You really should be screening migrants on embark if for no other reason than to properly employ them. Make a holding gatehouse by your trade depot's outward facing airlock. keep the main fort walled up. When migrants arrive activate a meeting hall in the gatehouse, screen migrants for jewelery and lots of past residences, add migrants to burrow once they arrive. lock the door. Unlock and free thirsty dwarves from the burrow. Once a year passes any remaining dwarves are deemed vampires and go upstairs. Lock a hatch, lower a bridge to access a vampire access tunnel to your vampire gladiator lair. Send them in and set them to training, mining, dumping ore/desireable stones down a supply chute to land on a hatch. periodically pop the hatch to drop the goods to a supply post burrow. Have burrowed railmen load a automatic minecart track to take the goods to the main fort. Congratulations Your vampires are miners that never sleep, eat, drink and gladiators that fight for your dwarves amusement. Need to take a risky animal? Let the vampire handle it. Nobody will miss him if things go bad. plus, he's had decades to become a legendary wrestler. Once you do a 2-z level drop into what will later become vampire conversion wells you'll be able to make more whenever you want.
Here's some Excess migrant Copypasta
WASTE NOT THE GIFTS FROM ARMOK! CLAD THESE OFFERINGS IN YOUR SHODDIEST COPPER ARMOR AND HURL THE UNDESIRABLES DOWN A TWO Z-LEVEL DROP SHAFT! MAY YOUR POOREST BUTCHERS[DOCTORS] HURRY THEM ON THEIR WAY TO ARMOK'S BOSOM!!!
In all seriousness, tag your migrants by their attributes.
Physical Attributes: All "--" should be carefully considered before placement in ANY squad and should be barred from jobs that suffer from their inferiority.
Strength: Keep in
--S [Very weak and worse]- These poor bastards are fit only for the most pitiful of jobs and being used as medical test subjects.
-S [Weak] - Send into non-strength related fields: Processing, Butcher/tanner, Carver, Marksdwarf and/or reserve squads
S,VS [Strong,Very Strong]- Send into Wrestler/Misc obj. (shield bashing) training squads. These will become slightly buffed recruits for specialist needs. Make better Stone haulers. Especially when paired with +A
M [Mighty] - These are your golden boys. Train these dwarves in hammerdwarf if you do not want them using or they are not large enough to use exotic weapons. The hammerdwarves can be later crosstrained into fully realized marksdwarf commandos. Dwarves with a size of 62500 or larger can wield pikes/mauls/great axes etc. in 2-H. Never hurts to screen migrants with an exotic weapon check once you have 10 of that type.
Agility: - Try to pair base agility's together as the base speed caps their upper limit. You want the squad to move as a unit instead of UristMcExtremelyAgile rushing into a 40 gobbo+40Cave croc siege by himself while 9 other UristMcQuiteClumsies are far behind.{Even after being trained to legendary and getting a massive agi boost the quite clumsies will still be slower than +A's}
--A [Quite clumsy and worse] - Put into a slow as fuck marksdwarf reserve unit with other --A and -A And/or use as medical test subjects.
-A [Clumsy] - Still Marksdwarf or medical bait.
A,VA [Agile,Very Agile] - Great dedicated railmen for guided minecart routes. Ideal for patrol routes. Consider training as marksdwarves and shifted into a melee skill after legendary. Those with increased healing and disease resistance should be moved into fast response reserves and Spec. Ops. Squads.
Toughness: - Reduces Damage Taken - i.e. Great for wrestlers, Shock Troops, Hospital guards {With +Dis}
--T,-T [All grades of flimsy] - Should not be used in heavy infantry or Medical testing that you want to survive for more than a few years/
T,QD,IT [Tough,Quite Durable, Incredibly Tough] - Can be used in wrestler/misc obj squads as shock troops. When combined with increased healing and disease resistance these are your ideal drop shaft subjects. !!Important!! If you disable refuse hauling for all but the Armored recovery squads you'll have a minimum of deaths to sock grabbing. [Recovery Squad: 10 dwarf marksdwarves in full surplus armor. Refuse hauling during sieges. enable item to stay busy during peacetime. mass dump designate the killing field and watch your 40 or 50 recovery dwarves rake in the gear, seal the wall then lug meltables to the forges & then burnables to the incinerator. No useless crap killing your fps.]
