I've been trying to equip my dorfs with basic equipment by assigning them to squads (excluding miners, woodcutters, and non existent hunters due to uniform conflicting) and then giving them uniforms, but despite this, and despite there being gear in the stockpile, they just run around half equipped. I have finally been able to get enough leather to produce leather High boots to almost everyone, but most don't equip them.
I'm trying to satisfy the buggers' insatiable craving for clothing, but it's hard. Theoretically, my fort of 41 dwarves should require 205 pieces of clothing per year (2 years to wear them down one step, and 10 (actually 9, since caps interfere with helmets) pieces of clothing, and I think I'm a fair bit above 200 pigtails a year, yet my clothing stocks are basically empty.
I've tried a few different strategies:
1. My intended "fighting" force of male masons: Replacement uniform, complete with clothing (shoes, socks, etc). Still, after a couple of years, one of them is still walking round with one naked foot. Do the buggers refuse to pick up boots unless the lower clothing layers have also been picked up?
2. The first general male squad: Over clothing uniform, complete with clothing. Not much luck there either.
3. Over clothing uniform consisting of only the military items (Bone Helmet, Bone Gauntlets, Leather Armor, Bone Greaves, High Leather Boots). Most are bootless.
None of the strategies work well. Should I just give up civilian clothing and trying to do things "properly", and just go for a completely military replacement outfit?
My attempts to get the buggers to dump their blasted caps fail, despite having tried to order them to be both dumped and forbidden at various times. The only way to get rid of them seems to be a replacement uniform (or wait until they rot off, which shouldn't be too long now). Is there a working way to get rid of this obstruction to helmets?
It can be noted that trying to upgrade a uniform template and then apply it to most of the dorfs is catastrophic: They dump everything in the uniform (including the items that were the same), and then look at the near empty stockpile to piece together the new one. At the rate they pick up and restock dumped clothing, they'll be mostly naked for years.
What I really want to achieve is to provide the dorfs with basic armor and basic weapons to have at least a little chance to survive and run away when hostiles attack them, even though they haven't received any training at all. I also want to be able to "draft" them when some wildlife needs to be removed, or kobolds chased away.