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[SixOfSpades]

Civilian dwarves cannot wear any sort of armor, not even leather. Why?
Soldiers cannot (actively) be Miners, Woodcutters, or Ambushers, as these labors create an invisible "uniform" that interferes with the military uniform. Why?
Civilian dwarves who happen to be attacked while carrying perfectly serviceable weapons (most notably picks & axes) will instead prefer to fight back with their bare hands. Why?
Dwarves who enjoy acquiring material objects have zero qualms about visiting the Finished Goods stockpiles & casually helping themselves to jewelry, even crowns. Yet civilian dwarves who enjoy fighting wouldn't dream of declaring ownership of a weapon--not even one taken off a dead goblin. Why?
Urist is badly distracted after being unable to practice a martial art . . . even though he's been carrying an axe around for years, and there's a barracks right there for anyone who wants to do some Individual Combat Drill. Why?

For a race that prides itself on its military prowess, dwarves sure do seem to have a bass-ackwards way of going about it, even to the point of deliberately making it unreasonably difficult for a dwarf to defend his own life . . . unless the mystical overseer (in his infinite wisdom) flips the 'You Iz Milisha Now' switch that toggles between "crazy drunk idiot that makes stuff out of bones" and "crazy drunk idiot that makes bones out of stuff".
Why?

Every RTS game that I know of, like StarCraft & Age of Empires, makes a huge distinction between workers & combat units. Workers cannot fight, soldiers can do nothing but fight. Why?

Dwarf Fortress is supposed to be a fantasy-realistic model of the real world, and in the real world, the line between civilian & fighter is anything but sharp. IRL humans get drunk & have fistfights far more often than DF's so-called 'dwarves' do. They attend combat-based sporting events, they pay to attend martial-arts classes and even enroll their children in them. Some even gather together in costume, and (re-)enact full-scale mock battles. Depending on local custom/culture, carrying a weapon (or at least a tool that could easily be used as a weapon) is perfectly normal, even expected. And every single day, all over the world, these supposed "civilians" assault and kill people. Meanwhile, "soldiers" cook food, wash clothes, repair vehicles, operate surveillance equipment, catalog warehouse inventory, clean things, fill out paperwork, and perform any number of tasks that in no wise prepare them for anything resembling direct physical combat.

Long story short, my actual suggestion is to take the list of Why?s at the top of this post . . . and correct them.
1) Civilian dwarves can wear armor, and should even want to wear (at least some) armor if they a) are in the militia part-time, b) have personality traits that influence them that way, c) have a profession that might put them at risk, d) have been involved in a Siege (however indirectly) in the past year, or e) have directly seen a hostile creature in the past year, or have a friend / relative / co-worker who saw one in the past season. Now, what armor they choose to wear will partially be controlled by their labors: Obviously, no Gem Cutter will be able to do his job while wearing metal gauntlets--but simple leather body armor, or even a mail shirt, won't inconvenience anybody. Players should be able to designate what armor items [types, materials, and quality levels] are free to be claimed by civilians, and which are reserved strictly for active-duty military.
2) Everyone should be armed. Not necessarily with a militia-grade weapon--Take the existing list of "Tools usable as Weapons" like boning knife & carving fork, and expand it to include things like hammers, chisels, saws, shears, sickles, etc., until a wide variety of professions have something they can carry around that will both serve in self-defense and be helpful (at least cosmetically) with their associated labor. And everybody, whether they have a trade or not, should (want to) have their own eating knife . . . with the possible exception of small children. Dwarves who lack a knife, and who feel threatened by the sight or rumor of hostiles, should without exception try to carry some kind of weapon at all times, even if all they can manage is a sharpened stick or rock.
3) Proper threat response. Dwarves should answer challenges, insults & grudges with a simple unarmed fistfight or wrestling match, that's well and good. But if their opponent breaks the rules & pulls a knife, or if they come upon a goblin / cave crocodile / vampire, they must respond in kind and go all-out with everything they have.
4) Dwarves that feel a need must also feel a desire to fulfil that need, and independently try to fulfil it. A dwarf that wants to pray, and has access to a space dedicated to that purpose, will occasionally do so. Why should a dwarf who wants to fight, or at least practice a martial art, be any different (at least, provided he can find someone willing to spar with him)?
5) Civilian dwarves should spontaneously morph into quasi-military in response to a threat. I don't mean every Herbalist should try to take on a whole ambush squad by herself--I mean that instead of the universal civilian response of "flee in terror", they should all retreat toward the entrance to the fort, and from there progress toward meeting areas, until the combined mass of available dwarf-flesh is roughly equivalent to the enemy's--and then attack. Also, when multiple dwarves are within sight of both the enemy and each other, the more heavily-armored (and/or militarily experienced) dwarves should try to stay between their friends & the danger, acting as Tanks to help their companions get to (relative) safety.

