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[hertggf]

Thank you for explaining the pros and cons of armor. I had been wondering what the point of training without armor would be. So first you have them wear armor to train their armor skill, then you remove their armor and that helps them learn to dodge?

Just leave the armor on.  As their armor skill increases they'll become more able to dodge and it'll work itself out organically.

[catoblepas]

Perhaps wooden floors could help in barracks ?

Yes, Feather Tree wood looks to be the best material for that, if you can get it. It's density is half that of cotton candy, at a mere 100. Candlenut is almost as good at 160, and Kapok has a density of 260, so should be pretty good as well.

For perspective, Silt has a density of 1450.

Conversely, if you are of evil intent, and want to do some sort of horrible 'training from hell' thing, you could make your sparring floors out of something dense, like metal. Iron has a density of 7850, so I'm sure you'd get more injuries out of that. Platinum is the densest metal, at 21400-use that for your sparring rooms if you want to turn them into a doctor 'training room'.

[Colonel Sanders Lite]

Dwarves typically don't start with super-strength (though I have had a few odd migrants).  If you equip your rookies with a full kit of iron & steel, they will move with all the speed of a dwarven syrup roast.

I've also noticed this problem with raw recruits and full sets of armor.  My approach is to give them a relatively minimal armor set until they're stronger and/or have built up some armor skill.  Basically: Weapon, Shield, Mail Top, Greaves, Boots.  Leave the Helm, Breastplate, gauntlets, and cloaks off of them.  If a recruit is particularly severe, I might have them training in civ clothes + weapon + armor until they're a bit stronger.

Another option would be to do something that improves strength, like forced swim training, before combat training.

[Sarmatian123]

To dig for lava with avoiding caves and getting like 50 bars of adamantine without breaching *FUN* is like 1 month job.
To ferry 9 metal mine carts up and down to set up 21 magma things above ground takes like 1 season.
The issue that takes me longest, like 5+ years is to build 3 floor fortress above ground, so I can house tavern, library, temple and barracks on 1st floor above ground.

Adamantine is 200 in density. Just in raws remove "waffles" from adamantine and you're shiny for adamantine clad and weaponized 100 Dwarves strong kick ass legendary skills army.

Issue could be platinum bars sold by merchants though, as it is better for hammers and maces then copper. You may need to use 1x500coins-Depot-500x1coins trick combined with melting to get 50 platinum bars out of each platinum bar you own. Same with adamantine, if you feel too lazy to dig for more.

[martinuzz]

Issue could be platinum bars sold by merchants though, as it is better for hammers and maces then copper. You may need to use 1x500coins-Depot-500x1coins trick combined with melting to get 50 platinum bars out of each platinum bar you own. Same with adamantine, if you feel too lazy to dig for more.

Have you ever played Dwarf Fortress? You can't make weapons out of platinum. Only a strange mood can do that.

EDIT: sry if that sounded grumpy. I just keep getting baffled, after spending 2 years mostly in the lower boards, with how much desinformation / half information / failed grasp of mechanics is being spread in the upper boards nowadays

[daggaz]

I started with three military dwarves with proficient teaching on each and either proficient dodging, wrestling, or Shields.  It's going great so far, they have no weapons or uniforms.  I'm planning on giving Shields once dodging and wrestling are decent..

One thing is that they quickly get out of sync and one or more will end up individually training, at which point they teach themselves fighting and striking etc.. and this inevitably dilutes their training regime. Oh well.

Once I have some migrants trained up I will add armor and weapons.

[strainer]

I noticed "leather breastplates" mentioned which dont exist. Cloaks  and hoods weigh almost nothing. "leather armor" protects little better than a cloak. Greaves weigh a ton, unless they are bone in which case they weigh almost nothing but they are then just light leg armor and recruits take them off any time they get a break.

A quiver full of metal bolts is the heaviest thing to not equip new recruits with, weighs around 40L.

A mail shirt is probably the most important bit of kit to get onto new recruits, gives significant protection to head, body,arms and upper legs for about 20L, which is worth it.

Metal cap, and gauntlets weigh 1L each. A Helm weighs 8L - and only improves on a cap by protecting the face. Two caps and a bone/leather helm is possible.

High boots weight 4L each but only equip them when ready to fully replace clothes.

Train wrestling by removing weapons from a squad - if you have a squad to spare from werebeast/monster/kea alert readiness. (If a werebeast turns up and you have a squad of unarmored excellent wrestlers - that going to be alot of fun ; )

Wrestling training could be good for civilians since improved stats boost productivity alot, and most civies like to train a bit anyway. But for military security, I think the priority is getting them good at their weapons.

[Sutremaine]

Adamantine is 200 in density. Just in raws remove "waffles" from adamantine and you're shiny for adamantine clad and weaponized 100 Dwarves strong kick ass legendary skills army.

Waffles? XD

Back when wrestling sparring did cause injuries, I found that leather armour was sufficient to protect dwarves. I don't think I ever bothered with flooring the barracks area in something lighter.

Currently, dwarves will train Armour User even in just clothes. I can't comment on how quick it is compared to training with actual armour.

[strainer]

 "Back when wrestling sparring did cause injuries, I found that leather armour was sufficient to protect dwarves."

Intresting - maybe its still good for padding then. I just noticed as far as cuts and piercing its virtually irrelevant.

[Sarmatian123]

Have you ever played Dwarf Fortress? You can't make weapons out of platinum. Only a strange mood can do that.

Oopsie!

Somehow [ITEMS_WEAPON][ITEMS_WEAPON_RANGED] ventured inexplicably into my platinum definition in raw/objects/inorganic_metal.txt and settled there down. Indeed normally it is not present there by default. It had to magically appear there, when I was busy chopping down this "waffles" nonsense clutter from adamantine definition after pushing adamantine definition to the top of the list over the iron definition for some inexplicable artifacty reason there. Ha!

