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[Edges]

I set up a shooting gallery to train my marksdwarves. I built a whole bunch of goblin cages connected to a lever behind pits and fortifications with shooters on the other side. Someone pulled the lever and marksdwarves started leveling up. Yay!

But wait... now I'm flooded with announcements that my workers have stopped work because they've been interrupted by goblins and the target practice guys are the only goblins around. Even some farmer 10 floors up is bothered.

How do I get the workers to chill about the target practice downstairs?

[Poindexterity]

how likely are dwarves to walk past this shooting gallery.
cause they're JUST smart enough to know that goblins can kill them, but not to realize they can't squeeze through fortifications.

try moving the gallery further away from the activity centers of your fort.

[Edges]

No one walks by. It's just the marksdwarves and the goblins down on that floor. Everyone else is at least a few floors away. Some are 20 tiles from a stair that's 10 floors above. Maybe they're bothered by the distant sound of goblin screams.

[Sphalerite]

They should only be interrupted by goblins they can see.  Distance doesn't matter much (range for being scared is about 25 tiles) but they shouldn't be scared unless they have a direct line of sight to the goblin somehow.

[Poindexterity]

No one walks by. It's just the marksdwarves and the goblins down on that floor. Everyone else is at least a few floors away. Some are 20 tiles from a stair that's 10 floors above. Maybe they're bothered by the distant sound of goblin screams.

i guess take a LONG CAREFUL look around and make good and damn sure there aren't any goblins who've escaped somehow. That's the only other option.

if not, post some screen shots

[Niccolo]

i guess take a LONG CAREFUL look around and make good and damn sure there aren't any goblins who've escaped somehow. That's the only other option.

This.

I had one of the finickity little bastards escape on me once. Caused no end of hassles, since I hadn't quite gotten around to disarming him just yet.

Fucking lashers.

[Edges]

They definitely hadn't escaped. There was only one way out and it was a locked door that was in the middle of my view the whole time. And the exit from the z-level (also in my view the whole time) couldn't be reached without going melee with a squad of marksdwarves. And, the scores of "disturbed by" announcements started immediately after pulling the lever before goblins even had time to go 3 tiles let alone get to the locked door.

As for line-of-sight, my !science! begs to differ. After an announcement "Planter stops plant seeds: Interrupted by goblin..." I paused right away and zoomed to that announcement. It was 10 z-levels upstairs in the farm between the seed stockpile and the plot. I look a long look and there was not a single goblin on the whole level.

What ended up happening was that production pretty much stopped on the whole fortress. Idlers went from 1 (the medical dwarf) to 45 (out of 82) within about 2 minutes. So I sent the hammermasters down. I put them in the airlock, unlocked the goblin door and wiped out the goblins. The announcement spam stopped as soon as the last one was brained by a hammer.

It's discouraging because I just want to train marksdwarves. I've failed with the archery ranges despite reading every archery-training -problem thread and trying every combination I can think of for active/non-active/designating range/designating multiple ranges/C and T bolts/etc./etc. So I thought, to heck with the ranges, I'll just train them on live targets. But now that won't work because it shuts down the rest of the fortress.

All I can think of is building a shooing gallery in a completely walled-off, independent outpost on the other side of the embark map. Oh well. Another big project just to try to give the shooters some xp.

[TheGazebo]

Do you have any stairs linking ypour shooting gallery to the rest of your fortress? Dwarves can see hostiles on different z levels if they are near a staircase. The same applies to ramps and channels.

[Rude]

Usually when I find my marksdwarves refuse to train with archery targets, its because the direction is not right.

to be thorough:
 make a target
 make a room from the target
 pick a direction (using "awds" it should say "shooting from left to right" or something) <-- this step is my #1 cause for refusal to train
 then - / + to the squad you want to train there and "t". Should show a light blue T next to their squad's name

If you know how to setup melee dwarves to spar (and if you have decent hammerers then I'm sure you do) then you can ignore this bit.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 Make sure their schedule/ alert has them training. Notice that the alerts screen and the schedule screen are connected and schedules default to the active/training alert. (So you can setup separate schedules and switch between them at the flick of a few buttons) So unless you've messed with things a bit (then I assume you know what you're doing) then you want them on Active/training.

