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[Hyndis]

Ah, but if they make friends while sparring: Tantrum spiral may occur taking down the entire military. Champions included.

I haven't had an issue with that. Sparring gives happy thoughts, and since they spar all the time they're extremely happy. DF companion gives numerical values for happiness, with 100 being content, 0 being miserable, and higher being ecstatic. My soldiers tended to be around 500 happiness, which for comparison the average ecstatic dwarf was 150-200ish.

[JoRo]

When I had dwarves with weapons crippling the newbs I put the veterans on patrol until the new guys gained some skill.

[Felix the Cat]

Wait. If I assign dwarfs to wear plate, will they put it on after picking up some chain and where it together? How does leather fit into all of this?

They wear things over things.

The order is something like (outermost to innermost):
Cloak/other such clothes -> Plate -> Chain -> Leather -> Shirt/other normal clothes.

Some things are "shaped" which means they are the only things that can occupy that body slot - for example, greaves are "shaped" IIRC and so the dwarf can't wear... leg warmers?

[the_taken]

Wait. If I assign dwarfs to wear plate, will they put it on after picking up some chain and where it together? How does leather fit into all of this?

They wear things over things.

The order is something like (outermost to innermost):
Cloak/other such clothes -> Plate -> Chain -> Leather -> Shirt/other normal clothes.

Some things are "shaped" which means they are the only things that can occupy that body slot - for example, greaves are "shaped" IIRC and so the dwarf can't wear... leg warmers?

So assigning all the steel chain mail to be melted was a dumb idea that has weakened my army?

[unobtaniumman]

So assigning all the steel chain mail to be melted was a dumb idea that has weakened my army?

Well, it probably saved you some steel... for other stuff...like weapons...

[Jamini]

If you give your military full plate a shields as soon as you draft them, sparring accidents are drastically reduced. In Quietshakes I have lost 0 dwarves to sparring accidents of any kind (although all three of my hammerdwarves  ended up with a broken leg for a season or two.) Remember, plate mail only covers the upper body, in order for full protection you need:

Helm ("This is a helmet! You wear it to protect your head from goblin spears!")
Plate Mail ("Like the bark of a tree, plate can be worn to ward goblins whips)
Chain Mail("Like the iron in your blood, chain mail can be worn under plate to stop goblin swords")
Gauntlets("Use this to catch goblin bolts so you can shoot them back at them!")
Greaves ("This is a cup. It menaces with spikes of

• . If you don't want to lose your chance to have children to a goblin axe you should wear them!")

Low Boots ("These are boots. Low, like you, they keep your ankles safe from hammers and maces.")
Shield ("Wear this and learn to use it well, for some day I will throw you out on the field before me to catch arrows. Failure to do so will result in your spleen, left eye, liver, pancreas, heart, and left lung getting punctured in a single shot.)

greaves are actually shin armour. Which raises the question as to whats up with having high boots and greaves at the same time..

Greaves cover the upper thigh to just past the knee (I have a friend who owns a pair of real  hardened leather armor, which includes greaves. As an aside: hardened leather is *very* heavy and surprisingly resistant to any form of damage when properly manufactured.)

Also, In my recent vanilla fort I've been unable to make metallic high boots (although I can make leather ones with ease). Thus, I mention low boots. Either way, greaves should be able to cover the upper leg with comparative ease, covering up the difficultties of not being able to make steel high boots. :/

[shackleton]

Surely an adamantine codpiece is what's needed to preserve the future of Dwarven civilization?

We should really mod in reproductive organs. Adventure mode would be hillarious:

You bash the cougar.
The cougar is neutered!
The cougar succumbs to pain!

[Hyndis]

A good way to actually segregate your barracks, so soldiers won't spar in their sleeping quarters is the creative use of barrack sizes.

Create a barracks from an armor stand or weapon rack. This will be where your soldiers will spar, so make it a reasonable size, such as 10x10 or something. Plenty of room.

Then for all of the beds, designate every single bed to be a barracks. But make the size of the barracks to be 1x1. Thus, every bed is its own barracks, just big enough to sleep on but not big enough to spar on, so dwarves won't attempt to spar where other dwarves are sleeping, and you can even make nice and neat rows of beds for a proper barracks with the exercise grounds separate, and preferably indoors so the blood spatter gets cleaned.

[Tormy]

Wait. If I assign dwarfs to wear plate, will they put it on after picking up some chain and where it together? How does leather fit into all of this?

They wear things over things.

The order is something like (outermost to innermost):
Cloak/other such clothes -> Plate -> Chain -> Leather -> Shirt/other normal clothes.

You know since DF has been released I was always wondering..it offers more protection if a Dwarf wears leather + chain + plate compared to Dwarf who wears plate only? It should offer more protection, but is it actually making a dwarf harder to kill?

[Stromko]

They won't wear leather armor with chain and plate (I can't recall if they will wear leather and chain together, I know I've tested it and I'm thinking maybe not, maybe so, can't remember).

I'm pretty sure that layering armor really does help though, I always build chainmail with every suit of platemail I manufacture, and dwarves dutifully equip both items without fail. Greaves and leggings are mutually exclusive however, they will wear one or the other not both. Metal greaves will only be taken by those assigned to wear Plate, but I believe they consider bone and shell greaves to be chain as far as equipment considerations go-- makes sense because bone and shell are also half the weight, half the effectiveness (but quite nice if you have a legendary bonecarver!). Leather, bone, shell, and most other non-metallic materials will have half the weight and effectiveness last I heard, but count as one 'level' lower (plate --> chain --> leather).

[Rotinaj]

I've had an axelord kill a champ in full addy plate. 

[sneakey pete]

Its worth remembering that, yes, while leather is 50% as good as stopping things as iron is, a leather amour itself is actually less effective again.
Its like the chain vs plate: plate offers more protection when made out of the same material and the same quality. So, leather torso amour is probably only 33% as effective as iron plate.

[sphr]

just to add in something from an experiment I carried out lately.

a good shield can sometimes be more effective than armor.  I've tested this with sparring new recruits, one of them with a masterwork shield.  Tracking their skill changes (Dwarf Companion), I noticed that the dwarf with the shield seems to get injuries less and that the shield skill is much higher than the rest... but on the other hand, the armor user skill is very low.  That could translate to the shield being more effective at deflecting incoming attacks before they even hit the armor.  A successful shield block prevents any injury at all, while armor only reduces the damage.  It could be questionable which is better : get hit less often but potentially less damage reduction,  or get hit more often with better damage reduction.  but from observations in my fort, good shields seems more effective at least for new recruits.

Extending upon this, I would guess that once I get adamantine and starting issuing masterwork adamantine shields to new recruits + some normal platemail,  it may be effective.  But on the other hand, if I had normal shields with masterwork adamantine platemail instead, it could be that even if the dwarf gets hit directly often, the damage can be totally absorbed? Will need some actual adamantine to test out though.

But the shortcoming of slower training of armor user skill is also there.   I believe the skill affects how fast the dwarves can move in heavy armor?  Perhaps there should be some new experimental training programs that forgo shields to make dwarves train up armor user skill, with lousy weapons and good armor that is...

[Tormy]

just to add in something from an experiment I carried out lately.

a good shield can sometimes be more effective than armor.

Yes, shields are extremely useful in combat.

I'm pretty sure that layering armor really does help though

Okay I wasnt sure about this actually, and its like impossible to test it really, since combat tends to be very random. Even 1 lucky hit can be deadly, regardless of what armors the creature has...