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[Grendus]

Whenever I go into my stocks->armor menu, it lists every piece of clothing my entire fortress has as well as the precious suits of armor I need for my military. Is there any way to make it show only armor that might actually protect someone, or do I have to manually search my stockpiles?

Also, while I'm on the subject, in my new fortress I dug into three massive veins of Malachite, but have yet to strike any other metals. In the absence of being able to smelt it into bronze or other decent metals, should I got ahead and make copper chain, plate, and other armors or save it/use it for crafts.

[Stargrasper]

As my computer isn't functioning at the moment, you're on your own for the first question for the time being.

The second question, I would recommend using it for military purposes for the first year or so.  Early on, it won't matter all that much.  In the second or third year, the attacks should start getting intense enough that you want steel.  Remember, you can always import metals, ores, and weapons/armor directly.  Barring that, if you have a flux material on hand, goblins are a handy(if limited) supply of iron.

[Derakon]

Copper's a hell of a lot better than nothing. Go ahead and make armor from it. If nothing else you'll be skilling up your armorer.

Contrary to what Stargrasper says, I don't think you need steel. It's nice to have, but iron is entirely adequate for protection, especially when combined with legendary wrestler/shield user. Of course, if you can make steel, you may as well.

[loopoo]

What I do is go to the armor menu and press Tab. It opens up the list more. You probably know this. Still, you have to sift through it all and forbid all the useless junk or melt it and only let em take what you want.

I'm dreading having to change all my guys from Iron to Steel :x

But, like Derakon said, Iron is amazing eitherway. Made into Steel it's awesome, but I had one hammerdwarf, who is legendary in Shield User and Wrestler (Competent or Expert hammerdwarf, not sure) go against a 12-14 member squad of Goblins, and he came out unscathed.

[Stargrasper]

Yeah, the guys are right, iron will serve your purposes just fine(and the goblins will provide you with a lot of it), but steel is a bit better, by about a third, according to the wiki.  Not necessary, yes, but if you're capable of making it, you may as well.  It's that tiny bit better(which nearly never makes a difference in the game) and it's the strongest thing next to adamantine.

So yes, use your copper until you have enough iron and then either start using the iron or turn to to steel and use that.

[loopoo]

If you have only a small amount to make Steel, make Steel weapons. Don't use some shitty weaponsmith, use your Legendary / next best one to make it.

[Albedo]

Weapons are important.  Not bolts so much, those can be iron just fine.  But you want to prevent enemies from trading blows - take them down, now.

Once you have "enough", then steel Plate Armor and Helmets for as many as possible, to avoid non-healing spinal/brain injuries. (when I say "Plate Armor", I mean the single breastplate piece.)

5 steel = 1 soldier w/ weapon, breastplate & helmet (plus everything else iron). 

[loopoo]

Albedo, I love you. Your tips are always useful, and you always go in-depth, not just some brisque, "brush over" explanation. That even helped me. I would usually kit em out in full steel, but your way is much easier and still amazingly protective.

PS I don't actually love you.

By the way, I found this out today. Laugh all you want but I just found it out :x

You can make armor stockpiles only have stuff that are usable. Just press q, go over the armor stockpile / weapon stockpile, and press u or j. It'll make it usable items only, or unusable items only.

I have a usable stockpile right near my barracks, and an unusable stockpile right near my smelters

You could section it out even more after that, cause usually you get more shields than anything else, so you could make your own shield stockpile, then chain / greaves / gauntlet stockpile. That way you can easily k over them and see what's what.

[AtomicPaperclip]

I would just stick to marksdwarves with copper bolts until you gather enough goblin corpses to make yourself some iron armor.

