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[Zeebie]

Members of my military ignore orders if they are socializing.  Do we know if this is intended or a bug?

"Urist McBattleaxe! The goblins are slaughtering the farmers! Help!"
"Eh, let me finish my beer."

I can't decide if this is really problematic or totally dwarfy.

[PatrikLundell]

Eating, drinking, stocking up on food/drinks, and sleeping trump military orders. Thus, dorfs won't die of dehydration if you station them indefinitely. My experience is that you can expect somewhere between 30 and 70 percent of the militia to show up when called upon (not excluding the 0 and 100% cases). You can also expect them to come in dribs and drabs, so ordering them to charge the goblin horde immediately is not advisable. Instead, they should be stationed so you can collect them before sending them in (and it's not unusual to see a dorf going in the other direction to satisfy basic needs when the squad is ordered to attack something).
If that's what you mean by socializing, yes, that's normal. If you mean listen/tell stories/poetry/songs, etc. I'd say it's a bug (in 0.40.24 my militia never made any friends due to lack of socializing. One dorf finally managed to get his third passing acquaintance after about 5 years, and that was his squad commander...).

[Hesperid]

This is actually a major hindrance now, because unlike primary needs like eating and drinking, socializing is an activity that ties your military up forever. Any tavern activity keeps them from obeying station and kill orders, which makes controlling the military impossible. They'll do nothing but hang at the tavern while the fortress dies.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

That's why recruit right before the war doesn't work now...
But if you create your military earlier, make them active, and they will eventually stay in the barracks.