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[Urist McShaft]

Another set of noob questions I am trying to figure out.
I have been creating sets of steel armor as I draft soldiers.
They seem to equip weapons fine, but not armor.  They will usually wear chest armor, leg armor, and that is about it.  They won't wear gloves or boots or helmets.
I get the feeling this is because they may not be able to wear that in addition to whatever clothes(caps, mittens, etc) they are already wearing.
Any advice from those with experience?

Better go ahead and ask another question to save time.
I love the idea of ranged attackers.  I am having issues with archery range setup and bolt selection.
It took me a while to figure out that if you have multiple items that could be made into a "room", you only need to select one.  I am assuming that archery ranges work like this as well.  I set up 3-5 archery ranges together, then select the one in the middle, make it encompass the other targets and create a room.  They only seem to fire at the center target(the one I used to make the room), and they only practice one at a time.  How do I set up for them to shoot at all of the targets?
As far as bolt selection, I have them use wood bolts for training and metal for combat.  They never seem to carry anything but wood.  How is this mechanic supposed to work?
Lets say I train them up to where I want them to be, how to I make them equip metal bolts so that I can have them patrol or station them somewhere?
I was invaded by a large force(20+ goblins, 20+ trolls).  My archers had some awesome fortifications to shoot behind - too bad they were all firing wooden bolts.  They may have killed a goblin.  After they got close enough, I just let the 10 melee dwarves finish the job.
Any help with bolt selection strategies would be greatly appreciated.

[clownwolf]

Yeah, always use "replace clothing" by pressing 'r' I think. Make sure you have head/body/legs/hand/feet armor for the entire squad, even cheap ones, before doing this though. You should actually do this to your entire population so everyone is armored. You also won't get a problem with tons and tons of used clothing slowing down your game.

Once you assign stuff to a dwarf, I found that not worrying about whether they equipped it or not is fine. Just check back in a season and check who is missing armor pieces using Dwarf Therapist. Re-assign different armor to the pieces that dwarves refused to pick up, and re-check in another few months. Usually by the second season everyone will be using everything you have assigned.

I just updated the wiki on what I found to be a working setup on archery targets. If you have 5 targets, you need to make them into seperate rooms, and assign the marksdwarves squad to train in each of them. After that, I create a barracks with the targets inside the area so they can train in discipline sometimes too.

If you assign two kinds of bolts, it gets kind of buggy, so just use one kind of ammunition. A good setup would be to a have a dog/cat/pig ranch to get a steady supply of bones, and just make thousands of bone bolts for both training and combat. Bone bolts are effective enough for goblins (not so effective against forgotten beasts). Unfortunately, only 5 bolts are produced per bone and a squad of marksdwarves will burn through a thousand bolts before they even hit level 5 in skill.

EDIT: Actually, DO NOT armor up or assign weapons to your dedicated miners/woodcutters/hunters because they will strip down and remove everything after you set them to inactive. Assigning picks/axes/crossbows also makes them unusable in actual dwarf jobs so don't do it. Also, make sure you deactivate these three jobs on all full-time militia members.

[SeelenJägerTee]

[...]
EDIT: Actually, DO NOT armor up or assign weapons to your dedicated miners/woodcutters/hunters because they will strip down and remove everything after you set them to inactive. Assigning picks/axes/crossbows also makes them unusable in actual dwarf jobs so don't do it. Also, make sure you deactivate these three jobs on all full-time militia members.

Haven't had soldiers in the new version (lack of invasions made it a somewhat moot point) but you used to be able to tell them to wear their equipment when off duty.

[greycat]

Haven't had soldiers in the new version (lack of invasions made it a somewhat moot point) but you used to be able to tell them to wear their equipment when off duty.

I'm sure you can tell them that, but it doesn't work.  A miner will never, ever, ever wear any military armor while digging.  It simply can't be done.  There aren't even DFHack workarounds.

Bug #1451

[Melting Sky]

If you assign two kinds of bolts, it gets kind of buggy, so just use one kind of ammunition. A good setup would be to a have a dog/cat/pig ranch to get a steady supply of bones, and just make thousands of bone bolts for both training and combat. Bone bolts are effective enough for goblins (not so effective against forgotten beasts). Unfortunately, only 5 bolts are produced per bone and a squad of marksdwarves will burn through a thousand bolts before they even hit level 5 in skill.

Bolts and ranged weapons in general were MASSIVELY nerfed in a recent update. You want to stick with all metal bolts now.

[clownwolf]

Bolts and ranged weapons in general were MASSIVELY nerfed in a recent update. You want to stick with all metal bolts now.

I was really outdated on my info. I just tested this now.

He is right, stick to all metal bolts right now when going into fights. Bone bolts only bruise the skin and bones right now when hitting unarmored elf/goblin parts. Bone bolts are as useless as Wood now.

[Melting Sky]

Bolts and ranged weapons in general were MASSIVELY nerfed in a recent update. You want to stick with all metal bolts now.

I was really outdated on my info. I just tested this now.

He is right, stick to all metal bolts right now when going into fights. Bone bolts only bruise the skin and bones right now when hitting unarmored elf/goblin parts. Bone bolts are as useless as Wood now.

Yeah its really quite ridiculous. It's to the point that bone and wooden projectile behavior should probably be reported as a bug. The same is true for metal projectiles behavior versus steel armor or better. We went from having crazy armor piercing rail guns to pea shooters.