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[Garath]

I recently started a new fort and encountered te by now well known problem that my marksdwarfs wouldn't train at the archery range unless inactive and idle, when set to active/training they stand around, usually in their room, with the job 'going to archery practise'

After some time I was moving most of my military into the daylight and made a second target range and now they do shoot there while their orders are active/training. The difference between the two ranges is that with one the targets stand right next to eachother and the other has a free tile between each target:
A A A A A A
AAAAAAAA
They do shoot at the more spateous one, but when I set them to shoot at the targets that stand right next to eachother they stop again.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but maybe someone has this problem and wants to try if it works?

[Sutremaine]

I tested this briefly and saw them doing archery practice in the barracks with targets that were both one tile apart and right next to each other. Any dwarves standing still with 'go to archery practice' were doing this while there was an archery range in the barracks that wasn't set to have that squad training there.

[Garath]

I hope I've been around enough that you trust me to have all the settings correct and still the marksdwarfs couldn't be made to practise (unless idle and not scheduled to) untill I made the second range. Maybe the firing direction (left to right) was to blame?

[Blue_Dwarf]

I've always made ranges with some aesthetics, so never had targets right next to each other. My dwarves still had issues training.

Maybe you're on to something though, keep observing.

[Garath]

I think I'm going to dedicate my next fort to different archery range setups just to understand what is going wrong, it's getting annoying.

[Sutremaine]

I hope I've been around enough that you trust me to have all the settings correct and still the marksdwarfs couldn't be made to practise (unless idle and not scheduled to) untill I made the second range. Maybe the firing direction (left to right) was to blame?

Well until you made the OP I could never get active dwarves doing archery practice, and then it suddenly clicked into place... >.>

Just to go through it, the conditions I did the quick testing under:

Dwarves: Squad of 10, 9 Elite, most with a couple of levels in Fighting and Dodging but no other non-archery skills.
Firing ranges: Five, up against a wall with no barriers between them, L -> R firing, size one less than the default. Each target set to have the squad training at it.
Barracks: Bed, overlapping every one of the targets (just the targets themselves) and assigned to the squad. The xxx barracks and the x x x barracks did not overlap.

Were you using barracks as part of the firing range, or just archery targets? If it's the latter, I'll need to redo the archery targets.

[Garath]

I had a barracks partly overlap the target range that was working, the other had no barracks overlapping. The overlapping barracks had noone set to train at it though, and the range also attracted training marksdwarfs when a barracks was set to allow them to train there at the same time

[Sutremaine]

Haven't been able to replicate the results yet. The closest I've come is having 10 targets in a row all set to train the squad, but with only alternating ones used. I built five with one tile between them, saw them used, then ordered the squad elsewhere while I slotted in another five targets. When the marksdwarves returned, they used all the new targets and ignored all the old ones.

There may also be some other peculiarities in placement -- marksdwarves don't seem to like using any range within the firing line of another, even when the targets aren't right next to each other. Exact distance is unknown. Might have something to do with build order of the targets, might not.

Testing is also made tricky by squads having a 'memory' of training orders. I set the squad to train at the barracks, then removed them from the barracks list. They carried on training, finished the session, and went back for more sessions. Trying the same with the archery targets saw them carry on for a while, but a few weeks later half the squad weren't doing anything but standing around active.

[Garath]

so even the testing for a problem with the military is getting close to impossible due to more problems with the military