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[Spleenling]

Ive put 10 Dwarfs in a squad only one is active goes and kills thing when i tell the squad to kill things.
Their schedule is empty they have no labors turned on they just sit with No job

can anyone help out this is my first fortress and ive probably lucky not to get a siege with only one marksdwarf to defend it

Edit: i can get them to attack by selecting them one by one

[Brewster]

(*) Make sure they're actually in the squad.
(*) Make sure they're actually not busy sleeping/eating/drinking whatever else.
(*) Try to make them move towards the area the beast is. Sometimes if it's a flying beast they obviously can't flap their arms and get it so they just ignore you.
(*) The Leader skill of your capt. I'm a bit foggy with but I think it has to do with how well your militia moves and attacks and stuff too. (Not sure on this.)

To be honest probably a million things a beginner could mess up on.

[greycat]

Ive put 10 Dwarfs in a squad only one is active goes and kills thing when i tell the squad to kill things.
Their schedule is empty they have no labors turned on they just sit with No job

can anyone help out this is my first fortress and ive probably lucky not to get a siege with only one marksdwarf to defend it

First thing: if this is a marksdwarf squad, do not give them kill orders.  Only give them move (station) orders.  Marksdwarves do not generally interpret a kill order the way you want.  (They will move toward wherever the monster was at the moment you gave the order, until they either catch sight of an enemy, or get to that spot... if they get there and haven't seen an enemy, they'll get a new location for the enemy, and move toward that spot... etc.  What they will never do when you use a kill order is climb up on the fortified archer's tower that you built, and wait for the enemy to stroll by.  So use a move order instead.)

Second thing: when you give your move/kill order, and "only one is active goes and kills thing", what are the other 9 doing?  Are they civilians or soldiers?  What jobs are they actually doing?

Third thing: make sure you have a militia commander (that he isn't dead), and that the squad has a captain (a dwarf in slot 1).  I don't think the captain's skills matter, but a squad with a dead captain doesn't work very well.

Fourth thing: since it's a marksdwarf squad, make sure each dwarf has a crossbow and a quiver, and that ammo has been assigned to the squad.  For a full squad of 10, you'll want to assign about 500 bolts, and you'll probably want to make a couple thousand.  (I'm not sure how many bolts a quiver can hold, but it's more than 25.)

[wuphonsreach]

Marksdwarves will pickup stacks of bolts until they have at least 25 bolts.  Sometimes they pickup exactly 25, sometimes they pickup 24, then a another stack to get at least 25 (so they might have 40-80 or more depending on the size of the last stack).

As said, never issue kill orders to marksdwarves unless they are already standing in place where you want them.  Even then, it's a bad idea.  Unless it's a flying animal that they won't normally shoot at or something.

To be safe, position your marksdwarves (using squad move orders) on a wall that is 1Z above the enemy (assuming that they are not tight up against said wall and in the 1-tile wide blind spot).  Then, once they are all up there and shooting, *cancel* their orders.  They'll revert to civilian status, but continue shooting until they run out of ammo.  This also prevents them from deciding to go down and use their crossbows as melee weapons (instead, they'll run away once out of ammo).