GUIDE: How to get rid of pistols (so that your soldiers will equip better guns)

UPDATE 2: Just do this:

Forbid all the crap weapons that your soldiers are carrying.
Unassign from barracks.
Assign to a farm that's growing something.
They will drop guns (if they don't, unassign them from the farm, turn off all job filters except for mining, and make them mine)
Once all guns are dropped, reassign to barracks.
Repeat until they have the guns you want.


UPDATE: This method might be easier:

As you know, simply making your soldiers drop the pistols, and then forbidding them does not work. For some reason, they will pick them back up again. This method will ensure that the pistols stay claimed somewhere else, so that when you assign new soldiers (or reassign old ones), they have no choice to pick up the higher tier guns.


What you will need at minimum:

1 barracks
1 farm
1 workcrew that you want as military. We will name this workcrew, "Emily Jarhead".
1 workcrew set to "forage" and "haul goods" only. We will name this workcrew "Jared Pistoldump"

(note: you don't actually have to name them that in-game. I just did that for the sake of clarity of this explanation)

OK, so, let's say that you already have a fully staffed military group under the leadership of Emily Jarhead, but for some reason they refuse to use the shiny new carbines you made, and insist on carrying around pistols. This is what you do.

Check to see which laborers are using pistols. Take them out of the military workcrew, and assign them to Jared Pistoldump's workcrew. They will immediately change to regular workers, but won't drop their weapon. As long as you keep them on forage and haul goods only, they will keep the pistol on their backs, and out of the hands of your military.

Do this until you run out of pistols. You may need more "Jared Pistoldump" type of workcrews depending on how many spare pistols your military keeps picking up.

If you assign a laborer to the military and he picks up a gun that you want him to pick up, then leave him in the workcrew and do not assign him to the "Jared Pistoldump" workcrew.

Eventually, your Emily Jarhead military group will be equipped with the weapons you want, and the Jared Pistoldump civilian crew will be holding all the crappy pistols.


One more thing, though. This doesn't help if Emily Jarhead herself is carrying a pistol. If that is also the case, then this is what you do: (You will need an extra barracks for this)

Pause the game, unassign all of Emily's laborer's and reassign them to another NCO (we'll call him Dave). Unpause the game.

Unassign Emily from her barracks, and assign her to the farm, which is set to grow anything. This will make her drop her weapons, in order to switch to farm tools.

Once she drops her weapon, unassign her from the farm, and reassign her back to her original barracks. Since Jared Pistoldump's crew is still holding all the pistols, she will run and get something better. Take back the laborers that you temporarily assigned to Dave, and reassign them back with Emily Jarhead.

If you did this properly, all of Emily's group will be wielding good weapons.

Another note: If your military takes too long to grab a weapon, set a rally point. That usually speeds up the process.

I hope this helps!

Once all the pistols are on the ground.

 

You are the protip master! Although all signs point to this one becoming obsolete in the next experimental or two. I think we'll be able to assign loadouts in the barracks. This is great in the meantime though!

 

UPDATE: This is simpler:

Forbid all the crap weapons that your soldiers are carrying.
Unassign from barracks.
Assign to a farm that's growing something.
They will drop guns (if they don't, unassign them from the farm, turn off all job filters except for mining, and make them mine)
Once all guns are dropped, reassign to barracks.
Repeat until they have the guns you want.​

Actually, I figured out a better way. With this alternate method, you can make the carbines the only thing that is accessible to pick up.

First of all, you have your stockpile with the all kinds of guns in it, and a bunch you don't want. Hopefully, you made a separate stockpile for just guns. That will make this easier.

1. forbid all the guns you don't want. (everything except carbines, for example).

2. Pause the game.

3. Delete the gun stockpile so that all the guns are on plain ground.

4. Make a new gun only stockpile somewhere else on clean ground.

5. Unpause.

6. Your haulers will eventually haul the carbines over to the new gun stockpile and ignore the forbidden guns.

7. Create a new milita group, and all the new soldiers should grab the carbines only in the new gun stockpile.

 

For only a moment when i built a barracks I got an loadout equipment screen, unfortunately I have not been able to replicate this and didn't think it was out of place so I didn't screencap it; however I got it must of been a fluke as building a barracks in other games has not got me that screen back. But it very clearly was meant to change the equipment of the soldiers within with pistols as default.

In any case I bring this up to mention that there is a clear plan for loadouts and not to panic.