[anewaname]

I noticed "leather breastplates" mentioned which dont exist. Cloaks  and hoods weigh almost nothing. "leather armor" protects little better than a cloak.

The item type "leather armor" will always be a weak protection because it can only be made from the material "leather", but it is "shaped" "armor" and a "cloak" is "cover". This could change the type of protection it provides and the circumstances it provides the protection in.

I suspect "shaped" armor items are considered inflexible enough to reduce overall impact trauma to muscles and bones by increasing the impact area applied against the underlying mail, clothing, and fat layers. I also suspect that DF's "leather armor" item is intended for materials that are more flexible than metal and less flexible than cloths (compare the UBSTEP, LBSTEP, and Shaped values between breastplates, mail shirts, and "leather armor"). In current times, rubbers and plastics might be materials available for use to construct "leather armor" (seen any post-holocaust movies where guys have partial armor made from car tires? And today's riot armor suits that have thick rubber layers?). Also, the linen/glue composite material suggested by the University of Wisconsin Green Bay linothorax tests could fit into this material category.

[Ulfarr]

Hello everyone, having done a couple of experiments on that same subject during the past couple of weeks, I 'd like to add my two cents in the conversation.

Do note that:
a) I'm still playing on the 43.05 version so there might be some differences with the most current one
b) I'm using Dwarf Therapist to monitor my dwarves.

Experiment 1: Wrestling training before weapon training.

I managed to get my initial dwarves at level 10 in both wrestling and armor (they started with 5 at armor) when a wereantelope attacked and pretty much killed them all. Their equipment at that point was a full set of iron armor (breastplate,mail,helm,high boots, gauntlets, greaves and cloak). As you can tell , my results were quite disappointing, however they are not conclusive.

Experiment 2: Weapons and armor training.

Using the same starting skillset (5 at armor), I gave each of my initial dwarves a full set of iron armor plus a weapon of their choice and let them train. When they all reached 20 at their weapon skill, I also gave them a shield. At that point, their armor skill was between 10 and 15, wrestling was ~ 15-18 and most of them had already reached their limit on strength, agility, toughness etc.

At about the same time I started training a second squad, using the same training plan with one exception, I would give them shields when they all had reached 20 at weapon and 15 at Armor.

Conclusions:

1) Focusing on wrestling seems to be inefficient as a training method. It seems to perform worse as an attacking skill than weapon skills of the same level and most importantly dwarves will train it automatically when sparring with their weapons anyway. As far as attribute training is concerned, both wrestling/weapon training seem to be equally effective.

2) Shield is probably the easiest/fastest skill to train. Both of my squads achieved a skill level of at least 15 by the time they got around 15/18 (from 10 and 15 respectively) at Armor. From experience on previous fortresses, giving them shields from the start, seems to result in very slow armor training. I suspect this is due to dwarves getting too good with shields and blocking most of the incoming blows with them instead of using their armor.

3) There have been no injuries in any of these 3 squads during training. However, on a previous (kobold) fortress, I did have a couple of deaths during training but I'm not sure if it was due to sparring or because they got into a fight among themselves (I think it was always one particular kobold involved).

[Sarmatian123]

2) Shield is probably the easiest/fastest skill to train. Both of my squads achieved a skill level of at least 15 by the time they got around 15/18 (from 10 and 15 respectively) at Armor. From experience on previous fortresses, giving them shields from the start, seems to result in very slow armor training. I suspect this is due to dwarves getting too good with shields and blocking most of the incoming blows with them instead of using their armor.

They still train armor. Leading and taking part of armor demonstrations. Sparing. [my training schedule: 10-2-2-2-2-2-10-2-2-2-2-2.] It takes longer because all their shoes and mittens have to rot away first to make place for high (preferably) boots and gauntlets. Then it takes you time to fit them with all armor pieces including breast plates and graves. This is why. Else armor skill would skill up normally like all other skills.

However starting training without weapon and shield... What a colossal Titanic failboat. Ban that thought!

Though with last changes to DF, I think metal shields are preferable over leather or wooden, what breaks my heart and hearts of all those Dwarves who trained with their beloved shields and then sneakily  got them even named and listed among my fortress's artifacts. Those sneaky little... ehem!   What was it about again? Right. I trailed away again. Right. Good this is not bug report page.

[martinuzz]

However starting training without weapon and shield... What a colossal Titanic failboat. Ban that thought!

Just no.

Training without weapon and shield is a good idea to start with. Near impossible to get anywhere near decent wrestling skills another way. And while wrestling may suck offensively, it is a lifesaver to prevent having your head bitten off or your arm ripped out.
Add weapons once they have some wrestling and dodge skills. Add shields once they have some armor skills. Armor skill will almost stop training if every sparring move is either dodged or blocked by a shield.

The only reason to forego training without weapon and shield is when you are playing a rushed style, and sending rookies out to fight for reals. In that case, yeah, I could agree on starting them with weapon and shield right away. But if you are training at leisure, start without.

[Ulfarr]

Training without weapon and shield is a good idea to start with. Near impossible to get anywhere near decent wrestling skills another way. And while wrestling may suck offensively, it is a lifesaver to prevent having your head bitten off or your arm ripped out.

Weapon skills seem to become reliable (against goblins, werebeasts, rocs etc) around level 10 -12. I' m fairly new to DF (I've been playing for less than a year) so, what would the equivalent for wrestling be? If it needs to get way above legendary, before it can be considered a decent level then yes a wrestling focused training is needed to achieve it, despite the fact that dwarf train it in parallel with their weapon skills.