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[Leonidas]

Is there any way to make active miners wear armor?

[Funk]

A squad set to wear Armour off duty?
Be ware there might still be some bugs around it.

[anewaname]

No.

Miners (and woodcutters/hunters), have a "civilian labor" uniform, which is based on their civilian uniform. They need to be wearing that "civilian labor" uniform or they will ignore mining designations.

[PatrikLundell]

anewaname gave the short answer...

A "civilian uniform" is basically the tool/weapon, implicitly worn "over clothing". A military uniform replaces the civilian one, including the weapon/tool, and DF doesn't know how to use a military weapon as a civilian tool or vice versa. When one uniform is worn the other is dropped.

[mikekchar]

When they change between military and civilian "uniforms" do they actually remove their clothing if you have the military "over clothing"?  I haven't tested it, but my impression is that they do not (someone feel free to correct me).  The main problem is that the miners will drop their picks when they go into combat.  In the past, I've put a pick stockpile near the entrance to the fortress with extra picks (which means you need 2 times as many picks as miners).  When drafted, the miners go exchange their picks, but I don't recall them ever changing their clothes.  I recall that the only real drawback was that the miners were always late to the combat -- but because they are awesome in cleaning up (legendary in their weapon, that has great penetration), it worked well to soften up the  enemy with regular forces and then hit them with the miners.  It's been literally years since I tried it, though, so I may be misremembering.

[PatrikLundell]

With "over clothing" clothing is not removed. I have my miners and wood cutters go through some military training, but when I do, I remove their trade skill, add them to their positions in their squad (pick/axe only, but no armor/shield, over clothing), set the squad to training, and add the squad to the barracks (and reverse all that when done), and they drop their tools to pick up their weapons. Last time I forgot to remove their civilian skills, but they swapped weapons without issue.

[Sutremaine]

It's possible to make a miner not drop their pick in a fight by seamlessly transitioning them from miner to soldier, but it's quite fiddly and requires you to be 'present'.

1. Dwarf is assigned the Miner skill. They are wearing their player-invisible mining uniform, which consists of, let's say, a -copper pick-. The -copper pick- is currently claimed by the miner uniform of that dwarf.
2. Dwarf meets target. Player notices, and pauses the game
3. Player removes Mining job from dwarf. -Copper pick- is currently unclaimed by a uniform and available for general use.
4. Player goes into military screen and finds the uniform settings for the dwarf (if dwarf is not in a squad, make it so). Dwarf's uniform is set to be the -copper pick- available for general use, ie. the pick that they are currently holding. Note: It is the single individual -copper pick-, not a copper pick in general.
5. Player unpauses.
6. Ideally, the dwarf processes the current uniform orders and realises that their uniform requirements are satisfied by the held item. If not, they might drop their mining pick and generate a Pickup Equipment job for the item they just threw at their feet. I don't know if it's possible for them to get interrupted in that short time.
7. Dwarf is no longer 'a miner', and is now 'an inactive military dwarf holding a pick'. Dwarf may be commanded to attack.

It might be possible to skip the unpause and send the kill order right after you assign the -copper pick- to the military uniform, but if the dwarf processes the changes in the order 'drop mining pick -> attack -> get military pick' then you might as well have not bothered.

[Leonidas]

The loss of weapon doesn't bother me nearly as much as the loss of armor.

[Sutremaine]

Cross-training, maybe? A dwarf who has high attributes and can consistently dodge attacks has pretty high survivability without armour.

What do you want the armour for, anyway? Defence against creatures, or against environmental hazards?

[Leonidas]

What do you want the armour for, anyway? Defence against creatures, or against environmental hazards?

Cracking open some caverns in a reanimating biome with over 350 undead. Every other dwarf is armored and trained. But the miners, who will actually pierce the caverns, have to be essentially naked.

Edit: Plus, if there's an accidental cavern breach leading to unexpected fun, it's the unarmored miner who did the breaching, and who gets to run for his life until the militia shows up.

[anewaname]

To avoid accidental cavern piercing, you just need to explore more. If you have any small breeding animals like turkeys, rabbits, or cavies, you could breed up a batch of them and release them into the caverns. They are excellent explorers due to their speed and agility, and small enough that their corpses will not be as dangerous.

[Leonidas]

To avoid accidental cavern piercing, you just need to explore more.

I know where the cavern is. The problem is that I'm digging all around the cavern. So it's easy to get over-focused on, say, following an ore vein.

I recently had some fun with an undead troglodyte when I was testing some ideas for an all-ramp fortress. I dug one channel too many, and suddenly my miner was fighting for his life while the militia rushed to save him. He would have done fine if he had been wearing armor.

[anewaname]

I've also auto-mined and chased ore veins into the caverns. I usually hotkey the area and name it "risk" and check that hotkey until it has been properly walled up.

[Sutremaine]

Cracking open some caverns in a reanimating biome with over 350 undead. Every other dwarf is armored and trained. But the miners, who will actually pierce the caverns, have to be essentially naked.

Ah. Got any dwarves you don't like?

I do have an idea though. Below a cavern floor, away from any fliers, dig a tunnel shaped like this (top-down view):

Code: [Select]

########
##+++###
##+#++++
##+++###
########

That's a tunnel with a 3x3 room at the end, the middle tile of which has yet to be dug out. Now ramp out that last tile:

Code: [Select]

########
##+++###
##+^++++
##+++###
########

The ramp might vanish, as isolated ramps tend to do. Either way, you'll have a hole in the cavern floor with no ground access to the tunnel beneath (or to the cavern above, if your miner is an enthusiastic brawler). To restore the ground path, you'll need dwarves to come and construct stairs, or a wall and ramp, and these dwarves can be armed and armoured.