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[BoogieMan]

Question 1:

I am curious exactly how training is supposed to work.

If I select a rack or armor stand and assign a unit to train there, that's ALL they do. I was under the impression that if they were set to Train, but the unit wasn't active they'd come here and do drills in their off time or if they had nothing particular to do. But they never leave but to eat, drink, or sleep. And I've been slowly training and gearing up sort of militias so my average citizens can defend themselves but they don't often do their normal jobs. Then they complain "about long patrols" when they haven't been active. I heard that was a bug and I recall someone mentioning a way to fix that?

Without using non standard training lessons, my Dwarves also skill up insanely slow. I see talk of people training Axelords and such, but I've only seen that maybe twice in 15 forts. And they only get it by surviving combat. I can have 3 fully equipped melee and 2 ranged squads set to train almost full time for years and they're lucky if they see Proficient without combat.

What am I doing wrong? I'm making a large room and putting in racks and pressing R to make the room nice and big, and them set T for training for each squad. I also have archery targets for my ranged squads but they don't often seem to use them. I have them set the correct direction. I usually make the room very nice with engraving and statues to help them get happy thoughts.

Question 2:

For and entire year, I had some Magma Forges set to make Iron Chests and pipes, and a Craftsdwarf shop set to make wooden and bone bolts for training. However, despite skilled laborers and abundant supplies of all these materials, they never got made. My manager set them up as jobs, too. What gives? The forges and such all work because I've fully geared up about 40-50 military Dwarves.

Question 3:

This is an extremely tiresome issue that I've had since I first started playing years ago. After maybe 3 or 4 years, and I guess after becoming a Baron my Leader/Broker won't do jack other than sleep or take breaks for entire freaking seasons. But he always has the best stats for trading and does it well for the first few years. Sometimes I've assigned him to a burrow on the depot and he'll still mill around on break. And he so commonly decides to do this right before/after a caravan arrives. This last game, combined with question 1, he will train until his breaks come around. He simply refuses to go trade. He has good stats for being responsible, energetic, etc.

This time I tried changing my broker to my manager, and guess what? He wants to screw around too. I request him to go trade, and double check only broker may trade, and I'll see him pasturing animals when he has NO hauling labors, over and over he'll do this and not trade. However, the burrow did work but why does this keep happening? It's driving me crazy, to watch them screw around and ignore important time sensitive tasks for menial labor that there are 20 other idlers available. I don't really like letting anyone trade because half the time you'll get someone who can't even give you a guess at item values, even if they can, the traders insist on obscenely lopsided deals. 

 At this point I'm ready to accept some DFHack script or just about anything to find a way to deal with this. Any way to cancel sleep/breaks or just get the dummies to do their jobs?

One more side question, what is everyone's stance of females in your military? If I'm good on laborers I usually just put anyone with the right skills/attributes to be soldiers. But it can be nasty when they pop out a baby and carries them into battle which seems more and more common as time goes on. Outside of emergencies I'm beginning to wonder if I should only allow males into my military.

[thegoatgod_pan]

1. Check you training schedule hit m-s and look at the squad orders schedule. The default is 10/10 training. Set it to something like 7/10 or a similar ratio is you have fewer per squad. Then the ones not training will rest and relax and do civilian work. Make sure you set this to be true every month.

2. No clue, maybe provide more details? Were the jobs cued in the forges/craftshops?

3. Set the depot to anyone can trade. Broker will set the prices while any old peasant does the bargaining.

Women make glorious warriors and babies make glorious shields.

[chevil]

Quickest way to get legendary military is to create squads of 2 or give multiple train 2 orders. The more dwarves you have training together the bigger chance for demonstrations and less for sparring. If you get your dwarves to spar constantly you will be swimming in legendary soldiers.

[Larix]

2: Do you have any dwarfs with Blacksmithing allowed? That's the skill needed to make metal furniture, nothing else will do. Unless your fortress is extremely young, woodcrafters and bone carvers should be available, though, so it seems like something got gummed up there - workshop profile, access to the workshop/raw materials, burrows... you'll need to elaborate a bit to get better feedback.

