DF2014 Talk:Scheduling

This is, frankly, a horrible system. The people writing on this subject constantly flirt around how bad it is. Here is my 2c.

The alert system won't actually allow you to put soldiers into one location. What actually happens is they put away all their soldier gear and go back to being civilians and then go to the location you defined as a burrow, even if you have them listed on alert as a squad.

Putting them onto active duty and using the burrow as an alert for defense is even worse. They go back to their training area and only come to the burrow you alerted them to defend in one's and two's all spread out AND they will wander around in and out of the burrow chasing the enemy.

So, no. there is no "one button solution" to massing your squads together.

What you end up having to do, in a very painful finger cramping way:

---define your squads ---Define a station or route of stations for each squad. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, a single defined station will only be used for a single squad. Multiple squads will not use the same station at the same time. So if you want to have 10 squads mass up in 1 room you have to define 10 single points in that room. ---Post the squad to that station in the scheduling portion of the military menu.

Now, here is where the pain begins.

Each time you CHANGE the station in the scheduling portion your squads deactivate, go back to the training area, take off their gear, wander around trying to find their gear again, put it back on and randomly, in 1's and 2's, meander back to the next station.

so the only way to "creep" along the map (down a corridor for example) with all your squads having interlocking fire is to set up a series of single stations and deactivate a small group of your squads to re-station at the next further on clumping of stations. You have to wait for them to go back, take off all their gear, re-find all their gear and come back straggly, but unfortunately that's the only way to control it.

The copy/paste command will not work because each squad will not post to a station that another squad is already posted to.

And when the calendar changes you are screwed.

The only good part about this is the combined battle positions are easy to set and once the combined battle positions are set it's only moderately painful to do again.

This is why people rely on traps.