[dth1]

I agree with all the points here, but would be really happy if even one would end up implemented, because they all seem to be good ideas that would improve the simulation.

As for the civilian uniforms for miners/woodcutters, if such uniforms exist, we should at least be able to modify them to for example... wear helmets. So that our woodcutters stop dying when trees hit them in their heads..

As for fighting with bare hands, there should be something that would work like a sparring in military, maybe a little bit more "invasive" so that dwarfs end up with bruises and scratches, but not dead with pierced skulls. There should be something like an intention in combat. You may want to just disable an opponent instead of killing him. You may strangle him until he passes out, but not until he's dead. You may hit him in his stupid face for what he said without the intention to smear his brains on the wall. You may want to _disable_ and jail crafter who went berserk instead of killing him. You may want to beat someone as a punishment without killing them. Stuff like that. Currently it's either "we're best friends and drink beer together" or "I will crush your skull and eat your guts" within seconds.

[GiglameshDespair]

I must admit, my miners and woodcutters don't seem to have any trouble using the tools they're holding when assailed by the local cave crocs.

I'm fine with non-mil dwarves not wearing armour and carrying weapons unless i put them in militia squads, because it'd suck to have to make 200 sets of armour because my ten military dwarves are too slow on the draw to actually get their equipment. It'd also mean that most of your dwarves would end up very slow under the weight of all that gear if they had any serious armour, and brawls would be even more absurdly lethal if people were axefighting in the dining room.

Maybe you could have options: civilians carry arms/don't carry arms and civilians wear armour/don't wear armour.

I'd be very happy tho if they just including the tools they're using when assigned a uniform with own choice of weapon.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I think it would be nice to see this once civilian revolutions and in-fighting between political groups is a thing. Then it's not just a question of "how can I arm my civilians" but "do I really want to arm all the civilians, and to what extent".

Fortress wide gang warfare sounds like a lot of fun to watch though, so maybe just open up the weapons stockpiles to everyone.

[FantasticDorf]

On the plus-side, everyone is armed. On the negative side, by a.rming everyone means you have much less control over where weapons go once they are produced instead of sitting in little piles, much like clothes as people pick out their favorites, they can't be set aside for other important things like arming traps, decorations and melting because they don't degrade typically like clothes that a attached citizen wouldn't just relinquish their adamantine axe to dwarves who need it.

Being able to make a offensive civilian alert, that summons every armed citizen with pitchforks to defend a burrow based on equipment stored in their personal belongings would be pretty neat.

[Pillbo]

Maybe a solution could be to allow dwarves to forge daggers, and allow non-military dwarves to take them as part of their personal possessions. A knife is a tool almost any profession would use anyway, so it makes sense to have them strapped to most civilians. That way they can have a better defense and not need to take military grade weapons from the squads.

There could be a standing orders for this:

- Civilians can wear leather/metal/no armor
- Civilians can wield martial (swords, warhammers)/simple (daggers)/no weapons

Then the player can decide if they want their farmers to take a steel set of armor.

[FantasticDorf]

Maybe a solution could be to allow dwarves to forge daggers, and allow non-military dwarves to take them as part of their personal possessions. A knife is a tool almost any profession would use anyway, so it makes sense to have them strapped to most civilians. That way they can have a better defense and not need to take military grade weapons from the squads.

There could be a standing orders for this:

- Civilians can wear leather/metal/no armor
- Civilians can wield martial (swords, warhammers)/simple (daggers)/no weapons

Then the player can decide if they want their farmers to take a steel set of armor.

Simple can extend to things like common walking sticks though, jobtools or cooking equipment. [DOMESTIC] kind of weapon tag?

[Putnam]

Soldiers cannot (actively) be Miners, Woodcutters, or Ambushers, as these labors create an invisible "uniform" that interferes with the military uniform. Why?

I mean, because that was the easiest way to get it to work? It's obviously not good, but the "why" is obvious.

Civilian dwarves who happen to be attacked while carrying perfectly serviceable weapons (most notably picks & axes) will instead prefer to fight back with their bare hands. Why?

This actually isn't true at all? Not sure where it's coming from. Dwarves pick whatever attack is most likely to hit. You will find your militia dwarves often use their bare hands too.

[PetMudstone]

Interesting ideas. I do wish there was an option for an arena or public martial area of some sort just so that dwarves could handle associated needs by themselves. This is more from a general desire for dwarves to be more autonomous and reasonable over fulfilling needs in general but oh well.

