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[Zemouregal]

Alright, so I successfully established a 1 million dorfbucks fortress, complete with its own zoo. Now, I just need a military.

Can you stack multiple layers of clothing? Does that create the effect of multiple useless limbs on several creatures whereas its hard to kill?

How should I train my metalsmiths, and using what materials?

Whats the best weapons for situations? Best materials?

Thanks for your time if you choose to answer!

[smeeprocket]

well, what metals are on your map? do you have flux stone available? Have you checked the wiki, btw? It has a list of what metals are good for what purpose (such as blunt or piercing etc)

Steel is probably the best conventional metal, unless you have access to candy.

How did you get your fort so accomplished without some form of an army?

I would, personally, pick someone who has the highest in armorer skill and just train them on the stuff you make for your soldiers, as they improve, you can always give the soldiers new outfits.

[Zemouregal]

I have found many veins of copper and iron, and have access to flux. I have, I just want some more clearing.

I tried steel once, only a chainmail, breatplate, helm and greaves, the dorfs died.

Lots of defense and traps. Somewhat flawed defense too, I used a moat and bailey.

And I agree, but how to train better?

[smeeprocket]

fastest way to train is a danger room I believe, though I don't use them. Coinstar helps some skills as well, but apparently it doesn't work... in the same way with the newer versions of the game.

[Zemouregal]

Im not looking for a danger room or coinstar, Im looking for a way to train the dorfs responsible for the creation of armor.

[smeeprocket]

oh right right. Just make armor, that's the way to get the skill up best, short of having a dwarf get a mood.

Dwarves will upgrade their gear to the best possible of whatever you assign to them, if you assign just metal armor, for example. Apparently this works in a rather problematic way though. If you station the dwarves, they check their armor and if it isn't the best they can get they dump it, which leaves them naked for a fight before they can go back and get the best armor.

Like, how has your fort survived without an army? If you have had no opposition this whole time, what are you building one for?

[Zemouregal]

Ive had opposition the whole time, 6 sieges, and tons and tons of ambushes. Its just quick timing, the use of a Defense Operator for Random Funtimes (Or D.O.R.F) defense system and plenty of traps. And a drawbridge.

[smeeprocket]

Half the fun of sieges is culling your fort of excess dwarves though o.O It makes migrants important, rather than a nuisance.

If you've got a whole lot of iron, you might try pumping out an endless supply of a few different iron types, since steel is such a pita to make, so you'd want it to use when your armorer is at her best. Adding in melted down instruments and toys of various metals from merchants to minimize the waste. If you have candy though, I'd skip the steel and pump out practice iron pieces and make it with that once your dwarf is more skilled.

[Aslandus]

The wiki has a whole section on armor which is kind of complicated, but here's the gist:

Armor has coverage and protection, coverage is determined by the type of armor while protection is more from the material. It also has different layers, from under, over, armor and cover. You can have one clothing item on each body part (head, torso, legs, feet, hands) for each layer (4 layers), and more layers is more protective than fewer (obviously).

So for example, hands would be best protected if they had gloves (under), gauntlets (armor), and mittens (cover). Naturally, it will take a bit of time to completely suit up your dwarves though, so if you need to armor them up pronto, you may want to start with the important stuff like chain shirts and helmets, which as far as I know offer the best survivability boost for their material cost...

here's the thread if you want to look at it yourself:
http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Armor

Iron is good enough for most things, so you shouldn't need to forge tons of steel unless you really want to prepare for the absolute worst, like a forgotten beast made of stone or an encounter with a flock of dragons (no, as far as I know dragons don't actually come in flocks, but that would be awesome)...

[Bognor]

...
I tried steel once, only a chainmail, breatplate, helm and greaves, the dorfs died.
...

They would have, because this leaves the feet, hands, and lower arms unprotected.  Chainmail, helm, high boots and gauntlets is a much better set as it covers the entire body.  Greaves and breastplates add additional protection but I'm not sure whether the extra weight is worth it on dwarves without high strength and/or armor user.

[PatrikLundell]

A further armor question: the excellent Armor wiki page mentions material recovered when melting armor, but what happens with adamantine?
Since the number of wafers going in is directly proportional to the resulting material contents (rather than bars that might be truncated/rounded), one might think you'd get the same amount back.

The reason for the question is that I want to keep trying until each piece is masterworks.

[StagnantSoul]

You'll be losing a lot of adamantine. The only way to get more back would be the coin or bolt tricks.

[PatrikLundell]

Thanks, I'll stop it.
According to the wiki, some items actually provide a profit with bar metal, which can obviously be exploited. Would the same go for adamantine?
My aim is really to break even...

[smeeprocket]

pretty sure it's true for all metal, but it's tedious. You have to spend a lot of time splitting stacks manually. I wonder if dfhack or any plug ins for that can do it for you.

[PatrikLundell]

What I meant was that melting some items is supposed to yield a loss, and some a profit, so e.g. 5 breastplates (90%) + 1 Leggings (150%) ought to give you your raw materials back, so if I was aiming for breastplates I could throw in one leggings for every 5 breastplates, even if I didn't really wanted any leggings.
As a matter of fact, what I'm trying to get is steel helm, chain mail, gauntlets, and high boots as the basic full body protection, with adamantine breastplate and greaves as added protection against non piercing attacks on most of the body. I'm aiming at replacing the current steel breastplate and greaves with adamantine, but was in the process of reforging the adamantine items until they were masterworks before changing the uniform to aviod having the "intermediate" quality items dropped all over the place during the replacement process (which is exactly what's happening with the steel items).