Okay, after figuring out my graphics problem (see below), I jumped back into the game full force! Logged in and started a new town... but I was promptly attacked by Giant Beetles eating my crops (nice touch by the way) and bandits at the same time and everyone died. Started new town! Didnt build a barracks in time... Fishmen attacked and everyone died. Started third town! Built a barracks! Assigned my military overseer to it so she can train others! But she did not train anyone. She just walked around inside the barracks. While trying to figure out how to assign people for her to train, Bandits attacked and everyone died. While I am having a blast in a weird 'Dwarf Fortress' kind of way, I would still like to figure out how to train more military. The wiki page i found just says "Assign troops to the Barracks" so could anyone help a guy out and enlighten me just how to get my barracks working so I can train more troops? Thanks for any insight you can provide.
In brief, move otherwise unassigned colonists into your military crew(s) by using the plus button on that crew's line in the Work Crew menu. Every work crew as a '+' and '-' symbol at the right end of that line. Using the minus sign will move common workers, from that Crew, into the unassigned pool (and the number of unassigned colonists appears at the top of the Work Crew window). You can add colonists to your military Crew by using the plus key on that line, which will move any unassigned colonists there. So you can take colonists from another Crew, and add them some place else.
Additionally the workcrew you assign to the barracks may be better off as a regular workcrew depending how your colonist generation luck goes. In theory a trained NCO is immediately better than a untrained militia leader who still has to undergo training themselves... however that theory lasts right up until you actually throw it into the game. If your NCO has various traits that mean the first thing they do in any fight is immediately have their morale broken and run around in circles letting themselves be killed, then finding a overseer with a trait like being foolishly brave and assigning them to the barrack to turn their workcrew into a military unit and then giving them time to train themselves up can often mean the difference between a guaranteed lost colony you couldn't do anything to save no matter what, and having a fighting chance of fending off attackers. By the way, 'training' currently is just a case of the unit leader running up to their soldiers and waving their arms about, promptly followed by that colonist dropping to the ground and doing pushups. So if you ever wonder if your colonists are actually training or not, if they're doing push-ups seemingly at random all over the place, then that is them training. Training doesn't actually happen at the barracks, the barracks itself just acts as an assignment building to trigger that behaviour at present but additional functionality will be added to allow you to control various aspects of the military unit assigned to that specific barracks in the near future.
Ahhhh ha! I wondered where the portraits went! They are just little profile shots and not on the top of the gump anymore. This explains a lot... thanks all.
(All the barracks stuff is being redone, but it is currently unclear when it will hit the stable branch.)
