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[Afghani84]

I'm aware that there are a couple of bugs with miners/hunters/woodcutters and their placement in squads. but I still want to try out a pikeman squad for my new fortress. now according to some threads on the forum, there is no separate weapon skill for picks. instead, you level mining. that leads me to two questions:

1) how does the mining skill translate in terms of weapon proficiency? is a great miner swinging a pick in battle comparable to a great swordsman/axeman etc? if so, miners would be perfect material for early-on military since it is waaayyy easier to level mining than weapon skills.

2) if there is no weapon skill leveled as such, does that mean that mining counts as one? what I'm trying to get at is this: do my miners automatically have a weapon skill AND a civilian skill just by mining? that would make it way easier to avoid bad thoughts (draft/relieved from duty).

[Bandreus]

1) Mining skill works with picks just like Axedwarf skill works with axes.

Training legendary miners can be done in an extremely quick fashion (especially in sand/clay/dirt layers), also Picks are incredibly effective weapons (and, unlike whips, are not foreign), as a steel pick will fairly easily penetrate most materials.

As an added benefit, the Mining labor trains all attributes which would benefit military duty. Highly competent miners make for very dangerous soldiers.

2) Actually I'm not sure as I never really cared. I don't think Mining counts as a military skill, but don't quote me on this (someone else will be as kind as confirming/denying).

A comfortable room, lavish meals, booze and a legendary dining hall (and a mist-generator if you want to go pro) usually are way more than enough to counter all but the most serious bad-thoughts spikes. I don't even care much about the sporadic bad thoughts unless tantrum spirals are a very concrete threat due to some pretty major shit happening, at which point drafting likely is the last of your concerns.

All of that being said, I don't usually rely much on miners for my military, mainly because I prefer to have those carving out my fortress and mining for valuable ores. I usually turn them in emergency-times soldiers if unexpected threats arise and my military program is not fully functional.

Also, training miners involves digging out quite some stone, which sucks for my laptop's framerate and usually leads to dumping lots of stuff into magma. Although, once the fort is more mature and not as much digging around is needed, you can safely turn some of your legendary miners into fairly efficient killing machines.

[AutomataKittay]

I can answer 2 at least. Mining don't counts as military skill and pick army shows as wrestler for military skill purpose if you're training them from zero.

[laularukyrumo]

What I'll do for my miners is I usually have two or three on active mining duty.... once they hit legendary, I'll make them a weapons-grade pick, assign that specific pick to them through the equipment menu, disable mining on them, nickname them so that I know never to turn it back on, and assign some freshies to do the actual mining. Forcing them to activate briefly should cause them to drop their copper pick and go grab the assigned weapon, and then I have them wear their uniform while inactive, just in case.

[Sutremaine]

Mining don't counts as military skill and pick army shows as wrestler for military skill purpose if you're training them from zero.

The pickdwarves will need some unarmed skill before they stop being treated as Recruits. If you're not going to be deactivating and reactivating them in a hurry this isn't a problem, but if you'd like to avoid bad thoughts about the draft then you can have them fight without pick or shield until they become Wrestlers.

I don't think there's any way of having weapon-skill picks while still having them use the same skill for mining and fighting. Something I've done in the past is to change the skill for maces from MACE to HAMMER and the skill for knives from KNIFE_USER to MACE, which allows knifedwarves to have a place in the status screen and their own weapon skill colour. But since the skill for mining is hardcoded, changing the weapon skill for picks from MINING to something else will separate the skill of miners and pickdwarves in the same way that the skill of woodcutters and axedwarves is separated.

[SixOfSpades]

If you're not going to be deactivating and reactivating them in a hurry this isn't a problem . . .

Just to clarify for the OP, having individual dwarves switch from "I am a Miner" to "I am a Fighter who swings a mean Pick" and back all the time is generally a bad idea. That's due to the hardcoded Miner "uniform" which consists of:
a) a pick, of any type, and
b) absolutely no armor.
That's why laularukyrumo said to never re-enable the Mining labor on those who you've chosen to draft, because as soon as you tell them, "picks are for digging," the first thing they do is get naked. Now, good Miners are in fact pretty badass about defending themselves, but if you ever want them to go and attack anything, first they have to take a day or so to collect & equip bits of their military uniform--all the while, your civilians are being killed.

As Bandreus said, only the most extremely bad thoughts (like a tantrum spiral) can affect a warrior. Once they get a couple dozen kills (easy if you use cage traps & pitting) under their belt, they "don't really care about anything anymore."

Getting high-level Miners actually doesn't always require a lot of digging. Sometimes they migrate in, sometimes they get moody. Although, I doubt either of these methods provides the (apparently rather negligible?) stat gains earned through actual digging, so they might not be preferable for warriors-in-training.

Digging sand/clay/etc leaves no byproducts, & therefore causes hardly any FPS drain.

[Kolnukbyne]

Also keep in mind that while they may have a great weapon skill their fighter skill will only be what they started with and will have to be trained in the regular ways.