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Author Topic: A bit confused by some aspects of the Military Screen  (Read 393 times)

doctoxic

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A bit confused by some aspects of the Military Screen
« on: November 09, 2012, 09:43:18 am »


Hi

I have set up a squad of 4 but really not sure about a few things.  Hope you can help.

1) I have set up a schedule of training every other month but on the schedule screen it says "Train, 10 minimum" - what does this mean in practice?

2)  What do you do in the 'orders' screen.  In the top left corner it says "o:defend burrow"  and on the right i have my 4 squad members in positions 1 to 4.  If i 'select' them does this just mean the actively 'defend the burrow' by automatically moving to any enemy (or if i don't select them they do nothing?).  Also what does the Minimum soldiers setting do?

3) On the equip screen my squad leader defaulted to:
Leather Armour
Leather Head
Leather Leg
Leather Hand
Leather Foot
Leather Shield/Buckler
Indiv melee choice
But there is no green icon next to them so i assume this just means they pick up the relevent items IF available.

If i then use the equip button i add (but leave all the above) then i get:
(Bronze short sword)   ==> what do the "brackets" mean?
=Cedar Shield=    ===> what does the "=" mean

These 2 items both have the green icon - does this mean they will ALWAYS be equiped if called to combat?

I have also seen equipment with other notation like:
(-Bronze Spear-)
+Pine Crossbow+
Again, does this denote anything in particular?


Many thanks

Doc
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Dwarfotaur

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Re: A bit confused by some aspects of the Military Screen
« Reply #1 on: November 09, 2012, 09:49:32 am »

I can only answer a few of the top of my head:

Last I checked, the schedule was broken so I've never used it.

A burrow is an area you can designate in order to mark certain areas of your fort. If you tell them to defend a burrow, they will defend that area. Most people however, have their barracks/training room near any entrances and just manually station the squad when under attack.

As far as I remember, that green icon means they have claimed a weapon/armour for that slot. No green icon means there isn't any spare armour/weapons available that match the assignment.

The things like =Item= are quality markers (true for almost every item, not just weapon/armour). http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Quality
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Trif

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Re: A bit confused by some aspects of the Military Screen
« Reply #2 on: November 09, 2012, 12:45:29 pm »

1) The 10 minimum means that at least 10 soldiers of your squad will be training actively. If you lower that number to, say, 5 minimum, only 5 recruits will train and the rest will be off duty. If one of the training dwarfs takes a break, another dwarf will train.
If you want your dwarfs to get some training, 10 minimum is perfectly fine. It makes sense to lower it when you set some patrol routes in your schedules or if you want your dwarfs to defend burrows because too much active duty makes dwarfs unhappy.

2) It means that a minimum of 4 dwarfs from the selected squad will be in the burrow that you choose and defend it from intruders.

3) If there's no green checkmark, the dwarfs aren't wearing the stuff that you ordered. If you set your equipment to partial (m)atches, they might just wear the next best armor if they can't find leather. Try activating a squad in the (s)quads menu and order them to move somewhere. Sometimes, dwarfs begin picking up their equipment once they have an actual order.

(Brackets) mean that this item is imported. The other symbols are quality modifiers.
The green icon means that your dwarf equipped these weapons and he will train and fight with them.
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i2amroy

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Re: A bit confused by some aspects of the Military Screen
« Reply #3 on: November 09, 2012, 12:51:05 pm »

1) Are you sure you have changed the order that they are performing and not just retitled the name of their schedule for that month? The two are different things, so it's fully possible to have an order for "Training, 10 minimum" to be titled something like "Sit around and do nothing".
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AutomataKittay

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Re: A bit confused by some aspects of the Military Screen
« Reply #4 on: November 09, 2012, 12:53:27 pm »

) If there's no green checkmark, the dwarfs aren't wearing the stuff that you ordered. If you set your equipment to partial (m)atches, they might just wear the next best armor if they can't find leather. Try activating a squad in the (s)quads menu and order them to move somewhere. Sometimes, dwarfs begin picking up their equipment once they have an actual order.

(Brackets) mean that this item is imported. The other symbols are quality modifiers.
The green icon means that your dwarf equipped these weapons and he will train and fight with them.

A bit nitpicky, but green icon means that the item's been claimed for the slot that it's in. It don't means the dwarf will be wearing it, particularly with conflict between cap and helmet, and boots not being able to fit over shoes, unless it's set to replace uniform. Being too lazy to grab stuffs will do it too ( though as you said, stationing will get them moving to it ).

Otherwise, that's right.

I have also seen equipment with other notation like:
(-Bronze Spear-)
+Pine Crossbow+
Again, does this denote anything in particular?

(stuff) means it's imported, or invader equipment, not fortress-made stuff.
The rest can be found here http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/Quality#Quality_grades
It's pretty much how good the thing is, or valuable if you're looking at market price.
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