Okay, many hours of testing later, I bring to you, my marksdwarf training regime, and the theory behind it.
I'll start by explaining the mechanics I've tried and tested.
1) Marksdwarfs only do archery practice when they may IDLE. So no hauling labors, and tell them to sleep as need via the scheduling system.
2) Marksdwarfs don't refill their quiver when they are not doing a military action. This means, that even though you can tell your dwarfs to have different ammo types for training and fighting, really, all that's going to do is prevent them from doing archery practice, so make bolts that you don't mind losing a lot of, I found bone worked well enough for fighting, and was easy enough to get that I could use it for training also.
3) Squad ammunition is ammunition allocated for the squad to maintain, not the individual. So if you want each dwarf in a squad of 10 to hold 30 bolts, squad ammunition needs to equal 300.
4) Archery practice is a solo activity. So, when you designate your archery ranges, make each target it's own range, and do not over lap the range over another target.
Okay, now, I'll give a rundown of a single, four marksdwarf squad, that practices via archery ranges.
1) I'm going to ensure the dwarfs have all their equipment set up through the military menu just as though they were any melee squad, but I'm going to set the squad ammunition m>F assuring that they are using 100(25 per dwarf) bone bolts for both T>Training and C>Combat.
2) I then, am going to set their training schedule via the military menu m>S, so that their training order requires a minimum of two dwarfs (you can set this to any amount so long as you make the minimum lower than the total amount of dwarfs in the squad. Any dwarfs outside the minimum will be doing archery practice.). This should allow two of my dwarfs to spar while the other two may IDLE and thus do archery practice. One added benefit of this, is that it also causes the dwarfs to refill their quivers to combat readiness, making restocking their ammo automagic.
Fail-Safe
If you are having trouble getting them to do archery practice with the schedule, you can set them all to inactive. This will allow all four of the dwarfs to do archery practice, but also means they will never refill their quiver. To force them to refill their quiver you must station them with the S>squad menu, and then remove the station order after they have equipped more bolts. But this requires micromanagement, and that is something we want to avoid.
Author
Topic: Archery Ranges with no archers (Read 1121 times)