3: i emphatically second Pan's advice: switch to 'anybody may trade'. In about 90% of fortresses, there's no good reason to insist on a designated trader. If you make it free for everybody, you can trade when you want to trade with minimal fuss and even if you're looking for a low merchant profit, dwarfs with high social skills (those with the most idle time and thus those most likely to grab a free-for-all trading job) can easily do as well as your broker; and you're even training a cadre of potential backup brokers in case your original one comes to harm, or forgets how to appraise through neglecting the job :p

[BoogieMan]

I just realized I didn't post this in the DF Questions forum, sorry about that. Feel free to move it to the appropriate section.

 Thanks for the training advice, that makes sense. I do have a follow up question though, does adding multiple squads to a single item (like a weapon rack) mean they will cross-train with each other or observe each others demonstrations? Is there any reason to have more than 1 item per barracks other than happy thoughts from good craftsdwarfship?

And for them refusing to craft the Iron chests and pipe sections, yes they were in the queue at the forges and I do have skilled Dwarves with blacksmithing and some very skilled ones with all the metalworking skills active. In addition to them refusing to make these items I am commonly finding my important crafters Penning/Pasturing animals instead of doing their jobs even when the only hauling skill they have enabled is Burial.

I do have a lot of Dwarves with good social skills, but when I set it to anyone may trade it seems just the nearest guy who isn't busy is selected and it keeps being a guy with no social skills at all. It just can't work like this, because I can't see any item values, and when they want 5+ thousand in free goods it's bad this early for the fort. I'm actually running out of STONE because it seems like at best 1/5 squares cleared with my legendary miners leaves anything behind so my crafting if farther behind than usual.

[Brackev]

If you want bone bolts, check to see if anyone has both bonecrafting and weaponsmithing.  Both are required on one dwarf.

Barons are barons.  Doing nothing is their job.  I don't assign them to anything else, because it doesn't get done anyways.

Also, I think each individual armor rack and weapon rack needs to be it's own room, or the dwarfs won't use it.  Or is this an old version trick?

[Telgin]

As for the bolts not getting made, are you getting cancellations for them?  I believe only bonecrafting is needed for bone bolts to get made.  As far as I know, weaponsmithing is only used for metal bolts.

The thing with the baron is a bug, and I experienced it recently myself.  In .31.25 I never had a baron or higher do this, but I've seen it in .34.11.  What happened to me anyway, is that as soon as I promoted someone to baron, he went on break and never left.  I was forced to appoint someone else as broker to deal with the crippling issue.  Interestingly, he would still do combat drills and respond as a soldier, so I stuck him in a military squad so he'd actually be useful.  Having a baron isn't necessary anyway.

What's more interesting though, is that after about 5 years of this, he snapped out of it and went back to work.  The backlog of like 20 diplomats chilling in my dining hall were finally met with, and he hasn't had a problem since.  My guess is that the game sets the On Break timer way too high sometimes, if there is such a thing.  It may be an artifact from older versions of the game where nobles were lazy.

As for the barracks thing, I'm not positive, but I think you can assign multiple squads to an armor stand or weapon rack without anything special really happening.  They definitely don't spar with or demonstrate to members outside of their squad, but I think that more than one squad can train from the same stand without problems.

[chevil]

There's no penalty for multiple squads using the same armor stand but I personally like to have multiple small barracks spread around in strategic locations.

[Larix]

And for them refusing to craft the Iron chests and pipe sections, yes they were in the queue at the forges and I do have skilled Dwarves with blacksmithing and some very skilled ones with all the metalworking skills active. In addition to them refusing to make these items I am commonly finding my important crafters Penning/Pasturing animals instead of doing their jobs even when the only hauling skill they have enabled is Burial.

Pen/pasture animal isn't a hauling labour, it's a non-skill labour that can be taken by absolutely every adult dwarf. It's definitely not influenced by the "animal hauling" labour, which concerns only and exclusively the hauling of cages and animal traps (full and empty) to stockpiles.

Do you have profile settings for your smithys with a minimum skill of 'novice' or better? Dwarfs with 'rusty' skills will only work in shops which allow users with 'dabbling' skill. To make matters worse, high skill ratings (high master and above i think) never display the (rusty) note, even when the skill is rusty and prevents the dwarf from using the workshop.

