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[Quiller]

While my mind was going through all sorts of things for guard rotation and the like, but then I realized what was really needed was a building.

Basically you build a sentry post where you want to station a guard, 1x1 would probably be best, but it could be bigger if that would work.  Military dwarves could be set to sentry as a job (or maybe opened up to all dwarves as a possibility, but should be open to military) and they would arm themselves and go to the post and stand sentry.  It takes a set amount of time to complete the job and you can set it to recur.  It probably doesn't increase any skills and it definitely doesn't get completed faster by more skilled dwarves.  Since I'm not sure how the job task works, if one dwarf leaves in the middle of the job, another dwarf should be able to take his place.

Another way to do it would be to make standing sentry something that members of a unit would do while standing down, like weapon practice, and the sentry post is the object they interact with.  This doesn't make as much sense, but it might potentially be easier to implement and avoid having active soldiers leaving their patrol to go stand sentry.

I believe that currently you can station soldiers at a point to have their unit go there, but then I think you have to deal with the rotation yourselves, whereas with the job mechanism you would get 1)If there are more sentries than posts, those without a place to stand sentry would take care of other tasks or needs, 2)Sentries that need to take care of needs could do so and be replaced by others, 3) Sentries would go to the nearest open post, rather than a specifically assigned one, though you can make a spot more likely to get filled by putting a barracks nearby.

[Woodstock]

How about making "guard duty" an option for on duty/standing down. You then select an amount of dwarves from a squad and they go and create shifts for each other based on the number of dwarves you specified*, doing whatever the standing order is, patrolling or stationary duty.

*for example, setting this number to "1" would have one dwarf at a time do a shift and setting the number to the amount in the squad minus 1 (having the entire squad go would make this option redundant) would have that many go, with the straggler filling in for everyone else while they are gone. That way, you could have, say, two squadmembers do their duty with the number set to "2", and then switch for two (or one, depending on availability) more that would stand in for them.

Dwarves off of the shift would act as if they were standing down, and not complain about guard duty. A nice way to automate your guards!

[Granite26]

Anything to say 'guards should hang out here occasionally'

[Footkerchief]

Military-specific jobs.  I like it.

[Lyndon]

Standing guard should increase some skill I think and it should make the guards slightly more aware then usual. I am imagining dwarven relationships destabilising after Urist was on guard duty for a whole year...
I am imagining a goblin James Bond sneaking past sleeping Dwarf Sentries.

[Chthonic]

Agreed on increasing some skill . . . like an "anti-ambusher" sentry skill so that a dwarf with high-level sentry ability might be able to detect a goblin ambush from some ways off . . . instead of when the goblins appear magically right in front of him - or surrounding him.

Sentry post is awesome, too.

[Granite26]

I think perception is an attribute (on par with str, dex and con) that's in the works for the 'some dwarves are smarter than others' req/bloat/whatever