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[celem]

I have a couple of questions regarding the military.
1) If I assign a training weapon and a "real" weapon to a dwarf, will he change automatically between training weapon and real weapon depending on whether he's training or attacking someone? Or will he pick either/or and then try to kill a forgotten beast with a wooden sword? Is it actually neccessary to use training weapons at all?

2) Atm my military is wearing a hotchpotch of leather, bone, and metal armor pieces on top of their normal clothing. I want to change to metal armor with some leather clothing underneath. Do I have to set them to no uniform first, then assign the leather clothing, and finally the metal armor, or is it sufficient if I just made a new uniform and set all my military to wear it?

1) training weapons are weapons exactly like everything else.  They just really really suck.  Dont bother with giving them to dwarves, theirs no need nowadays
2) The last one   Just define the uniform and assign, they'll do the legwork.

[Farmerbob]

Hey, probably asked before, but I have a slight issue with a fey mood. He's demanding leather and a whole bundle of cut gems, I've got a ton sitting around but he's not even going for them? Is this just an act of dwarven stupidity? Any way I can get him to not go berserk?

Watch the shop for at least 30 seconds and make sure he doesn't ask for something else.  Each "want" is onscreen for a certain amount of time.  If he has a whole lot of leather and cut gem wants, you might not see the other stuff unless you watch the shop for a while.

[AcESCAR]

I have a couple of questions regarding the military.
1) If I assign a training weapon and a "real" weapon to a dwarf, will he change automatically between training weapon and real weapon depending on whether he's training or attacking someone? Or will he pick either/or and then try to kill a forgotten beast with a wooden sword? Is it actually neccessary to use training weapons at all?

2) Atm my military is wearing a hotchpotch of leather, bone, and metal armor pieces on top of their normal clothing. I want to change to metal armor with some leather clothing underneath. Do I have to set them to no uniform first, then assign the leather clothing, and finally the metal armor, or is it sufficient if I just made a new uniform and set all my military to wear it?

1) training weapons are weapons exactly like everything else.  They just really really suck.  Dont bother with giving them to dwarves, theirs no need nowadays
2) The last one   Just define the uniform and assign, they'll do the legwork.

Do note though that training axe, can actually be use to chop trees

[JLT]

I have a couple of questions regarding the military.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1) If I assign a training weapon and a "real" weapon to a dwarf, will he change automatically between training weapon and real weapon depending on whether he's training or attacking someone? Or will he pick either/or and then try to kill a forgotten beast with a wooden sword? Is it actually neccessary to use training weapons at all?

2) Atm my military is wearing a hotchpotch of leather, bone, and metal armor pieces on top of their normal clothing. I want to change to metal armor with some leather clothing underneath. Do I have to set them to no uniform first, then assign the leather clothing, and finally the metal armor, or is it sufficient if I just made a new uniform and set all my military to wear it?

1) Actually, I'm not sure, but that said training accidents are nothing like they were in the past- you can assign them fully lethal weaponry with practically zero chance of injury (I myself have not yet seen it, despite relying on military training.) The bonus is that you don't have to worry about them hanging around in the armory getting their "real" weapons when you put them on alert.

2) As I recall (don't have a game open in front of me) the default uniform reads something like "metal chest, metal legwear, metal handwear etc." Your dwarves will attempt to equip one piece of metal armor for each body part- if they cannot find metal, they will wear leather/bone until some metal becomes available. So based on what you've said thus far, you'll need more metal armor to fully equip everyone.

Depending on how well you want to learn the military screen, there are two ways to go about this. Let's assume you just want to make them wear a breastplate over a leather vest right now- you can modify the default uniform in 3 steps. 1) Remove "Metal Chest." 2) Add a Breastplate and a Vest. 3) Using "M" for material, change the material on Breastplate to "Metal" and the material on Vest to "Leather." You can be more specific if you want (Steel instead of Metal, for instance) but since dwarves will automatically upgrade to better armor as it becomes available you don't really have to worry about it.

The more in-depth way to go about it would be to create a whole new uniform- I recommend this because if you screw up you still have the default uniforms as a fallback. Add the items you want your dwarves to wear the same way you did in the first part. You can find information about each piece of armor here, and information about layering here, although it is probably easier to start reading here. Note that these are all the same article, I'm just highlighting different sections. That last link in particular has a min/max'd uniform ready to go.

1) If you assign both, they'll probably pick up both and use one or the other randomly. If you have access to real weapons use those, training weapons have few uses that normal weapons don't have.

2) You can make a uniform and assign it. Your militia will drop any armor not part of the new uniform. Make sure to assign materials.

