Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[trees]

a) Is there a way for marksdwarves be made to use another weapon along with their crossbow and use it instead of crossbow-bashing? My tests say no so far.

You can assign them a second weapon in their uniform and they'll pick it up and use it in melee, yeah. If it's edged they'll give it priority over crossbow-bashing.

b) What's a good material for bolts? Does weight need to be balanced with edge for better momentum and thus perhaps deeper penetration, or is it only the edge that goes into the calculation?

I'm pretty sure weight does effect penetration quite a bit. Copper seems to be the best material, both in amount and actual power, for bolts.

c) What's the best kind of enemy to supplement marksdwarves, which tend to cripple more than kill? I'm thinking warhammers, because they penetrate armor very easily and a blow to the head of all but the largest enemies will usually kill instantly or shatter the upper spine, leading to suffocation. Since the enemies will most likely be unconscious, the head will be open for a strike.

It's mostly personal preference. I tend to go with axes or swords, but I'm sure that warhammers would work well too.

d) Is movement speed tied to firing speed, and if so, is it enough to warrant leather over full armor?

Movement speed is the same as turn speed, and I'm pretty sure it takes a certain amount of turns for the dwarf to "reload" and fire again, so yes. If you position them properly, they should rarely take any hits anyway unless you're facing an elite marksman who can shoot through fortifications, so metal armor is not required.

e) Does bolt or crossbow quality matter at all? Being the densest crossbow-making material, is copper the best option for making Xbows?

I know that crossbow quality matters quite a bit, affecting accuracy and I think firing speed. Bolts probably don't matter as much, since it'll just make tiny adjustments to the damage done and not the probability to hit.

I've found that, in general, marksdwarves are very useful when your melee soldiers are just fledgling recruits, as facing half of an army of bleeding, vomiting, unconscious goblins is a lot easier than a full squad of them. They also don't really require much training, as emptying their quivers will train them rather quickly and a hail of inaccurate fire is surprisingly effective. Sometimes, if I care to set it up, I make groups of general peasants/haulers/unskilled laborers patrol the ramparts for a season and have them rotate. It's very nice.

[Roraborialisforealis]

a) Is there a way for marksdwarves be made to use another weapon along with their crossbow and use it instead of crossbow-bashing? My tests say no so far.

You can assign them a second weapon in their uniform and they'll pick it up and use it in melee, yeah. If it's edged they'll give it priority over crossbow-bashing.

b) What's a good material for bolts? Does weight need to be balanced with edge for better momentum and thus perhaps deeper penetration, or is it only the edge that goes into the calculation?

I'm pretty sure weight does effect penetration quite a bit. Copper seems to be the best material, both in amount and actual power, for bolts.

c) What's the best kind of enemy to supplement marksdwarves, which tend to cripple more than kill? I'm thinking warhammers, because they penetrate armor very easily and a blow to the head of all but the largest enemies will usually kill instantly or shatter the upper spine, leading to suffocation. Since the enemies will most likely be unconscious, the head will be open for a strike.

It's mostly personal preference. I tend to go with axes or swords, but I'm sure that warhammers would work well too.

d) Is movement speed tied to firing speed, and if so, is it enough to warrant leather over full armor?

Movement speed is the same as turn speed, and I'm pretty sure it takes a certain amount of turns for the dwarf to "reload" and fire again, so yes. If you position them properly, they should rarely take any hits anyway unless you're facing an elite marksman who can shoot through fortifications, so metal armor is not required.

e) Does bolt or crossbow quality matter at all? Being the densest crossbow-making material, is copper the best option for making Xbows?

I know that crossbow quality matters quite a bit, affecting accuracy and I think firing speed. Bolts probably don't matter as much, since it'll just make tiny adjustments to the damage done and not the probability to hit.

I've found that, in general, marksdwarves are very useful when your melee soldiers are just fledgling recruits, as facing half of an army of bleeding, vomiting, unconscious goblins is a lot easier than a full squad of them. They also don't really require much training, as emptying their quivers will train them rather quickly and a hail of inaccurate fire is surprisingly effective. Sometimes, if I care to set it up, I make groups of general peasants/haulers/unskilled laborers patrol the ramparts for a season and have them rotate. It's very nice.

Some minor edits: Hammers tend to be very poor crossbow supplements, as crossbows of the same material will perform very similar to a hammer of that metal, so a crossbow dwarf with a hammer will most likely never use the hammer (Ive seen them rushing off into melee combat instead, using the crossbow.) They also tend to rush off to get them-self killed when equipped with anything sufficiently big (Axes, spears, not short-swords (as much, but if their swordskill exceeds their crossbow skill, all bets are off,)) it seems.)

