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[Sarmatian123]

So named shields, no matter material, are invulnerable to wear/dmg. However, are better non-legendary shields, even of master quality, when made out of hard metals like iron, steel or adamantine, then soft metals like platinum, copper? Or durability of shields is connected only to material's density?

[Ziusudra]

It's some combination of the material properties that determines durability. If it were just density candy would make bad armor.

[janamdo]

I hope it helps some. To understand those menus for first time is a tough job.

Yes, i am stil not good at it, but reading post again helps

[janamdo]

I am still confused how the military screen exactly works.
Think that Toady.. the developer of DF has made a bad design for this militairy GUI and ruined his own game.

[Schmaven]

I think everyone would agree that there is room for improvement for the current menu system. 

The great news is that UI changes are coming in this upcoming release that Today is working on right now.  Something to look forward to

In the meantime before that release comes out, I found that for the military menus, I just have to slow down a bit and read what's on the screen.  The immediate thing I want to do is often on another screen within those menus; but if I read where each of the hot key menu links lead, the one I'm looking for usually becomes apparent.  I don't get fancy with it though, I just create & equip squads, and toggle the occasional civilian alert.

[janamdo]

I think everyone would agree that there is room for improvement for the current menu system. 

The great news is that UI changes are coming in this upcoming release that Today is working on right now.  Something to look forward to

Thanks
That's good news the new militairy screens 
Making squads and alerts is not that difficult, but assigning weapens, armor, etc => what and how to equip.
There are default uniforms and custom made uniforms, but what weapon belonging to a default uniform ?

Well i must read this topic again     

[Schmaven]

It took me several forts of creating basic uniforms before I felt even a little comfortable with it.  I always create my own 3 basic uniforms for every fort.  <m> Military, <n> Uniforms, <c> Add uniform, <N> Name uniform (very helpful)

• Bare naked: navigating the active cursor with the arrow keys, <Enter> on everything in the ITEMS column, set to <r> Replace clthng and <m> Exact matches.  I assign this uniform to stressed dwarves wearing masterwork steel armor who I want to expel from the fort, but leave their armor behind.
  
• Metal: I add 1 item from each <A> Armor (usually it's already on the Armor selection), <L> Legs, <H> Helm, <G> Gloves, <B> Boots, <S> Shield and <W> Weapon, then again using the arrow keys, select each piece specifying metal while in the <M> Material category for all the armor pieces (helms, greaves, gauntlets, high boots, etc.) and whatever metal I know I'm currently making weapons out of for the weapon.  In reanimating biomes, I always use maces because it keeps the dead more dead, which helps reduce stressful encounters on the fort's population.
  
• Archer: Exactly the same as Metal, but with crossbows assigned.
  

I now get a little bit fancy with it and assign both mail shirts and breastplates to the metal uniform, and also cloaks to the archers.

Creating uniforms however is a totally different process to getting dwarves to wear anything.  For that, you first have to have dwarves in a squad in the <p> Positions tab.  Assuming you have squads formed, then you have to go to the <e> Equip tab, then <U> Assign uniforms, then highlight the squad, position, and position uniform all with the arrow keys before doing <Shift+Enter> to cast it on everyone.  I call it casting on everyone, as if you're casting a spell because any time you make any change to the uniform, you have to do this again for those changes to be applied to the squad using the previous version of the uniform. 

From that screen, if you have a particular artifact jagged gold helm or something that you want your militia commander to wear, you can press <V> View/Customize and highlight the position with the arrow keys again, then whichever category of <H> Helm your artifact helm for example falls into, then <Enter> on specific helm to then be able to pick it out of a list by name. 

I don't know if vanilla orders the list by value, but with DFHack running in the background, it does for me, so artifacts are generally on the top of a massive endless list of all head coverings.  Unfortunately, I don't know a way to get a description of the item from this screen, so you can't just scan through the list here and choose without accidentally assigning a frilly pigtail cap that has a cool name to one of your fighters.  Whenever I get a cool artifact, I try to assign it right away before I forget what it is.  And for fun, I try to assign the most humiliating frilly cave spider silk thongs to the hammerer, who I created a specific squad position for just so I could do this.

Edit: The most common mistake I make is pressing <Enter>when the active cursor is highlighting a different field in a different column than I think it is.  So I shake the highlighted selector around a bit with the arrow keys sometimes to get my bearings if I'm not sure.

[janamdo]

It took me several forts of creating basic uniforms before I felt even a little comfortable with it.  I always create my own 3 basic uniforms for every fort. 

Thanks
I am puzzling on this further and you could also use the mouse in the militairy screen.
Say, choosing a default uniform  for a given squad shows not what exactly is equiped ..or do i miss something?

The squad must pick up the equipment what is in stock and can do this  as a exact match or as a partial match.
But you are using : replace clothing, so the dorfs don't wear their civil clothes and "exact match" therefore you must be sure that the choosen equipment is existing. ( needed to check this in stock). 

Could be handy to use the "partial match" pick up chooser :  example , do have  5 battle axes  and 6 crossbows made from different materials in stock and with this option "partial match" all  battle axes( 4x mat) and crossbow(3x mat) are picked up by a squad.
No need for assigning one by one weapon.