 If they stand around the meeting hall as recruits / xbowdwarves then there's something wrong with your ammo supply or your training room (the Archery target). If they don't turn into recruits / xbowdwarves (act like civs) then there is something wrong with your schedules/ alerts (they are inactive, or not scheduled)

Do they shoot bolts in combat or bash? If they bash, then check that they have bolts:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

"m" "e" "P" and check to make sure they each have quivers as well as crossbows. Then "v"eiw their "i"nventory, -/+ to their quiver and check its contents for bolts. but if they were firing at loose gobs, then I'm sure you have that right. You could confirm that they were firing with the "r"eport  screen. and an alternative to a shooting gallery would be to send them after wild animals (I recommend harmless animals at first so they don't try to bash a cave croc's head in with a bone crossbow or something.)

If they don't have bolts then they may just be behaving a little glitchy:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This seems to happen to ppl occasionally and I don't know a definite fix. try disbanding/ reinstating the squad, flooding the fort with extra bolts (hunter's or other squads may have already claimed your entire supply, even if they don't carry them around) assigning 1 stack for training and combat (make it bigger if you have lots of dwarves in the squad -- Maybe, 2 stacks of 25 for each dwarf. so 100 for 2, 500 for 10) giving move orders for a moment (to jar them awake), checking "z" stocks for forbidden equipment or shortages or just flood the fort with magma ("see what you made me do!?")

As for the interruptions, the only thing I can think of is that somehow civs DO somehow have  line of sight. Fortifications are totally see through, some glass products may be see through (portals?), grates and z levels don't block LoS either. you could drop a bow gob in and see if he shoots at any civs...

[Edges]

Do you have any stairs linking ypour shooting gallery to the rest of your fortress? Dwarves can see hostiles on different z levels if they are near a staircase. The same applies to ramps and channels.

This must be it, I guess. It's definitely not even close to a realistic line of sight but whatever. The goblins are 2-5 tiles from fortifications which themselves are 7 tiles from the stairs. But it is that same staircase that connects to all the guys that were disturbed. Some of the disturbed guys were 10 floors up and even a little ways from the stairs. But I guess that's DF geometry. 

Usually when I find my marksdwarves refuse to train with archery targets, its because the direction is not right.

to be thorough:
 make a target
 make a room from the target
 pick a direction (using "awds" it should say "shooting from left to right" or something) <-- this step is my #1 cause for refusal to train
 then - / + to the squad you want to train there and "t". Should show a light blue T next to their squad's name

...

Yeah, I've tried these things. Thanks though. I can get one guy to do archery practice every now and then but that's it (it's not always the same guy and it's quite rare). All the target directions are solid. There's a blue T next to the squad name, etc. I've tried it with just one target designated as a room that encompasses all the targets and I've tried it with each target designated as a room. I've tried it with small rooms in case there was a max range and I've tried it with large rooms in case there was a min. I've given them numerous move orders. Tried assigning lots of bolts or just a few. I've made sure that there's no forbidden bolts on the stocks screen. I've let them use any bolt so they don't fall prey to the classic wrong-bolt-so-I'm-paralyzed bug. I've taken them off duty for a while and then back on. No luck.

I can get them to spar like any other squad though but this only builds their hammer skill.

I often find that most of them don't have any ammo though. Yet they do have the green symbol next to the ammo types in the military ammo screen as if it's equipped. I wait and wait but they just stand around with empty quivers.

I can't train them as hunters because I've long since eradicated all wildlife. So there are no hunters to take ammo away from soldiers and there is no ammo assigned to these non-existent hunters. But when I did have hunters, they leveled up on wildlife quite quickly.

I haven't tried disbanding the squad yet. I guess I'll try that. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Nan]

I've hard dwarves disturbed by enemies they can't see. It has rarely happened for me with forgotten beasts in caverns which are totally sealed off. However I've never seen it happen on a large or problematic scale.

[Rude]

That sounds like the glitchy behavior and I don't think anyone really know why it happens. you could try removing all the assigned bolts from the squad so they could be reassigned.
Is anyone in the hospital? I suppose it's possible that the lower ranked members would not be able to pick up bolts until the higher members had and if one is in the hospital for a long time.... (that is completely blind speculation though, I have no idea if that could be an issue)
If there is a minimum size, its very small (like 2 tiles or less) bc I've had some very small ranges. you want every archery target to be its own room, they can overlap completely though.
 It seems to me like you have more of a bolt collection problem than any problem with the ranges themselves since they are standing around with empty quivers. you could try forbidding all the bolts in the fortress except several specific stacks that your sure they have access to, reset the queued bolts in the ammunition screen and watch to see if they pick them up.
Try wood or bone bolts instead of metal.