[loopoo]

I had to use Wooden bolts for the first siege of Orcs. Unluckily, they had Elite Marksorcs, but luckily, my tower is 4 z levels high, 5th z level is the roof. Most of their projectiles didn't even reach my Marksdwarves, that, or they didn't even target em. Was fun

EDIT: Thing I hate about Marksdwarves is they go trigger happy and spray bullets like crazy. I'd rather them shoot half the speed, but aim well, rather than go through my iron bolts like psychos and deplete em in one siege. 5 Squads of Orcs. Marksdwarves go through about 250 iron bolts, and that wipes out about 3 of the squads, wounding them here and there, and the last 2 squads are wounded badly.

[Jurph]

Protip: when traders are at the depot, you can use the search function to find all of the Narrow Iron items that haven't been gathered up yet, and designate them for melting/dumping/forbidding from within the Move Items to Trade Depot screen.  I long for the day that this feature will be available in the (Z) Stocks menu!

You can make armor stockpiles only have stuff that are usable. Just press q, go over the armor stockpile / weapon stockpile, and press u or j. It'll make it usable items only, or unusable items only.

You can even do things more granular than that.  I typically like to have the following piles customized for separating Goblinite from useful armor.

Bins as Currency (these piles go near the Depot)
Because these piles end up with a pretty predictable mix of items, you can count the bins in each pile to get a guesstimate of how much you can afford to buy from the caravan.
* Unusable silk armor and silk finished goods ($4k - $10k per bin depending on GCS frequency)
* Unusable leather armor and leather finished goods (about $100 - $300 per bin)
* No-modifier wearable leather armor (about $200 - $500 per bin, higher if you've been importing fancy leather)
* High-modifier unusable any-metal armor (rare drops from goblin bosses, usually no more than $2k sitting around at a time)

Goblinite Ore (near smelters)
* No-modifier unusable any-metal armor, metal weapons, except for whips, scourges and metal shields

When a Problem Comes Along...
* Iron whips and scourges
(I use captured whips in my "safety" weapon traps behind my main entrance.  I prefer them for the gore damage - goblins wracked with pain are easy pickins for even the most inept recently-drafted cheesemaker)

The Delicious Steely Fruits of Dwarven Labor
* Low- and medium-modifier wearable leather armor (near Dining Hall, for emergency militia drafting)
* High modifier wearable leather armor (near Barracks)
* High modifier wearable copper or iron armor (near Barracks)
* Masterwork wearable armor, leather or metal (in a separate lockable "dressing room" near Barracks)
* Masterwork and Artifact Weapons (in a different, separate lockable room near Barracks)

[loopoo]

*Words*

Awesome. I didn't know about that protip you gave, seriously, thanks. Gonna use it everytime from now on, I hate manually designating it all in the Stocks screen.

Also, damn. You're one the nicest guys i've met on here. You came across really nice, and shared your knowledge, rather than thrust it upon us or make fun of anyone else

Also, good job joining the Army. Well done

[Grendus]

Usually I have the good fortune to get a legendary woodcrafter well before the first siege, so I end up with masterwork wooden arrows - I've seen even average marksdwarves reliably kill goblins with a single steel-quality wooden arrow.

I still couldn't get an answer on my first question though. Is there a way in the stocks menu (that is, when you hit 'z' and tab over to stocks and go down to armor) to make it ignore clothing and just show military-grade armor?

[loopoo]

No, at least, not yet you can't.

[Jurph]

I still couldn't get an answer on my first question though. Is there a way in the stocks menu (that is, when you hit 'z' and tab over to stocks and go down to armor) to make it ignore clothing and just show military-grade armor?

I think the best you can do is to (D)ump or (F)orbid or (M)elt all of the armor you're interested in under a given category, and then when you expand the category it will all be piled up at the bottom of the list in red or purple.  Of course you need to un(D)ump, un(F)orbid, or un(M)elt when you're done, which still requires the painstaking item-by-item scrolling.  I guess if you don't mind naked dwarves you could (D)ump all the non-armor clothes and leave them dumped...

Also, good job joining the Army. Well done

*cough* Air Force *cough*  But thanks, it was a fantastic six-year stretch.  They paid for college and taught me how to polish boots and how to be a rocket scientist.