, usually 80-100% of adults have had either one melee weapon skill at 3 + shield user, armor user, and dodger 1, or marksdwarf+something. A couple of higher-skill melee dwarves in waves 2-4. 1 wave (#5) only had 50%. Never seen this kind of thing before, although I've only played with DF2011 and later, I think, and not that much even then. Annoyingly, I don't have much use for all the military, since I've yet to see a siege in my 4th year. Only 1 minotaur, 1-2 snatchers and maybe 3-4 kobold thieves, too.**

I was just assuming it was some sort of cultural bias, as in, your civ had some sort of bias to military, maybe another to something else, etc. I've also gotten like 4 dwarves with building designer, I've had several 100+ dwarf forts earlier with no immigrants with that skill, ditto for eg. organizer/record keeper, but now i've gotten immigrants with those.

** What might be a factor for both things, is that I'm living pretty close to some other dwarf sites (not my civ's) in the middle of this medium-sized area completely surrounded by mountains (with all the passes inhabited by dwarves). The info for the embark site did list red ----- goblins, though.

[Hammerstar]

Maybe there's gold doubloons buried underneath the mountain and your miners are pirates in disguise?

Oh, don't bring up pirates, or I'm going to end up singing "Lead or Gold" and "Under Jolly Roger" for four hours straight.

[misko27]

I think Toady talked about this in a recent DF talk or FotF post, but I can't find it right now. Generally, migrants are weighted towards having skills that your fortress lacks. However, if an overwhelming majority of your fortress has the same profession, the game makes the assumption that you have that many of one job for a reason and sends you more of them to fuel whatever insane project it is that you have in progress.

Wouldn't that lead to a shitty Catch-22 situation? Oh, you have a quorum of Firs Cleaners. Better send you more Fish Cleaners. What's that, you don't need Fish Cleaners? Then why do you have so many Fish Cleaners? What? It's my fault? Ok, I'll try to s- too late, here come the Fish Cleaners.

Now I'm trying to imagine some fish cleaner based megaproject. All I can think of is "the docks of smelliness".

[ThatAussieGuy]

I think Toady talked about this in a recent DF talk or FotF post, but I can't find it right now. Generally, migrants are weighted towards having skills that your fortress lacks. However, if an overwhelming majority of your fortress has the same profession, the game makes the assumption that you have that many of one job for a reason and sends you more of them to fuel whatever insane project it is that you have in progress.

Wouldn't that lead to a shitty Catch-22 situation? Oh, you have a quorum of Firs Cleaners. Better send you more Fish Cleaners. What's that, you don't need Fish Cleaners? Then why do you have so many Fish Cleaners? What? It's my fault? Ok, I'll try to s- too late, here come the Fish Cleaners.

This makes far more sense than you seem to realize. 

[WealthyRadish]

The number of soldier immigrants you get is related only to the military actions your civ has taken recently. If they've recently been attacking or been attacked, it seems world gen drafts every dwarf and gives them a military skill of competent, and usually adequate in some civilian field. Depending on exactly how long your civ's been at war, you may never get an immigrant with anything above adequate. Conversely, if all the civ's fought are named badgers and giant butterflies, there'll be more highly skilled civilian skills uninterrupted by war, and very few soldiers.

It seems picking a wartime civ also causes vampires to be very rare... I'm not sure if this is a statistical thing, with them eventually dying in combat, or whether the war changes just bork how vampires are produced.

[Snaake]

Now I'm trying to imagine some fish cleaner based megaproject. All I can think of is "the docks of smelliness".

A couple of forts ago I was wondering why my cook kept cancelling jobs, even though I knew I had loads of fish barrels in my food stockpiles. Turns out they were barrelfuls of raw fish. I had forgotten to build a new fishery after I'd removed a previous one during a siege (the trolls would've smashed them anyway, so I thought I'd remove the outside workshops so they'd come to my trapped entrance hall a bit faster). I'd run up a glut of, oh, 1.5-2k unprocessed fish. Took me several months to get that cleaned up, with 3 fisheries running nonstop.

The number of soldier immigrants you get is related only to the military actions your civ has taken recently. If they've recently been attacking or been attacked, it seems world gen drafts every dwarf and gives them a military skill of competent, and usually adequate in some civilian field. Depending on exactly how long your civ's been at war, you may never get an immigrant with anything above adequate. Conversely, if all the civ's fought are named badgers and giant butterflies, there'll be more highly skilled civilian skills uninterrupted by war, and very few soldiers.

It seems picking a wartime civ also causes vampires to be very rare... I'm not sure if this is a statistical thing, with them eventually dying in combat, or whether the war changes just bork how vampires are produced.

Nice to know about how soldier immigrants are defined. My current fort seems to get a couple of soldiers similar to the ones you mention above per migration wave, so ok, but not as notable as before. About getting less vampires, I guess maybe warring dwarves have less time to profane temples?