I do especially like the idea of civilians taking weapons for personal use. Having them take normal weapons without special conditions might be a bit too much cuz of aforementioned concerns with that interfering with one's proper military and trap making. However, stuff like large daggers should be fine to for dwarves to take normally. A [DOMESTIC] tag for weapons may indeed be something that would be nice to have.

This also reminds me of Grimlocke's History & Realism Mods, which included various weapons for civilians to carry around in adventure mode like cudgels and daggers, though it had to define them as tools for them to be carried.

Anyhow this could add nice flavor where dwarves could take personal weapons for self-defense and-or enjoyment. Public martial spaces like arenas and whatnot could be places where dwarves could train or spar either to better protect themselves or just for fun.

[DuniteOlivine]

I agree with the suggestions and have been thinking about a similar thing recently. Here's a couple tweaks / add-ons I thought of:

2) In the barracks settings, add the ability to toggle civilian training and gear storing.
3) Quick squad, add the ability to paint over a group of Dwarves to automatically create a squad, mostly useful in emergencies.

[SixOfSpades]

As for the civilian uniforms for miners/woodcutters, if such uniforms exist, we should at least be able to modify them to for example... wear helmets. So that our woodcutters stop dying when trees hit them in their heads.

AFAIK, that's fixed now--the logs always fall directly away from the Woodcutter that felled the tree. It's the other dwarves unlucky enough to be in the area that might need helmets.

There should be something like an intention in combat. You may want to just disable an opponent instead of killing him.

Indeed. Possible intentions could be . . .
1) Kill, obviously
1a) Kill Special, on creatures (such as zombies) where the normal methods of killing do not always apply.
2) Incapacitate: Render an enemy incapable of fighting back, by any nonlethal method. Breaking all his limbs is perfectly acceptable if all you want is a goblin prisoner to interrogate.
3) Restrain: Incapacitate them by any non-harmful method, primarily with the Wrestler skill. Useful for arresting Justice suspects & tantruming/berserk dwarves. Might see if ropes/chains can be implemented as "weapons" in this context.
4) Touch: All of the "lightly tapping the target!" hits in sparring. Also possibly useful in duels: Unarmored combatants with edged weapons could use this as a "first blood" victory condition.
5) Dishonor: Slap to the face, kick to the buttocks, pulling their hair/beard, etc. Intended to cause pain & humiliation, either as a provocation to further combat or just to shame them in front of witnesses. Also useful as the mildest possible Hammerer punishment.
6) Assault: The current(?) unarmed combat action, but changed so that it terminates when one fighter either surrenders or is knocked unconscious.
7) Manslaughter: Same as Assault, but the attacker doesn't intend to stop until the opponent is dead. Very likely to trigger a Restrain response from witnesses.
8 ) Torture: Useful only if some kind of (public) flogging is implemented as a mid-tier Hammerer punishment.
9) Maim: Much the same as a current Hammering, but far less random. Which body part will be mangled/lost is determined in advance (and ideally proportionate to the crime), and hardly ever results in death.
10) Execution.

I must admit, my miners and woodcutters don't seem to have any trouble using the tools they're holding when assailed by the local cave crocs.

Dwarves pick whatever attack is most likely to hit. You will find your militia dwarves often use their bare hands too.

Curious--my understanding that civilian dwarves tend to ignore their weapons-in-hand comes from both the wiki ("Despite their effectiveness, however, a miner who is attacked when he's busy mining will not generally use his pick in combat, unless he is forced to") and my personal experience, in which I always seem to see my Legendary Miners prefer to lean on their Dabbling Striker skill when confronted by a cougar or magma crab.

Maybe you could have options: civilians carry arms/don't carry arms and civilians wear armour/don't wear armour.

On the negative side, by a.rming everyone means you have much less control over where weapons go once they are produced instead of sitting in little piles, much like clothes as people pick out their favorites, they can't be set aside for other important things like arming traps, decorations and melting . . .

Having them take normal weapons without special conditions might be a bit too much cuz of aforementioned concerns with that interfering with one's proper military and trap making.

Well, in the OP I did mention that "Players should be able to designate what armor items [types, materials, and quality levels] are free to be claimed by civilians, and which are reserved strictly for active-duty military", but to be fair, it was a longish post and I won't blame anyone for a bit of tl;dr. In my head, I'd planned this working as an additional stockpile tag: Just as Food stockpiles have a toggle that allows/excludes Prepared meals, and Animal stockpiles have one for empty cages, any Weapons and/or Armor stockpile could have one that allows/blocks civilians from claiming the contents of said stockpile. But I also like the suggestion of having it be an option in the Orders menu, that makes it more user-friendly. Just have all weapons & armor stockpiles default to allowing civilian use, and the Orders menu default to not allowing civilian use. That'd result in the same setup as the current game, and players can change it via the easy way (Orders) or the difficult way (Orders + stockpile micromanagement).

