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[Brhino]

I equipped my soldiers with iron weapons, armor, and shields to start.  Once I found flux stone, I eventually made enough steel items to replace every iron item.  I found that for the most part the dwarves helped themselves to the new steel equipment automatically, but in a few cases here and there they held onto the iron stuff.  Nothing got named or anything like that, it seems mostly to be an issue with shields and weapons.

Since I completed all the steel gear I have been trying to get them all in steel gear and I have been unsuccessful.  The "uniform" function doesn't seem to work - it's gotten my first squad back into mostly steel with a bit of iron, and my second squad into no equipment at all!  It seems the only thing that will work is to call out specific items for each dwarf, and I really don't want to have to apply a hundred items one by one, especially since there doesn't seem to be a good way to make sure you're not assigning two dwarves to the same specific items.

Are there any tricks or workarounds for easily getting your soldiers in the right equipment?

[Naina]

Forbid the various items you don't want them to equip.  They'll drop the forbidden items, then (theoretically) pick up the better equipment.

[Brhino]

Nope, they're continuing to carry the forbidden items.

[Brhino]

Designating, dwarf by dwarf, slot by slot, "steel X" (where x is the equipment type, like shield or breastplate) is MOSTLY working for the first squad, once I selected "exact matches" over "partial matches" in the equipment screen.  I say mostly, because at least two of them only picked up one gauntlet, leaving a cloth mitten on the other hand.  I tried specifying two steel gauntlets for one of them, and he dropped the steel right gauntlet he had, and picked up a different steel right gauntlet, leaving the mitten to remain on his left hand.

[Larry421]

Designating, dwarf by dwarf, slot by slot, "steel X" (where x is the equipment type, like shield or breastplate) is MOSTLY working for the first squad, once I selected "exact matches" over "partial matches" in the equipment screen.

Dearie me, that must have taken forever! If dwarves "grow attached" to a piece of equipment, I think it automagically forbids it in their hands. I've had success manually reclaiming their leather leggings and crappy weapons, dumping them, then assigning a new uniform. The uniforms function has been working a treat, actually. I recommend having at least 2 stockpiles, one for good-quality steel and one for everything else. Get your soldiers naked, get all the crappy gear in the stockpile, mass-forbid, and then assign a new uniform.

The "only equipping one gauntlet and one boot" issue is something else entirely, I think others here have a solution. I haven't tried yet.

[Brhino]

well, here's what I ended up doing:

Creating a new uniform that specifically called out all steel gear got the first squad in about 90% of the right equipment.  After that I inspected each dwarf, and when I found iron gear or no gear I went back to the equipment screen and added an individual entry to wear a steel shield or whatever, even if the uniform assignment was already telling him to.  If that didn't work, I then used the equipment screen to assign a specific item to the dwarf, but I only had to do that two or three times.

For the second squad, attempting to assign them to the uniform template I created resulted in them dropping all armor and weapons.  I assigned them the default "metal armor" uniform, and that got them mostly in the right gear, and then I went about fixing up each dwarf as necessary as before.  However, when I got down to the last two dwarves I found that there were a few steel items that they simply would not pick up (I only made exactly enough gear to equip all my soldiers, no leftovers).  Said items were in the armor stockpile along with everything else, although they did have several blood coverings from the previous owner and the goblins and trolls he was fighting when he died.  The items certainly weren't marked as forbidden but the dwarves ignored them.  I ended up smelting a couple more boots and gauntlets and they snatched those up right away to complete their sets.

Now then, time to conscript the third squad... god help me.

[Another]

I observed a few times that when a squad member dies - all equipment he had remains assigned to his position and not used for anything else. Similar thing can happen if you move dwarves to different positions. You can check assigned equipment for empty positions even in completely depopulated squads.

[Labant]

The fastest and most effective way I have found is going through each dwarf and manually assigning specific equipment and weapons to each soldier....I only have 2 squads of 4 and 3 respectively right now though and its the biggest army I have ever had since my other forts didn't last long enough.  It's not going to be an effective approach once I have more though that refuse to use the best equipment.

When I dwarf grows attached to their shield or whatever I just let them keep it since I can't get them to easily give it up anyway