Endurance: Completely irrelevant. Trained by enough that it isn't a concern unless you're minmaxing to a ridiculous degree.
Recuperation: Important for heavy Infantry, Shock Troops, and Drop shaft test subjects,
--H [Very slow to heal and worse] - Marksdwarf/haulering/civvy job candidate. Too much of a liability in a endurance slugfest against a steel or stronger FB.
-H [Slow to Heal] - See Above. Can be used in infantry but caution is advised.
QH,QQH [Quick to heal, Quite Quick to Heal] - Priority for Wrestler/Infantry/Test subjects. Giving them a civilian job is a waste of potential imo. With a highly skilled medical squad they'll be rushing back to combat at a blazing pace.
IQH [Incredibly Quick to Heal and stronger] - These are a special concern. These dwarves should be cycled into Training squads until teacher hits legendary. Employ as teachers and keep them out of all but the most dire combat. Dwarves with IQH,VRS or ANS and acceptable remaining attributes are to be employed as royal guard and your final line of defense to buy time for a falling fortress. They should be cross trained in all ranged skills, wrestling striking kicking misc. obj, their primary melee and the defensive skills.
Disease Resistance:
--Dis [Quite susceptable to disease and worse] - Keep out of shock troops you want alive, core infantry, and marksdwarves with FB duty. These fools are a liability in the case of spreadable diseases. Remember comrades! Loose Immune Systems Sink Fortresses! Do Your Part and Keep Your FB AIDS To Yourself!
-Dis [Susceptible to disease] - Of Marginal Concern. Just keep away from syndrome using FB's
RS [Rarely Sick] - Filler for Marksdwarf Squads with FB duty and Test subject squads
VRS & ANS [Very Rarely Sick and Almost Never Sick] - These dwarves should be placed according to their remaining stats. With QH,QQH,IQH They should be employed as royal guards, Spec. Ops., FB Duty Captain, Hospital Guards, with being assigned as a doctor as the highest priority in case of sympathetic doctor stats.
Soul Attributes Willpower - Resistance to passing out. Of minor concern due to a wide amount of skill training it but +W can be beneficial with the raised willpower cap.
IW [I just use Iron Will but W/e works] - Iron will is an ideal trait for captains, teachers, and wrestling/misc obj. squads and shock troops. An near 5000 point unbreakable will will fight through a siege with shattered legs and passing out only AFTER the enemy is exterminated or disabled.
Analytical, Memory, and intuition:
Boosts to these attributes help the diagnosing skill. A Minor concern in the grand scheme of things but it doesn't hurt to have a better doctor
Focus:
Boosts help Surgery, Bone Setting & Suturing. A useful byproduct of giving doctors & nurses marksdwarf training.
Spatial:
Boosts help the four non-diagnosing skills. Doesn't hurt to have it boosted by self defense training.
Personality Finds Helping others Rewarding: These are your good nurses and doctors.
This gives the dwarf a happy thought when rescuing a wounded dwarf. This is essential for your medical staff. Nurses in particular. Their lack of medical training and probably lack of resistance to the horrors of war will likely devastate their happiness if your forces are routed. Every scrap of happiness that helps them keep it together for another day is desirable.
I believe that Altruism [Finds helping others rewarding/does not like helping others] is also the kindness stat which gives a happy thought when feeding/watering a patient. Once again, Without creating "Does not care about anything anymore" doctors is desirable in disastrous times.
Self-Discipline: Less breaks is an amazing thing. Especially in a crunch vs a adamantium FB! D:
Friendliness: Or more particularly, A lack of... You don't want Mr. Lotsoffreetime making lots of friends with off-duty soldiers that'll likely die
Other minor Concerns are: {Not a big deal now but after the personality rewrite...}
Sense of Duty
Organization
Sympathy
Activity Level
Vulnerability: A high resistance to stress is very desirable.
Depression: A High Resistance is Preferable
Anger: A high resistance to berserking and enraging.
Anxiety: A High resistance to melancholy.
From the Embark on TL;DR:
- Disable Push/Haul Vehicle. You want dedicated railmen[A,VA's] for your routes with many stops. High Agi dwarves and burrows should be assigned to take advantage of the minecarts innate cancellation on content weight.