As for the Orders options, I personally would like to see . . .
Civilians wear: [no armor] [leather/bone/shell armor] [copper/bronze/iron armor] [steel armor]
Civilians carry: [no weapons] [domestic weapons] [copper/bronze/iron militia weapons] [steel militia weapons]
As a major source of cheap arms is likely to be goblinite, this would be a convenient way to toggle its use for civilians. It pretty much depends on whether or not the military already has access to steel.

[SixOfSpades]

A couple of other things I forgot to put in the OP.

1) Along with blurring civilians to be more like militia, I'd also like to see the inverse: Create a "Reserve" status, for dwarves who are currently in the militia (and wearing their full kit), but not yet on any active duty, and thus able to take a number of civilian jobs. They can't do delicate tasks (like Surgery) in their gauntlets, and they won't haul stones without a wheelbarrow ("You want me to lug around a weapon, a shield, all this armor, and this big-ass boulder? Piss off"), but they can certainly pasture stray livestock, fell trees, operate a pump or quern, recover wounded, etc.
A "Veteran" status would be similar, but allow more breadth of civilian tasks at the cost of wearing less equipment. They would be part of the militia, but not part of a squad: Their value is more in an instructive & advisory capacity. As the main reason to move a soldier to Veteran status would be because they'd suffered crippling wounds, there might (invisibly) be two types of Veteran: One who can/will perform jobs that require just the hands (Spinner, Wood burner, various Crafters, etc.), and one who does jobs that only use the legs (mainly Hauling). It would probably also be useful to allow individual dwarves to claim ownership of wheelbarrows.


2) I'd like to see weapon racks & armor stands used in individual bedrooms, not just in a barracks, or only for show in a noble's quarters. Of course, getting them to work at all takes priority, but once civilians start owning weapons/armor, it'd be nice to see them properly displayed when not in use.

[FantasticDorf]

Soldiers cannot (actively) be Miners, Woodcutters, or Ambushers, as these labors create an invisible "uniform" that interferes with the military uniform. Why?

I mean, because that was the easiest way to get it to work? It's obviously not good, but the "why" is obvious.

Civilian dwarves who happen to be attacked while carrying perfectly serviceable weapons (most notably picks & axes) will instead prefer to fight back with their bare hands. Why?

This actually isn't true at all? Not sure where it's coming from. Dwarves pick whatever attack is most likely to hit. You will find your militia dwarves often use their bare hands too.

For the same reason i find that a mixture of wrestling and weapon-skill works best, because sometimes dwarves require immobilization via a headlock (or just grasping onto a toe) before they can execute the most direct final attack, either by themselves or other dwarves on the squad landing the killing blow.

Miners are much less likely to use their hands though, because the core skill is imparted to the military ability too while wielding that weapon, which is a departure from woodcutters and axes who are still less accurate because woodcutting doesn't passively train axeman skill. I think its because of the new 'Ready' schedule in the squad menu that people would expect the work uniforms to be updated over (dwarves put on their armor but often put away their weapons without a task), as it doesn't stop current jobs, sort of 'looks' like a viable override but currently has the same problems as before of swapping back into the work uniform.

[ayy1337]

Soldiers cannot (actively) be Miners, Woodcutters, or Ambushers, as these labors create an invisible "uniform" that interferes with the military uniform. Why?

I mean, because that was the easiest way to get it to work? It's obviously not good, but the "why" is obvious.

Civilian dwarves who happen to be attacked while carrying perfectly serviceable weapons (most notably picks & axes) will instead prefer to fight back with their bare hands. Why?

This actually isn't true at all? Not sure where it's coming from. Dwarves pick whatever attack is most likely to hit. You will find your militia dwarves often use their bare hands too.

Easiest way to get it to work 12 years ago doesn't mean it makes sense that it's still like that :p

Not sure but maybe a simple fix would be to have it that a piece of equipment be assigned to multiple uniforms iff they're: for the same dwarf, and one of them is a woodcutter/miner uniform - and if this is the case the same weapon _should_ be chosen by default if it fits the material requirements of the uniform.
The invisible uniform should [ideally] be invisible in that it doesn't interfere with other core aspects of the game, not just hidden from sight. Logically it doesn't seem like a good situation to have a guy whose job it is to swing an axe not be able to be an axe dwarf when a violent animal shows up.

[se5a]

or allow the woodcutter uniform to be modified, and let it be in both the civ slot and the squad slot.