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Author Topic: Military drops/refuses to pick up weapons?  (Read 675 times)

paladin225

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Military drops/refuses to pick up weapons?
« on: October 03, 2014, 03:17:55 am »

So, I have a very basic military set up.  Just got an ambush and so I'm telling the military to only grab their weapons and no armor since I have no armor anyway.

In their uniforms I have only very basic options like "crossbow" or "pick" or "war hammer" etc. and nothing else for each of their uniforms, to speed up their response time to the current crisis.  I have no material set for the weapons, so they can select crossbows and hammers etc. of any material.

Most of these dwarves are hunters and miners so they already have their weapons equipped anyway.  So, when I activate their squad and have them move toward the ambush... they all drop their weapons and go to their movement point unarmed. Is this a bug?  They've done this twice now.

They don't drop any of their clothing, just their weapons.

I've tried both exact and partial matches for their uniform and this doesn't seem to help either.

Any advice?

Thanks.
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Sirbug

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Re: Military drops/refuses to pick up weapons?
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2014, 06:01:48 am »

In the past versions tools (axes, picks and crossbows) were swapped for another if conscripted. I'm not sure if it changed, although hunters didn't seem to swap recently.

Particularly picks aren't considered weapon at all unless you specify on equipment screen.
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Cool, but wouldn't this likely lead to tongues having a '[SPEACH]' tag, and thus via necromancy we would have nearly unkillable reanimated tongues following necromancers spamming 'it is sad but not unexpected'?

Loci

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Re: Military drops/refuses to pick up weapons?
« Reply #2 on: October 03, 2014, 08:11:11 am »

Miners, woodcutters, and hunters make very poor militia since their invisible civilian "uniform" conflicts with any assigned uniform. They will drop their civilian equipment when activated into the militia and their weapons and armor when deactivated.

Avoid the problem by only selecting militia that do not have any of the conflicting labors enabled.
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paladin225

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Re: Military drops/refuses to pick up weapons?
« Reply #3 on: October 03, 2014, 11:04:31 am »

Well that definitely sounds like a bug to me.  I'm using DF version 0.34.11 by the way.

The dwarves I have selected for my military are the only dwarves I have with any military skill. It would seem ridiculous not to use my master hunter/marksdwarf/dodgers in military for example and send out completely inexperienced troops instead, my hunters are by far my most well trained dwarves at the moment since I'm only in my second year and haven't been able to set up military training yet.  The DF wiki also seems to claim that legendary miners are actually good in combat with their picks and I have a couple legendary miners so I figured they could help.

I did specify for my miners to grab picks of any material in their uniforms.

A single one of my master hunter/marksdwarves who got trapped outside was able to take out almost 3 goblins by himself before getting surrounded. So I figure this would be no problem if I could just get the rest of my dwarves to run out there with weapons instead of unarmed. lol

So if the programming makes them drop their weapon... well fine... but why wouldn't they just pick the same weapon up again if its in their uniform?   Are they "forbidden" from using weapons they've used as a "civilian" while in the military?  This is where it really seems like a bug to me.

So... is there any fix for this?  Would turning off their hunter/miner labors before I activate their squads help?

Answers would be appreciated, thanks.
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shlorf

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Re: Military drops/refuses to pick up weapons?
« Reply #4 on: October 03, 2014, 11:26:27 am »

Yes currently turning off those 3 labors is the only way.
For the marksdwarves i just let them train up hunting then disable hunting and draft them.
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paladin225

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Re: Military drops/refuses to pick up weapons?
« Reply #5 on: October 03, 2014, 12:36:32 pm »

Yes currently turning off those 3 labors is the only way.
For the marksdwarves i just let them train up hunting then disable hunting and draft them.

Thanks for the answer. I'll have to remember to do that from now on then.

Anyway, things went better the third try... master hunter that was trapped outside decided to run in and start rapid firing at all the goblins, heavily wounded 3 or 4 of them in a few seconds lol.  Then my woodcutter decided to bring an axe to the fight and finished them off.  Having weapons equipped definitely helps!
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