- "Finds helping others rewarding" Should be examined for a series of stats.[DCand]
- Analytical, Memory, Intuition Boosts. These in addition to boosted Misc. Doctor traits and a Solid personality. will make a Doctor Chief Candidate.[DCCand]
- Boosts to disease resistance. They'll be surrounded by infectious blood and body parts in the case of a flubbed FB Assassination attempt. Best to have them sturdy.
- Various Misc. Physical, Soul, and personality traits which make them effective doctors. Cross-train the more serious flaws out where applicable.
- Washouts or overflow should be employed as nurses or enforcers. Basic nurses purely feed/water. Up & coming nurses gain dress wounds and suture to keep infection rates lower. Enforcers get military training until the core medical staff are trains and they are cycled in for doctor training.(keep 3 training yr round to keep rust off and kill berserking patients)
- S,VS,M Are queued up for Wrestler/Misc obj, Hammerdwarf, Stone Hauling, Exotic weapons, masons and particularly Adamantium great axe wielders in case of FB's made of a highly resistant material.{You ARE Modding the dwarves Entity_Default.txt to allow crafting of all weapons aren't you?}
- --A,-A are either tossed in Marksdwarf squads or are written off and used as unskilled labor
- Boosted A's are marksdwarves, railmen, and patrolmen
- Boosted toughness's are trained to be skilled recruits and shock troops.
- Excess migrants Should be dealt with as follows.
- Tag for stats and employ accordingly
- Once you deem your military satisfactory, employ as specialized haulers.[Haul jobs are queued up to ALL with the labor enabled.]
- Once you feel your haulers are maxed out you have two places to send undesirables.
- Put them into recovery squads. If they are idle too much. Temporarily enable furnace op, item hauling, and other time intensive tasks to keep them busy. Create a custom Prof in The Rapist to quickly reset them back to pure refuse during a siege.
- Put them into medical test subject squads. With pure overflow dwarves survival is no longer a concern. Station (# of doctors - 2or3) on a 2 z-level drop dropshaft's retracting bridge and set lever to repeat. They get broken limbs, get treated, return, and repeat until infection kills them ~2 years later.[*Refer to further down for drop shaft specifics.]
[/list]
* Medical Drop Shaft:
Z-2 Retracting Bridge. Preferably 3x5 to have consistent station success.
Z-1 Open Air D:
Z-0 Sweet delicious stone to splatter on.
Common injuries ~90%: Broken arms, legs.
Uncommon injuries ~10%: Compound arm,shoulder,leg fracture/shatters.
Rare Injuries <~1-5%: Fatal head or spinal nerve wounds.
Somewhat related; Maintain at a minimum a core squad of ~6 legendary teachers. These dwarves should in time have legendary in :
Teacher
Fighting
Biting, Striking, Kicking, Wrestling, Misc Obj. User
Dodger, Shield user, Armor User
Desired Melee skills.
Ranged weapons are optional and more of a maxing Agi/Focus.
Do not let these dwarves engage ANY enemy. They are the Facilitators that not only bring up future soldiers but they will be balanced soldiers that will hopefully survive even the worst siege.
As a misc. Note. Create a swimming pool for your 'boos to skill up in. Artificial waterfalls and be put to use to isolate and slow down threats so it doesn't hurt to have amphibian dwarves. =D
As time goes on. Add more teacher squads. Generally snag the dwarves with the best attributes to be your teachers. Recruits should get to moderate ranks within a year or two and can be rushed via a gladiator arena. Then return to the trainers to max out defensive and Aux. attack skills.
If you are a sadistic fuck, lock the teachers in a system of auxiliary access tunnels linked to multiple levels of the fort and the arena after your military is fully trained and you no longer need trainers.(Keep 3-6 as royal guards just cause) Lock the door to the booze so that they are forced to drink from a well a vampire "Whoopsied" in earlier.[Werebeast is fine too I suppose?] Clad in your finest Masterwork Adamantium armor and Artifact weapons. In the end of times signal a fighting retreat into saferooms deep in the bowels of the fort. Then unleash the Monsters!. The Stat boost from vampire conversion on top of the already monstrous stats should end any threat. Even if it's an adamantium FB.