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[Oaktree]

My last fort, and to a degree my current fort, have begun acting as a sort of training facility for this dwarf civilization.  I am no longer using my "best" dwarf in various industrial tasks, but instead rotating in other dwarves in order to train them up in various skills.  The ideal being that in future forts established by this civilization the odds of getting "useful" migrants will increase due to previous seeding of the population with trained dwarves.

Assuming that the full population is not going to be trained to Legendary combat or industrial skills by the time I abandon the fort, what would be an ideal generic target for a dwarven training program in terms of skill sets to imbue?

Example:
(Weapon) - 6; Fighter - 8; Shield User - 3; Armor User - 2
Armor Smith - 4; Weapon Smith - 4; Furnace Operator - 6
Planter - 7; Miller - 4; Thresher - 4; Cook - 6; Brewer - 6;
Mix of other "moodable" skills such as Mason, Mechanic, Weaver, Clothier, etc. at 3 (or less)

This would be a "militia dwarf" with primary military skills, a variety of industrial spots they can fill, and they would mood to create an armor or weapon artifact.  I would see such a dwarf as useful in general, and very useful in one of the early waves since they can fill a number of worker slots adequately in addition to boosting the military effectiveness of the fortress once they receive weapons and armor.

A second type would be an "industrial" dwarf who is basically Level 8+ in a slew of the various crafting skills.  They can cover multiple positions in a young fort due to their production speed, and even if Armor/Weapon smith is their official profession they still might mood a useful piece of furniture.

Another asset of "pre-trained" dwarves is that between weapons training, furnace operation, smithing, etc. they should have increased stats and essentially operate and move faster than the average randomly generated dwarf.

(Another factor with populating forts from earlier forts and that since I use pop cap and child limits the children that have been showing up are already at an age of 10-12 - they go adult quickly.)

The downside of using a system like this is that you are limiting your play to a specific world and civilization region.  Less experimentation going on.

[Loud Whispers]

+20 potash maker, the only migrant you'll ever need.

[Dutchling]

My ideal migrant has:
-Enough animals to feed my starving fortress.
-High enough fighting skill to entertain me in the fighting pits.

[WaffleEggnog]

As much as I would having a ton of military dwarfs, it's still potash makers and cheese makers for me. I literally never get anything but farmers, except for a few exceptions. Damn you migrant-hole! Give me good migrants!

[itg]

The professions I really care about in a migrant are the ones that are valuable but difficult/expensive to train. The big ones would be the military skills, medical skills, weaponsmithing, and armorsmithing. A good miner or mason is always nice because those skills are so useful, even if they're not hard to train. I like getting a good gem setter, too, so I don't ruin so much good furniture with a poor encrusting job. In general, I'd rather have a dwarf that does one thing well than a dwarf that is okay at three or four things, particularly if that dwarf is going to end up doing one of those jobs full-time.

[Oaktree]

My goal (sort of) at this point is to push back into the population a larger group of dwarves with a military skill, Armor and Weapon smith at around Level 4, and possibly planting or another Farming skill at 3 or 4.  A smaller group will be the "industrialists" with a higher skill level in 3-4 other areas.

Generating a high-level specialist is what happens a lot --- and then you never get the specialist you want as a migrant.  Thus a reason to spend the time getting a less military skilled dwarf good at a number of skills so that a fort will have a slot he fits.   

I saw the utility of this when a dwarf arrived in the 2nd wave at my current fort who was level 10+ in 4-5 skills (Weaving, Clothier, plus Bone Crafting, as well as 4-5 in the main smithing skills.)  He essentially was better than any current dwarf in the fort in that entire skill set.  And with his work speed he could cover a lot of ground and basically proved very valuable to a young fort.

Whether a fort makes a good training environment for which skills will also depend on the fort's resources and industries:

I had a lot of shallow tetrahedrite veins plus the Magma Sea was only ~26 levels down.  Therefore the Foundry was established early and there was a lot of copper bars to play with.  Easy to queue up cheap armor and bolts as smithing training and ammo for the marksdwarves.  Black smithing and metal smithing can be trained as well with buckets or something else that can be melted down to recover the metal.  (Which trains Furnace Operators of course.)  And, as a side effect, these are tasks that help with increasing Strength, Endurance, and Toughness.

Your farming/livestock industry will generate a lot of training tasks: Miller, Thresher, Planter, etc.  and then Butcher, Tanner, Weaver, etc. in the follow-on processing industries.  And if you have a silk farm running training Weaver is even easier.  None of these are "vital", but are useful for a fort to have someone show up trained in if that is an industry the fort is trying to set up.

The military skills is essentially being patient, or using a danger room.  I tend to draft most of my workforce at least part-time into training by the 3rd year.  Get them doing combat drills or archery range with their idle time rather than partying.  And once they get a level or two in a basic weapon possibly grouping them more efficiently to see if they will spar.  (I also use the draft to get them uniformly clothed, using some armor that won't wear out, and another way to get them physical training.)

Haven't hit upon a good method for getting gem cutter/gem setter trained.  It would probably gear around having a glass industry generating lots of rough green glass and having them cutting and setting that as practice.  Though they can also just work with stone as well.  (Which makes it easier than in previous versions.)  That would depend on how your stone situation is going - in the current fort mine went into blocks for paving, surface construction, and mechanisms.   Glass and clay took up a lot of the workload in terms of furniture, food storage, and building as well (clay brick).  So getting trained potters and glassmakers was not a challenge once immediate needs were met.
   

[JimmyBobJr]

+20 potash maker, the only migrant you'll ever need.

Its also the only migrant you'll ever get.

[weenog]

Skilled animal trainers always seem to take longer to develop than I want, when the critters I'm working with are a real threat if they revert to wild.  I'd probably add that to my own useful skills package if I took on a project like this.  Come to think of it, I'd also like to see if a bonded training partner will follow its trainer's migration like a pet would, so I'd probably turn some high skilled animal trainers loose in the world anyway just to figure that out.