Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mediterraneo]

Is there a way to tell the game that I want my military squad equipping progressively with better equipment as soon as it become available?

I mean: let's say I am in a map with gold as a metal, few trees and no coal.
The caravan doesn't bring numbers high enough to equip my developed military (let's say 160 strong)
I finally got my magma piston working and started magma smelterS and magma forgeS, to make use not of goblinite but of humanite I couldn't wear "as is". I want my army to start using breastplates instead of leather armor as soon as it becomes available.
Is there a way to instruct the squads to do so, sistematically?

Spoiler: This explains why it is difficult for me, but please ignore it in the answers! (click to show/hide)

 Ok, my need of a systemic solution is direr than it seems because I'm playing a mod, and mixing them at that: I'm playing with goblins, mining humanite and a necromancer's tower people, and recieving caravans from dark elves which bring worse armor design than the "dwarven" ones from vanilla, but better metals than I can smelt as goblins.
I need to do this same activity but with different equipments - along all of the uniform's spot, but at different, unpredictable rates.
I'd like to be spending more of my time with the story of the goblin fort that conquered the nearby human village, not the story of how I spent a real-time week fully equip my military - for a season, until the next undead horde came and I got more gauntlets and ought to substitute my bone ones with those, or let some goblin die of infection from an arm wound, like my bigger troll last winter - they don't produce soap, poor bastards).

[anewaname]

Leather armor and breastplates are different items (with different body coverage) and they cannot be worn at the same time, so short answer is you cannot get them to reliably drop a leather armor when a metal breastplate becomes available, even though a uniform item like "gauntlets" will upgrade from bone to copper to steel when the item becomes available.

But, you are equipping 160 guys and are likely working with squads of 10 all the time, so try this...
Make two uniforms that are almost duplicates, one with leather armor and one with metal breastplate. Everything else in the uniform would be whatever-material, so the gauntlets would be "gauntlets", not "metal gauntlets". Then craft metal breastplates in groups of 10 using the job manager. When you see an order for 10 metal breast plates is done, go to a squad that has the leather armor uniform and assign the entire squad the metal breastplate uniform. They will replace the leather with the metal and keep the rest of their stuff (because the rest of their stuff is already the "most valuable" of whatever-material).

If you do this, I'd suggest having a minecart QS stockpile for all armor and weapons, because some military dwarf will haul a corpse to the refuse stockpile, and as the first step of his next job of upgrading his exceptional steel helm to a masterwork steel helm, he will drop that exceptional steel helm on the refuse pile and leave you cursing when you find it has become a Xexceptional steel helmX after sitting on the refuse stockpile for a while.

[Mediterraneo]

Thanks Anewaname, that is a very neat solution.

I cannot apply it in the situation I'm playing (too many different pieces of body-protection to upgrade, a lot of them good quality ones in foreign forms I cannot produce, which come in unpredictable numbers on zombies) but that would be perfect for the scenario I actually described in the post.

What I would have needed would have been something like a button: "wear the drow_war_boot if there are any available - they come in steel and alloys; if there are no fancy metal foreign boots left, don't go without shoes but wear a low_boot we can produce, better if in metal".

I guess I will still have to manage the thing almost uniform per uniform - the ragged look of the army with such a mixed equipment as I have is very goblin like - there's beauty in this. Or I'd be better if I found it, at least, lol.