Thank you both for your answers.
I still have a question, tho. From what I've read here and at the magmawiki, there's a problem with getting the dwarves to put on a new uniform in the right order:

Items in Dwarf Fortress must be equipped in a specific order. A dwarf must equip a layer type of Under before he equips a layer of type Over, for example. The complete order goes: Under, Armor, Over, Cover. It is common among civilians to see a dwarf equip pants with no undergarments due to this restriction, even when an undergarment is available. This is typically not an issue with soldiers, however. [...]
In order to equip a new item, the dwarf (or other creature) ...
must start with the lowest layer first, continuing to the next layer when no other items of that layer need to be equipped

So, how do I go about this? My dwarves are already wearing some metal armor, but I want to change the Under layer as well. If I understand it correctly, if they're already wearing e.g. metal gauntlets (armor layer) they won't put on leather gloves (under layer) even if I assigned a new uniform that includes leather gloves.

[AutomataKittay]

Thank you both for your answers.
I still have a question, tho. From what I've read here and at the magmawiki, there's a problem with getting the dwarves to put on a new uniform in the right order:

Items in Dwarf Fortress must be equipped in a specific order. A dwarf must equip a layer type of Under before he equips a layer of type Over, for example. The complete order goes: Under, Armor, Over, Cover. It is common among civilians to see a dwarf equip pants with no undergarments due to this restriction, even when an undergarment is available. This is typically not an issue with soldiers, however. [...]
In order to equip a new item, the dwarf (or other creature) ...
must start with the lowest layer first, continuing to the next layer when no other items of that layer need to be equipped

So, how do I go about this? My dwarves are already wearing some metal armor, but I want to change the Under layer as well. If I understand it correctly, if they're already wearing e.g. metal gauntlets (armor layer) they won't put on leather gloves (under layer) even if I assigned a new uniform that includes leather gloves.

Set the uniform to replace clothing will force them to try to layer it the best they can, though it can take a bit for them to swap around and figure it out. You'll have to re-assign the uniform if you change it.

[jamesadelong]

Hate to bother again, but for the purposes of the building destroyer tags. Is a bridge counted as a building? In that, can I build a temporary wall out of a bridge?

[Farmerbob]

Hate to bother again, but for the purposes of the building destroyer tags. Is a bridge counted as a building? In that, can I build a temporary wall out of a bridge?

A temporary wall?  It's much faster to build a temporary wall out of a wall

Just use the d -> n command to have the dwarves destroy the wall when you no longer need it.

I am not sure about building destroyers and bridges - They used to destroy bridges, but I've heard some folks saying they no longer do.  I have not personalyl seen a bridge destroyed by a building destroyer recently.

[jamesadelong]

Well, tell you what. I've just been sieged by a variety of building destroyers, cyclops, ettin, giants... that sort of thing. I'll tell you in a bit after they arrive at my silo-styled door.

[JLT]

Set the uniform to replace clothing will force them to try to layer it the best they can, though it can take a bit for them to swap around and figure it out. You'll have to re-assign the uniform if you change it.

Thanks for the quick answer!

[jamesadelong]

I can say, no, building destroyers cannot destroy bridges. Also, fire is the greatest siege ender ever. _{Next to magma.}

[Farmerbob]

I can say, no, building destroyers cannot destroy bridges. Also, fire is the greatest siege ender ever. _{Next to magma.}

Hrm how are you generating fire without magma?  Doable in Vanilla?  Or did you mod in a dungeon master and tame a dragon? 

[jamesadelong]

No, I'm using the fortress defense mod. On of the challenge civs is a group of evil winter creatures, ettins, cyclops, ice giants. One of them has the ability to shoot small balls of fire. Of course, when they rocked up on the map, I was busy sorting out my stockpiles so I had a small pile of booze barrels. I hadn't taken this into consideration when I charged out of the silo doors of my fortress with a group of low level dorfs led by a champion to act as a distraction long enough to get the doors sealed. Once the two groups had met head-on, the dorfs were crushed and thrown around the map with my champion holding his ground. That was when I had the doors sealed and directed my champion into the small set of caves I had dug out in the early days to defend my food stores against buzzards. As he was leaving, a well aimed fireball struck him, he ran into the barrels, the barrels detonated into a ring of fire and then that ignited the surrounding forest. The remaining creatures sat around destroying the embark workshops and my wagon, a couple hovered around the, now sealed, doors but none attacked it. So with that I now have a brand new trap to design and build, alcohol IEDs.

[Khris]

How do I assign items like thread and soap to a hospital so that they get shown in the hospital screen?

[AutomataKittay]

How do I assign items like thread and soap to a hospital so that they get shown in the hospital screen?

Check the zone, {H} is what you want to look at once hospital zone's been set. Then you want coffers to be within the zone to store the materials. If there're not enough space, the stuff won't get stored. (Be warned, they'll overstuff them the first time  )

[AcESCAR]

Does better bolts means that I can go through some enemy armor ?

I.E using Steel bolts will pierce through enemy using copper armor or something like that ?