[tommy521]

Only marksdwarves. Ever. Granted, I've only ever made about three successful Fun hating militaries, and marksdwarves just allowed me to keep them safe.

What were most of your bolts made out of?  Back in the day, I used a lot of bone bolts, but those take soooooo long to make now.

Late response, most bolts I use are made of copper or iron. Iron works well enough when I have lots of it, copper is also decent. Though, I've heard weight has no real effect...

[automaticsquid]

i know that training melee against live targets is more effective is there any data concerning the effect for marksdwarves? like if i put a goblin or something on the other side of fortifications and had my marksdwarves shoot at it for a while as training

[Roraborialisforealis]

Only marksdwarves. Ever. Granted, I've only ever made about three successful Fun hating militaries, and marksdwarves just allowed me to keep them safe.

What were most of your bolts made out of?  Back in the day, I used a lot of bone bolts, but those take soooooo long to make now.

Late response, most bolts I use are made of copper or iron. Iron works well enough when I have lots of it, copper is also decent. Though, I've heard weight has no real effect...

Silver bolts have been reported to break bones more often.

[Urist Da Vinci]

There was a thread all about bolt testing:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=89997.0

TLDR:
-Bolt threads always fill with speculation and people commenting on how they think things work.
-According to many tests run by IT 000, weight doesn't affect bolt damage.

[JackoftheBox]

Thanks for the link Mr.Urist

[Psieye]

With an abundance of resources (be it bone or metal), I make all my haulers use crossbows when it's siege time as there's much less for them to be hauling in war time. Invaders will meander through my entrance maze while 50+ haulers shoot them from above. Some dodge-me trap or such keeps the invaders from ever making it out of the maze. Melee fodder act as living, one-way fortifications by standing in front of (and on the same z-level as) my shooters. Once the siege is broken and the survivors are crawling away in retreat, that's when the melee go down to get some kills.

[Azure]

That's awesome!  How did you keep the marksdwarves restocked with arrows?  The patrol/supply-depot-out-of-sight trick?

Pay attention to how much ammo is assigned to who. the default is 25 per dwarf or 250 per 10-man squad.(indiv. choice weapon will autoassign 250 to the squad even all the dwarves grab axes.) If you have 1000/1750 ammo there's 3 squads that wont do jack except get pummeled. Try to have some extra item haulers getting ammo to the stockpile and keeping clutter low.

[trees]

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=89997.0

Ah, I've never seen that before. Thanks.

[Sandrew]

My military is always composed of regular squads on full-time duty which are bolstered by civilian miltias during sieges. This effectively means that all useless male dwarfs (about 25% of my population) are on year-round duty, and all other non-essential civilians carry a crossbow with them at all times. When sieges come, I can usually bring about 75% of my population to the field. Or place them behind my fortifications.

So yeah, about a third of my military are marksdwarves. After a siege or four at least.

[Starver]

Thanks!  Why no/few bins? Is there still a bug where marksdwarves won't reload ammo from bins?

Absolutely no idea about the bug, it's just because I like seeing how full the stockpiles are.

Firstly, bins and barrels need producing.  It's useful to set just one bin in each of multiple (single-item-type) stockpiles, rather than inadvertently all the available bins in one and letting the others gunge up with entirely unbinned items.  This is what I do with tradesgoods (one for amulets, one for figurines).  Later, I tend to up a 5x5 stockpile to 5 bins.  Once I'm swimming in such stuff, I'm usually also swimming in bins (by manufacture or by import of binned goods (exporting no bins at all), but I still don't fill the stockpile.  Other stockpile types also benefit from this.

Secondly, for some product that I might actually run out of, seeing empty stockpile spaces is a handy visual hint.  Seeing a stockpile full of unknown-'filledness' is not so handy.


Whether this should be used across the board, I don't know, but I tend to initially set all stockpiles to zero bins/barrels, and then allow them the limited amount once I know I'm not devoid of either their designated produce or containers to put them in.  This goes for everything from metal bars to weapons.  Just about every product except for decomposable food, which I tend to keep as maximum barrels to avoid the kitchens cluttering with rotting stuff.  But it's still nice to know whether those containers are empty/full by seeing that there's 'overflow'.


For the one you're asking about, the ammo stockpile beneath the ranges, I just let them sit there (multiple-items on a tile, in some places, given that they fall there).  They don't need moving, they can't be restacked to a single-item of multiple-bolts and I just have no reason to put them into bins at all, really.  If I'm avoiding a bug, that's a co-inky-dink.


edited for bad.... editing...
x2