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[VerdantSF]

I took a break from DF, but when I saw the news of the latest release, I decided to jump back in.  I was really excited to see the major boost that hammers got, but I haven't seen much on marksdwarves.  Are they useful in battle now?  Do they train on ranges when assigned?

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Things are still a little bit wonky, but the marksdwarfs fire and train.

Can't tell how useful ranged weaponry is.  One the one hand, I saw a bolt from a human marksman tear a kobold's lower body off.  On the other hand, the goblins don't seem any better at wounding my legendary axeman than before, and my own marksdwarfs do a lot of firing, with every bolt glancing off of armor, even off of silk.  It may be that they aren't skilled enough yet; it may be that I should stop using silver and copper bolts.  I'm not sure.

[Shrugging Khan]

Now, don't listen too closely to what I'm saying, but I'd say that combat has become more realistic. Crossbows will do very well if the bolt is made of something strong enough to defeat the target's armour, and if the marksdwarf is skilled enough to hit his target. Really, they *can* be a valuable asset, *if* you train and equip them right.

Or did you just mean the technical aspects? You'll have to fiddle a little, but it does appear to work.

[LordSlowpoke]

Things are still a little bit wonky, but the marksdwarfs fire and train.

Can't tell how useful ranged weaponry is.  One the one hand, I saw a bolt from a human marksman tear a kobold's lower body off.  On the other hand, the goblins don't seem any better at wounding my legendary axeman than before, and my own marksdwarfs do a lot of firing, with every bolt glancing off of armor, even off of silk.  It may be that they aren't skilled enough yet; it may be that I should stop using silver and copper bolts.  I'm not sure.

Silver and copper versus anything won't work. Even masterwork copper axes inflict bruises or light cuts at most.. However, if you got a hold on iron bolts, we'd be slowly moving into actually killing your enemy. And the human marksmen? They use bronze versus some silk loincloth. It's a matter of sharpness and durablity.

Fakeedit: Ninja'd.

[personofshadow]

it may be that I should stop using silver and copper bolts

I wonder if those silver bolts would work well against werewolves, I've run afoul the beasties a few times

[VerdantSF]

I wonder if those silver bolts would work well against werewolves, I've run afoul the beasties a few times

Dwarven science!  Let us know if you find out =D!

[Hyndis]

Just use the arena. Get some marksdwarves vs creatures of various types. Vary the ammo used and the armor the creature has. You can then pick the best overall ammo type from there against different armor.

Most likely you're going to want iron or steel bolts.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

I went with the cheap metals for a couple of reasons.  First, I don't have any source of iron on my map, other than the constant goblin ambushes.  Two, I've heard reports that adamantine bolts weren't doing much, which led me to believe that material density is still the most important factor.  One of these days I'll make some bronze bolts, see if that works any better.  Probably won't bother until I have a legendary marksdwarf or two, see if skill means anything other than accuracy and rate of fire.

[personofshadow]

Well I just tested 3 werewolves against 3 adequate marksdwarves with iron crossbows and silver bolts

They seemed to annihilate the werewolves pretty hard, but could that just be because they don't wear any armor?

[Fishbreath]

Try with some regular iron bolts and see if you notice a difference, perhaps?

[Misterstone]

Marksdwarves seem to more or less work, HOWEVER it seems that they still do not take ammo from bins, so you have make sure no ammo stockpiles allow bins (use q on the stockpile, set max bins to 0).  As long as you have iron to make bolts with, you are OK as far as I can tell.

Personally I think it's a good thing that crossbows are more realistic now; in the old game a few untrained dwarves with bone crossbows and wood bolts could take out anything that wasn't a massive undead creature, it seemed.  Also in adv mode people were always complaining about how a legendary bowman/marksman would annihilate them as soon as it appeared on the screen and scored a direct hit to the brain from 100 tiles away.  But this business about copper and silver not cutting through cloth sounds wonky.