If it's not that, it's more likely to be some sort of access problem, although you ought to get cancellations for some of those.

It just can't work like this, because I can't see any item values,

Erm, as far as i know price display depends entirely on your broker noble. A dwarf with absolutely no appraisal skill will trade with prices displayed if the fort has a broker with appraisal, and a dwarf with legendary appraisal skill won't have prices displayed if there's no broker at all or if the broker has no skill.
The easiest way to get a skilled broker without pre-planning is to make the very first trade free for all and appoint whoever takes the job as broker, right before opening the trade screen.

And maybe i'm not ambitious enough, but i find i can get quite enough early trade goods by simply using most of the bone and horn my butchery produces for crafts; that generally keeps me going alright until metalcrafting, prepared food and old clothes come online.

[Sutremaine]

If you want bone bolts, check to see if anyone has both bonecrafting and weaponsmithing.  Both are required on one dwarf.

Only if you want the same dwarf making both bone and metal bolts. Bone Crafting is for making bone bolts, Weaponsmithing is for making metal bolts.

You can use DFHack's 'siren' command to get dwarves off break, though it has minor side effects. Sleeping dwarves will be rudely awoken and dwarves taken off break will worry about the lack of protection, and the latter will go back on break after a while.

You can also cancel the pasturing job in the Units screen using r.

Do you have profile settings for your smithys with a minimum skill of 'novice' or better? Dwarfs with 'rusty' skills will only work in shops which allow users with 'dabbling' skill. To make matters worse, high skill ratings (high master and above i think) never display the (rusty) note, even when the skill is rusty and prevents the dwarf from using the workshop.

How did you determine this?

[Larix]

Do you have profile settings for your smithys with a minimum skill of 'novice' or better? Dwarfs with 'rusty' skills will only work in shops which allow users with 'dabbling' skill. To make matters worse, high skill ratings (high master and above i think) never display the (rusty) note, even when the skill is rusty and prevents the dwarf from using the workshop.

How did you determine this?

Not scientifically, but well - my dwarfs with "competent (rusty)" skill will reliably work in workshops with a maximum skill permission of "novice" and will not work in shops with a minimum skill requirement of "adequate". I think i first started to work it out when some "rusty" metalworker just wouldn't take a job in the smithy until the minimum skill requirement was entirely removed. I might be in error on the details, but i can confidently say that rusty skills combined with minimum skill workshop profiles are a great way to prevent work from getting done. Managed to prevent any wax crafts from being made for a full season until i checked the workshop profile and removed the "adequate" minimum setting, so my "adequate" and "competent" but rusty wax workers got back to work...

And "legendary" dwarfs who never used their legendary skill for a long time eventually become "Grand Master" and less without ever displaying the (rusty) tag.

[BoogieMan]

Do you have profile settings for your smithys with a minimum skill of 'novice' or better? Dwarfs with 'rusty' skills will only work in shops which allow users with 'dabbling' skill. To make matters worse, high skill ratings (high master and above i think) never display the (rusty) note, even when the skill is rusty and prevents the dwarf from using the workshop.

How did you determine this?

Not scientifically, but well - my dwarfs with "competent (rusty)" skill will reliably work in workshops with a maximum skill permission of "novice" and will not work in shops with a minimum skill requirement of "adequate". I think i first started to work it out when some "rusty" metalworker just wouldn't take a job in the smithy until the minimum skill requirement was entirely removed. I might be in error on the details, but i can confidently say that rusty skills combined with minimum skill workshop profiles are a great way to prevent work from getting done. Managed to prevent any wax crafts from being made for a full season until i checked the workshop profile and removed the "adequate" minimum setting, so my "adequate" and "competent" but rusty wax workers got back to work...

And "legendary" dwarfs who never used their legendary skill for a long time eventually become "Grand Master" and less without ever displaying the (rusty) tag.

Some of them are indeed rusty since I was having trouble finding more metals. That may very well be it, thanks!

 I think a combination of this the and issue with a Dwarf becoming a Baron getting ultra lazy for a few years is the source of my problem here.