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[Yaotzin]

When told to defend a burrow they will not leave it except to get ammo(or eat drink and sleep)

If they will leave the burrow they are defending to retreive ammo will they also rush out into the seige to retrieve the equipment of fallen comrades? I am so sick of losing legendary warriors because they sensed a blood soaked +sock+ in the goblin horde that was just too tempting for them

This is why Toady made the forbid-on-death autosetting. Leave it on:P

[Yaotzin]

Has any !!SCIENCE!! been done on personality traits and the military?

Right now I only look at attributes when picking them. Do traits matter much?

[TheGazebo]

This is why Toady made the forbid-on-death autosetting. Leave it on:P

Ah yes. I turned that off ages ago and forgot about it. Thanks for reminding me.

[Greiger]

Haven't seen it happen with freshly dropped bolts (the whole auto forbid on death/when fired thing most likely) but they will go out to grab any unforbidden ones if they think they are better.  I have seen it happen once when my haulers and smiths were too slow to completely clean up before another siege.  I plop down an ammo stockpile in the 'shoot from here' burrow to try to dissuade that behavior, but the only way to be sure that won't happen is to make sure there is no unforbidden ammo outside the gate.

[slothen]

I should really give "defend burrow" a try for replacing stations that are commonly used.  As for traits, we know that risk-takers are more likely to have their squads spar.  Also if you embark with a military dwarf with the intention of having that dwarf train and then later organize demonstrations, make sure that dwarf does not have 'unwilling to help others.'

[khearn]

I should really give "defend burrow" a try for replacing stations that are commonly used.  As for traits, we know that risk-takers are more likely to have their squads spar.  Also if you embark with a military dwarf with the intention of having that dwarf train and then later organize demonstrations, make sure that dwarf does not have 'unwilling to help others.'

Yeah, make the "unwilling to help others" dwarf be your Chief Medical Dwarf.

I've found that defend burrow is far superior to stationing when you have a plan. It tells the troops exactly where to go, not just "somewhere kinda near this point, but on the far side of the wall is just as good as in the actual room where I really want you." 

But it is more hassle to do. Instead of just opening the squad menu, selecting a squad (or squads) and pointing, you have to define a burrow, define an alert, and set the squad(s) to the alert. If you have specific places where know you will often want troops, it's worth the extra work to set it up. If a forgotten beast has managed to get into your bedrooms where you never expected a problem, just stationing is probably the better way.

[Hyndis]

Instead of burrows, make a whole bunch of 1x1 barracks. You can easily assign squads to stand at those locations. Not being assigned to a burrow frees them up so they will eat/drink/sleep as needed and won't get very unhappy about being unable to do that.

[khearn]

You don't assign them to the burrow, you schedule the squad to protect the burrow for a specific alert, and set teh squad to that alert. So they're not confined to a burrow like normal burrow usage, and they can leave to get food/drink/ammo as needed.

[Hyndis]

Using a barracks allows them to train and spar with each other when not stabbing or shooting things, and that will both increase their skills as well as preventing existing skills from getting rusty.

[Goncyn]

What do you guys do to avoid the happiness bugs/design-problems/features with your military? Most advice I've seen, including the wiki, says to reduce the minimum number of dwarves on your training orders so they don't all get unhappy from "long patrol duty" or starve themselves, but that just triggers drafting/un-drafting unhappy thoughts.

Do you just leave all your dwarves on-duty all the time? What negative consequences does that have, if any?
Do you use the small 3-dwarf squads as suggested by the wiki to increase sparring?
Can anyone share examples of their schedules and orders?

 

[Hyndis]

Only recruits will be bothered by those negative thoughts. After chopping through a few sieges they will no longer care about anything, and so they will be nearly immune to negative thoughts at that point.

[khearn]

The trick to avoiding the unhappiness from going off duty seems to be to make sure they have at least one skill at novice or above and enabled. So all your peasant soldiers get unhappy because they don't have anything useful to do when off duty. I'm trying out a way to avoid it at the moment. I have a pump set up to pump nothing and set to be pumped by hand. All of my soldiers have pump operator turned on. So when they go off duty, they spend time on the pump and get the skill up so they won't be unhappy next time. They should also build strength in the process.

That doesn't prevent the unhappiness from going back on duty, though. I think the only thing that stops that is becoming legendary.

[Greiger]

They only complain about the draft if they don't have a weapon skill above dabbling in my experience(though they will keep the thought for like a year, so it can still show up as a stale thought after), and having a civilian skill keeps them from being bothered by being taken off duty.

My usual military schedule is 2 months training, one month off.  And work it out so that the 3rd 6th 9th and 12th month of every year has all the squads on duty either training for my melee guys, or patrolling the walls and courtyard for crossbows and guards. I still get the long patrol thoughts now and then, so it's still not perfect.  But it seems to be an improvement since it seems less common to escalate the thought to enraged, and nobody misses their vacation month to a siege.  With a bit more tweaking it could possibly avoid the long patrol thought entirely.

[thistleknot]

What do you guys do to avoid the happiness bugs/design-problems/features with your military? Most advice I've seen, including the wiki, says to reduce the minimum number of dwarves on your training orders so they don't all get unhappy from "long patrol duty" or starve themselves, but that just triggers drafting/un-drafting unhappy thoughts.

Do you just leave all your dwarves on-duty all the time? What negative consequences does that have, if any?
Do you use the small 3-dwarf squads as suggested by the wiki to increase sparring?
Can anyone share examples of their schedules and orders?

 

I have squads of 10.  Of which only up to 5 are active at any given time.  And even then, the squad is only active 1/2 the year, the rest of the time, they are off.

So they have 6 months or more as a civilian.   I haven't had much problems with this.  There patrol duty isn't too long (6 months), and they get to go off duty.  It's almost like the real service (at least deployments, which use to be 6 months, but last I heard were 9)

[Hyndis]

The problem is that once they hit champion status their jobs are all toggled off, so when they go back to civilian life they will not do any jobs and just sit around idle.

Two workarounds:
1) Have then use mining picks instead of conventional weapons. This trains the mining skill and uses the mining skill for combat, and mining picks are absolutely devastating in combat.
2) Once they join the military they're in the military for life. They only leave the military in a box. The recruits will whine like pansies until the bloodbath of melee combat toughens them up a bit, then they will no longer complain about anything.