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[Seconis]

My only problem with the military system, besides the intermittent equipment issue, is that my dwarves rarely get around to actually training if they are ordered to train.  They simply sit around for 3 months -- my general allotted time for any one particular order -- waiting for the captain to organize a demonstration and then never actually train.  Due to this, I'm left with giving them no orders when I actually want them to train and this gives me mixed results at best with some dwarves training the entire time and some dwarves not training at all. 

The way that I view it, the military system is broken in a few ways AND people are generally only dabbling users of the new military system.

[Gus Smedstad]

I've gotten the hang of it.  It's incredibly buggy, but I rarely have serious problems with my axedwarf squads.  Yes, they wear weird stuff, like multiple steel mail shirts, and often they've got two battle axes and a shield in each hand, but they're effective.  They do pick up backpacks and flasks if I provide enough of them.  In general, given how often they pick up multiple copies of things, I make a point of having redundant equipment, and not stocking stuff I don't want them to use, like silver axes or copper mail.

Yes, sometimes dwarves will run back into the fortress unexpectedly while on duty.  Every time I've checked this, it's because they wanted a new piece of gear.  Why they waited for the goblins to invade to pick it up, I'll never know.  It's possible that the "station" order, rather than "training" or "inactive," is what triggers this.

Since training doesn't work as intended, I usually give standing orders of "1 dwarf must train."  This has little visible difference from completely inactive, 90% of the time the squad dwarves are in their barracks, doing individual combat drill.  This produces Legendary axedwarves in a reasonable amount of time. 

I don't try and get military dwarves to do anything else.  I pretty much assume that no matter what their labor setting are, they'll spend any off-duty time doing individual combat drill.  If they stick to some civilian jobs, fine, but I don't plan on it.

What completely doesn't work is marksdwarves.  The axedwarves pick everything up, but no matter how much ammunition I assign to them, the marksdwarves refuse to pick it up and use it.  They won't do anything but individual melee drill, and they won't shoot if the goblins show up.  I've given up trying.

 - Gus

[Mr. GOH!]

The biggest bugs I've encountered involve training and equipment. If I set a squad to active training, they get stuck in weird endless loops of almost, but not quite, training in organized sessions. What usually happens is Urist McDodger, for example, ostensibly organizes dodging training. But everyone in the squad just waits around for the demonstration to begin, including Urist McDodger. This sometimes means a portion of the squad even ignore my orders to move to a location or kill a monster. Further, active mode squads seem to not fully equip their assigned uniforms, missing pieces of armor or using weapons of the wrong material.

So I generally set my squads to inactive, hoping that individual training will be enough. The dwarves generally wear the uniforms assigned. But when I give a move or kill order, about half the squad decides to switch out their arms and armor and heads to the armor stockpile before finally obeying my orders. Even when not ordered to do anything, they'll switch equipment every so often for no reason. At first I thought it was to switch out their current equipment for higher-quality equipment. But they switch equipment even if I haven't been producing any new weapons or armor.  I think I'm just going to start assigning them specific weapons and armors and just be done with it.

[Vercingetorix]

It seems to be working better in .04, but I'm not sure if it's just a situation where the system happens to be working well or if it's actually a fix. 

[Vulkan]

My militia commander would randomly switch out her steel battle axe for a bronze, copper or iron one.

 

[kmob]

(from a 31.03 standpoint)

Besides the standard equipment (especially anyone with ranged weapons) and training issues, I find it a pain in the ass that dead dwarfs don't get removed from the squad listings (in the "m" screens). Coupled with having to pretty much have the military all set to inactive (to get individual training) and so reverting back to their civilian occupations etc it is overly difficult to work out who is actually in military squads.

That said I do really like the potential of the new system despite it's current problems. The flexibility that will be provided when it's eventually working will be very much welcome.

Lastly as a bit of a personal aside, I'd like it if there wasn't such a clear "winner" (axes) in terms of weapons. I'd like some variety in my squads for flavour purposes

[Neyvn]

Oddly enough while watching a Training session on Therapist, I noticed that even if the Lesson doesn't start, or the trainer pops off to get a drink or nap, they continue to gain exp into the skill, but not all that well...

[tastypaste]

There are fixes to all these problems. I've had a working military in all my forts.

Firstly, make sure your squads are assigned to carry their weapons and armor with them all the time (this is on by default but it's possible it could have been change accidentally). Second, do not use the Schedule option for your dwarfs that's broken. Instead just leave them on Inactive (default) and they will train individually. Third, make sure you have a barracks and use the [t] command from [q]uery to set each squad to train there, if they have no assigned barracks they won't train at all. Fourth, sometimes the arsenal dwarf position doesn't show up in the nobles screen until after you've appointed a sheriff. Make sure all noble positions are assigned and by the next season you should have an open arsenal dwarf position which you can fill (this bug is random, sometimes it happens sometimes it doesn't but the sheriff trick works every time in my experience). And as always, make sure the arsenal dwarf has an office or he won't do his job.

This system kind of counter-intuitive if you don't know about it already. But once you learn the system, it works well enough. Some of the features do not work or are very buggy such as the group training and schedules.

One final bug that I've noticed is that sometimes if you give a kill order, the squad will leave and go back to training. If that happens, it's better to give them a move command and position them near the bad guys you want dead. They'll spot the baddies on their own and kill them.