[janamdo]

I don't know if vanilla orders the list by value, but with DFHack running in the background, it does for me, so artifacts are generally on the top of a massive endless list of all head coverings.  Unfortunately, I don't know a way to get a description of the item from this screen, so you can't just scan through the list here and choose without accidentally assigning a frilly pigtail cap that has a cool name to one of your fighters.  Whenever I get a cool artifact, I try to assign it right away before I forget what it is.  And for fun, I try to assign the most humiliating frilly cave spider silk thongs to the hammerer, who I created a specific squad position for just so I could do this.

Make some progress in understanding how all works thanks your post @Schmaven.
I don't have artifacts yet, but it seems in general there is no uniform item description on militairy screens
I see a green square icon (meaning? : stock item)  for some uniform category items : example : metal armor , metal headwear and battle axe ( i know i have 5 in stock)

Also i see a item  categories ( foreign ) :example capes(foreign) and what are those foreign uniform categories standing for ?..from outside the fortress ( not made by the dorfs ? )

Further the unfinished "dwarven compendium" has also some info about militair .. look at that too

Note: at the moment there is a big forest fire going on..amazing

[Fleeting Frames]

Foreign is generally stuff you can't normally produce, yeah (with the exception of picks).

Green checkmark is "item assigned". This doesn't actually mean equipped, unfortunately.

[Schmaven]

The reason I do replace clothing and exact matches is to avoid the occasional situation where a dwarf won't equip their metal armor because of some cloth piece they are already wearing.  I haven't experimented much with the partial matches setting.  Also, I don't think there is any indication in the military menus as to whether or not they are actually wearing anything yet that you set them up to wear.  The equipment / uniform pages just show what you intend them to wear.

If your smiths don't have an abundance of a single metal to use, or if you're just trading / looting corpses for gear, you don't have to specify a material.  You can just set up the uniform for "Maces" or the generic "indiv choice, melee" to let them pick one from what you have already.  I only assign specific weapons to individual dwarves when I get a cool artifact like a rose gold mace or something along those lines, so I haven't noticed the foreign category yet.

In the <e> Equip tab, the list of gear assigned has some green check marks next to them.  I don't know for certain, but I suspect that if there is a green check mark, that means the assigned equipment is available to be used.  I assigned an adamantine crossbow (there are no adamantine crossbows in the fort) to a dwarf, and it never got a green check mark next to it. 

I just tried using the mouse in the military screen for the first time.  I prefer the precision of keyboard control for the most part though.  I always have DFHack running in the background since I use the Peridexis Errant's DF Starter Pack, so I'm never 100% sure if cool stuff like mouse support here is a vanilla feature, or just part of the QoL stuff DFHack sneaks in under the radar.

PeridexisErrant's Starter Pack bundles Dwarf Fortress with huge community upgrades - graphics, tools, bugfixes, and much more.
Download the latest Starter Pack here!

[janamdo]

Thanks

Replace clothing option for this you must be sure that you do have the armor for your dwarf.
If not then your dwarf will be naked.

Why is choosen to give not a direct feedback in the military screens for equipment and uniforms ?
(although there is a green checkmark...)
To check this you must go to the
inventory of the dwarf by remembering the assigend wanted equipment and check this for all squadmember looks to me very laborious ( you must write down on a paper the squad setup)   

Don't know if the foreign category can be used ?

If there is a green checkmark for assigned eguipment then this the only feedback that the equipment can be used, yes i think so too
Seems that mousecontrol also can be to used  in the vanilla DF   

Partial matching setting can be used if you do have the  same equipment made from different material:  the squad  dwarfs can then pick up the same item what only differs in material : indiv choice (melee, archer, weapon)
Note: don't not yet where the "indiv choice weapon" is used for, maybe a combination of melee and archer ?)   

[Schmaven]

The individual choice melee weapon is for if you don't care if they grab a spear, short sword, war hammer, mace, or whatever, as long as it's melee.  They'll probably pick one they have a preference for.  In my experience, they tend to also choose the more valuable weapons (luckily steel is among the more valuable materials).

If you have Dwarf Therapist (part of the starter pack), the military tab is very helpful for showing what your dwarves have equipped.  If you mouse over their colored equipment box, it makes it very easy to see what pieces they are missing, and what they are already wearing.  If the square is green, they have everything, if it is blue, they are missing some pieces.  If most of them are missing a chest piece, then I make / trade for more breastplates etc.  I find this much quicker and easier than tracking down each dwarf and inspecting their inventory with <v> + <i>.

Spoiler: Dwarf Therapist Equipment View (click to show/hide)

Edit: Somehow everything got italicized and I don't know how to stop it.

[janamdo]

If you have Dwarf Therapist (part of the starter pack), the military tab is very helpful for showing what your dwarves have equipped.  If you mouse over their colored equipment box, it makes it very easy to see what pieces they are missing, and what they are already wearing.  If the square is green, they have everything, if it is blue, they are missing some pieces.  If most of them are missing a chest piece, then I make / trade for more breastplates etc.  I find this much quicker and easier than tracking down each dwarf and inspecting their inventory with <v> + <i>.

Thanks
Yes, very convienant to use DT with equipment, good tip you mentioned here  : i noticed it already this feature earlier.It Take a lot of laborious work to do this in DF without DT

[Fleeting Frames]

@Schmaven: Sadly, green checkmark means just an actual, physical item is assigned to the position, not actually available - the assigned item can actually be underwater, forbidden, locked behind a door, etc... Made a script to fix it, though I get it more than normal due how I handle invader gear.

@janamado: Foreign weapons can be assigned to be wielded in battle if your citizen is big enough for them, though admittedly I don't know if individual choice will pick those up.