OK, help the new guy out... when you say to make your uniform like the above examples, do you mean exactly as it's written above there, or do you specify your armor?
For example, you've got "Metal Chain Shirt". Is that a selectable option on the uniform menu, or is that meant as I should select a metal chain shirt specificly for that slot? Do I need to specify a particulal metal chain shirt, or can I just set them up to go grab the best metal chain shirt they can find?
Sorry if the question is confusing - I'm confused in general when it comes to equipping my dwarves, so I think I may not even know enough yet to ask my question effectively...
What you do is set up a uniform, add "chain shirt" to it. Then switch to specifying materials (I think it's either (m) or (M), I forget which at the moment), select the chain shirt, and choose "metal" as the type.
It's not really that important to specify the material, without it, they'll pick up the most expensive chainmail shirt that's available, without considering the material.
The only reason to specify "metal" is so you don't have anyone doing things like preferring elephant bone armor to copper armor because elephant bone has a higher value multiplier. As long as you don't require exact matches, they'll still equip the elephant bone armor if it's all you've got, but they'll prefer metal once it's available.
If you have stupid-expensive artifact metal armor made of inferior metals, you might consider requiring a specific metal instead, so your heros won't wear it instead of something that provides more protection...although I'm not certain what the ‼science‼ says about artifact lousy-metal armor vs. masterwork steel armor.