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[Rollory]

So I hear that .12 has pretty much all the major bugs fixed, and start a fort.  My starting 7 is all miners with a smattering of other skills and some copper bars and logs.  I forge my extra picks and start in digging.  Ok.  So far so good.

A kobold shows up and tries to run off with a rough gemstone.  I create a squad, stick all my miners in it, give them a uniform with a weapon setting of "picks (foreign)" (the only "picks" option available) and give them a kill order.  They switch to mildwarf mode and go tear him apart.  Ok.  So far so good.

The kobold being dead, I cancel the kill option and expect them to go back to their digging.  They all drop their picks and stand around with their thumbs up their asses.  I laboriously go through de-activating and re-activating Mining on each one.  Some of them pick up picks and do a little digging, others don't.  I set a weapon stockpile so as to at least get the picks that haven't been picked up gathered in one place.  All but two of the ones with picks promptly go drop the ones they were carrying in the stockpile instead of digging, and then stand around with their thumbs up their asses again.

Toady ... what?

Is this some sort of hard scenario to imagine or test for - that miners might use their picks in an emergency fight and then go back to mining properly?  What did I as a player not do that you as a programmer were expecting me to?  What is the path that I should be taking that doesn't leave the dwarves with their brains fried?

[Kravick]

Its funny someone posted this.  I have the exact same problem only I was trying to do something else.  I put all my miners in a squad of their own and set their equipment to leather armor, except I told them to equip a specific weapon (steel pick).  I was simply trying to get my miners to equip leather armor (in my current fort they're the most valuable workers).  I couldn't even get them to do that despite having a fully functional military thats training constantly in layered full steel armor and training weapons.  The miners refused to switch out their copper picks for steel ones and refused to equip their leather armor despite both sitting there in the stockpile waiting for use.  I tried dumping the copper picks so they'd go and get the steel ones.  Now they won't pick up any pick.

I finally said screw it and disbanded the squad they were in and figured they'd be fine as is so long as I have my military on standby when my miners are above ground.  Now they refuse to do anything.  They won't even pick up their old copper picks (I reclaimed them).  So now I have 2 legendary miners who refuse to mine.  Yes, both of their jobs are turned on.  I did was the OP above said as well.  Turned off their job, waited a bit, and turned it back on.  Miners won't do diddly squat.  They just stand there with "No job" next to their names.

[Vercingetorix]

Sometimes they do; I've had giant cave spiders and the like done in by miners in the past.  However, it seems to only happen if they're boxed in and forced to fight rather than ever doing so on their own...even a legendary miner who could demolish anything with his pick took off when encountering a particularly fierce raccoon.

[martinuzz]

What you could still try to get your miners to work, is put em in a squad with some peasant civvies (make a squad of about 6). Make sure, the miners are not in the squad leader position.

Then, set their alert to training, and edit their schedule, so that the order says: train, minimum 1. Only 1 soldier will go and train at any time, with a high chance of that being one of the peasants, and not your miner.
All soldiers who are not training should pick up their civ duties.

However, you might still be left with the problem of them not using their picks. I remember setting their weapon to picks (foreign).
What happened, I think, was that they had the pick in their inventory listed as (multigrasp), meaning they use it as a 2-handed weapon.
I think the problem lies there; possibly the mining job cannot be executed with a pick held as (multigrasp), instead of in one hand.
equipping your miners with shields, and after that, with the picks might force it into one hand, haven't tried that.

Personally, I gave up on using woodcutters and miners as emergency military, until it is fixed properly.

[KojaK]

Have you tried setting the weapon as 'individual choice, melee'? Since they have mining experience, in theory, their choice -should- be the pick they're holding.

On the other hand... I've had my dwarves train with axes for two years, and not get past dabbling in ANYTHING. ( I set their schedule to 'active/training' and change the train order for one or two less dwarves than the squad has)

[Rollory]

Followup to this.  Having finally decided that the miners were fucked, I reloaded from an earlier seasonal autosave and avoided the situation entirely.  Later, I had some other trouble, so I took a couple woodcutters, stuck them in a squad with no uniform, gave them a weapon preference of battleaxes, and give them a kill order.

They immediately drop their axes.

After fuming a bit, I reload from a savegame again.  This time I try a default uniform with the "individual choice" weapon, with the woodcutters.  They kill the thing.  Then one drops an axe, and the other doesn't.  They both still have woodcutting enabled.  The guy who dropped his axe, if I turn _off_ woodcutting, he picks it up.  As soon as I reactivate woodcutting, he drops it again.  I have to kick them out of the squad entirely and toggle/detoggle it several more times for him to pick up his axe and start behaving normally again.

This is just not acceptable.  It is BASIC.  It is one of the simplest and most immediate situations involving the military the player is going to encounter.  It is not functioning correctly at all.

I don't know why people are going around saying the military system works fine, but HELL NO IT DOESN'T.

[Rollory]

Save the game, upload save to http://dffd.wimbli.com/ , submit to bug tracker?

No, because this is so incredibly easy to reproduce there is no excuse for not being able to recreate the situation.  He doesn't need my savegames or bug report.  He should know about it already.

[Patchouli]

Save the game, upload save to http://dffd.wimbli.com/ , submit to bug tracker?

No, because this is so incredibly easy to reproduce there is no excuse for not being able to recreate the situation.  He doesn't need my savegames or bug report.  He should know about it already.

He does know about it.

He also believes it's fixed.

Bring it up again in the tracker.

http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=605

[RavingManiac]

If the picks are assigned to a squad as weapons, they will become unavailable to all miners even if the squad is off-duty. I had a similar problem, which I resolved by unassigning the picks.

[Zaik]

for what it's worth, i found that setting a miner with no uniform or equipment settings at all will cause him to wrestle with the left hand and swing his pick with the right, and he won't do any of that dumb crap after going back to civilian mode