[hjd_uk]

I've only used 2010 so far and ive also had issues with the military.

The 1st is that sometimes the Dwarfs just wont equip themselves. I understand that an Arsenal Dwarf is needed to handle equipment properly but really an Arsenal dwarf should be used to manage what material and quality equipment the squad has, having a disorganised (non arsenal dwarf) fort should mean that each squad member just goes off to find any old thing wether that be an oak-sword or an adamantine artifact battle-axe. In other worlds the Arsenal dwarf ought to give you more options in the equipment screen ( Weapon-Material / Specific-Weapon etc) instead of being 100% necessary to get stuff done.

When setting a squad to schedule "inactive" sessions they should either go back to their normal jobs or ther should be another option for such. Train, Rest and Off-Duty. Off-Duty dwarfs should act as civillians and go back to other jobs.

My army dwarfs die, a lot, even Master / legendary ones. That im willing to concede to bugs / balance problems. But still anooying when a single captured gob can escape a "pit-ing" and kill my whole millitary single-handed.

Ive had the equipment bug too, a Legendary Dwarf just literally sat in a stockpile dropping off and picking up equipment, occasionally going back to the barracks just start off to get equpiment gain.

Not sure if its a bug but i've had dwarfs that were in the millitary but disbanded, but never did anything else ever gain, just did individual training, never did Civvy jobs again. I was quite annoyed when my Legendary Metalsmith spent eternity in the barracks training rhater than making anything.

Alerts - Confusing as hell. In order to get dwarfs to actually go inside you must 1st define a burrow, which as you need to paint the tiles can take some time and will be outdated when yo make extensions. We need a 'default' burrow which just grows itself as you dig (excluding found caverns ofc). meaning your Home burrow would only need adjust to exclude internal drawbridges etc. The UI could do with work as well.

A whinge but im now addicted to DF, got a fort at work that i play during lunchtimes and a home one too. also working on a homebrew 3d map visualiser - not a memory hacking one but one that reads the maps from the MapArchive.

[Ivar360]

I have really only encountered the "not picking up equipment bug" once so far.
I seem to have a working military as long as I keep it simple. So my dorfs are always training, not using training weapons, I assign them all metal armor wheter I have it or not, they usually pick the good stuff on their own.

I set them all to use battle axes, and they pick those up when I make them. Only problem is they tend to pick up 2 steel axes instead of just one.

I stay away from all other options and weapons, certainly no crossbows, and I use them only when my traps fail or to murder animals/stragglers.

Oh, and use the (m)ove order, not the (k)ill order to get stuff done.

[tastypaste]

Keep in mind too that an unarmored dwarf in 2010 is a dead dwarf. Armor is essential and the material used is everything. Soft metal armors can be cut like paper by weapons of a tougher metal. There are some great threads around here about research into metals and how they affect the different kinds of weapons and armors. Everyone needs to read it to understand the system and make sure they're using the right materials.

[Rex_Nex]

If its not steel/bronze, at the bare minimum, don't use it. There is some small balance issues that need to be deal with (Such as iron. While I agree it isnt as strong as bronze, it shouldn't be useless.) so you need to be careful when equipping your military. Dont use iron, unless your forced to. CYAN metal is a very good armor, and a pretty good weapon  (Save for hammers), but your better off with a bronze/steel weapon (You'll be using up a lot of it if you use it to fully equip your dwarves.). Copper is pretty useless, and Silver only makes good hammers.

[Rotten]

If its not steel/bronze, at the bare minimum, don't use it. There is some small balance issues that need to be deal with (Such as iron. While I agree it isnt as strong as bronze, it shouldn't be useless.) so you need to be careful when equipping your military. Dont use iron, unless your forced to. CYAN metal is a very good armor, and a pretty good weapon  (Save for hammers), but your better off with a bronze/steel weapon (You'll be using up a lot of it if you use it to fully equip your dwarves.). Copper is pretty useless, and Silver only makes good hammers.

Iron isn't useless. High master axedwarf, in masterpiece (I love immigrant metal smiths) chain armor, helm, high boots, gauntlets and a masterpiece iron axe ran into a group of 10 trolls and 4 various goblins armored goblins and killed them without a scratch.
The 20 goblins riding Giant Toads was to much though. Eventually a badass human swordsman in liege with my 2 similarly equipped talented axedwarves killed off most of the siege by himself before the human dodged off the dam and into the brook and drowned.

The map was coated with red and cyan (trolls and toads have weird blood).

[mnjiman]

The system wouldn't be as complex if you didn't have to attempt to compensate for the amount of bugs that is included with the military at the moment.

At the moment you basically have to have your dwarfs off duty to have them to train, and sometimes they will not attack your kill target so you have to MOVE them and station them into position. You also have to limit the amount of times you change there gear.. or else they may OR may not start putting on several weapons at a time.
There is alot of THEY MAY or MAY NOTS occurring because of the bugs.

It isnt because people are using the bugs as a excuse not to like the new system, people are legitimately having issues dealing with the new system which happen to have bugs.

[Rex_Nex]

Almost anything in masterpiece armor is really good. Masterpiece give 2(3?)x the def value of the same armor in normal. Iron is really shitty, really.