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40d:Military
About drafting
You can draft any dwarves in your fortress by pressing v -> p. Then you press A (Shift + 'a'), or alternatively via the military screen m and then a on the dwarves in question.
If you draft dwarves without any (non-dabbling) combat skills, it will generally produce an unhappy thought. Dwarves with little or no (non-dabbling) civilian skills will not like being undrafted.
Promotion / Squads
Pressing m will lead you to the military screen. Here you can promote dwarves and create squads. This is done by pressing Enter on recruits.
- Select the dwarf you want to be squad leader.
- Press Enter (-> promote).
- Use arrow keys to select the dwarf you want to be his subordinate.
- Press Enter.
- Repeat for each dwarf you want in the squad.
- Press Space space to exit promotion mode.
To remove a dwarf from a squad select them and then press Enter again.
You can do complex chains of command this way if the first dwarf you selected was already in a squad (he'll become leader of a sub-squad) though I don't know if that has any use right now. If you want to take a dwarf out of his squad, promote him and select himself as a subordinate.
Note that there are restrictions to who can lead whom: you can't make a weaponmaster subordinate to a normal military dwarf, nor a champion subordinate to a weaponmaster (and possibly not a military dwarf subordinate to a recruit?). Dwarves who become weaponmasters will automatically become leaders of their squads if the current leader is less experienced.
Choosing weapons / Armour
Pressing m and then w will show you a screen containing:
- Shortened names for weapon types.
- A number indicating the number of weapons you want them to carry (note: this is not dual wielding, this is the dwarf carrying a backup weapon slung across their back in case the first weapon becomes stuck in a combatant)
- A Shortened name for the level of armour they should aim to wear and the shield they should carry.
Note: Giving a dwarf a weapon will affect their non-military professions, if the weapon in question conflicts with their labour tasks. E.g. Issuing a mace to a dwarf, will cause them to discard any axe they may be carrying for Woodcutting, or a pick they might use for mining.
Controlling your squads
By pressing x you will select squads near your marker. You can station the squads at the current cursor position if the squad in question is on-duty. Squads will fight and pursue hostile creatures until they or the enemies are dead or the squad moves too far from its station. Squads can be set to pursue regardless of how far they move from their station and to attack wild animals (along with various other options) via the military screen, in the view squad submenu. For more information on fighting, see Combat.
Training / Sparring
Squads that you marked as "Off Duty" by the squad-management screen in the military screen will head to the barracks and begin sparring to train their skills. It is possible to get horrendous injuries by letting your dwarves spar with weapons, so it is strongly advisable to make them train first without weapons to improve their wrestling skill, and then outfit them with armour before you give them real weapons to practice with. m then select the squad in question, press v to view the squad's setting and then t to toggle their on-duty status.
Archery ranges offer the equivalent of sparring for Marksdwarves, and will only be taken advantage of when there are wooden or bone bolts available (Dwarves obviously view these inferior materials as 'practice' ammo). As with sparring, shooting on an archery range is only done off-duty. Make sure you set a safe shooting direction after designating the shooting range on an archery target using wasd. Marksdwarves do not gain Armor user, Shield user or Wrestling skill shooting on a range, so make sure to get them involved in a few unarmed, armored sparring matches in the barracks.
Certain injuries, notably those to the neck and brain, will never ever heal, even if they are only minor scratches. A dwarf with these injuries will never spar either. If a military dwarf gets a minor neck injury before he has gained much combat skill, you may want to release him from duty so he can at least serve your economy as a hauler (or Royal Guard), and give his weapon and armor to a dwarf who will practice with them.