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[Fnear]

I'm still confused. My marks barely touch the ranges. They're all piss poor in skills.

How exactly does the x-minimum per task work? I tend to leave it low, e.g. in a squad of five I'd leave it at maybe a minimum of two training, assuming I'll always at least have two ready to go.

To make any military guys train, I need to put them on inactive? Is that what I'm hearing? So, 'train' does nothing really?

It does nothing for archery.  It works fine for melee.  If you set your archer squads to train, they will train bashing each other with crossbows.

Assigning ammo, is that figure for the squad or per individual? I have it around 250 but still get marks / hunters going for ammo frequently.

The figure is per squad.

How much ammo can a quiver hold?

Did I get, marksdwarves use the hammer skill for their melee?

How do I avoid a marksdwarf preferring to melee enemies? I had one guy just belt undead with a steel crossbow instead of going back for ammo. He was great at it, sometimes one hit KO-ing, haha, but that isn't what he was supposed to be doing ಠ_ಠ

Yep.  They will bash enemies with their crossbows if they run out of ammo.  As a result, I generally station them behind fortifications (such that the point I order them to go to has no reachable tiles within a 3 tile radius that are not next to the fortifications - otherwise they stand someplace useless where they can't see enemies).  If they can't reach the enemy for melee combat, they won't think about it.  If they CAN reach the enemy, they'll charge with their crossbow the moment they run out of ammo.

Bonus off-topic questions.. I can't seem to link stockpiles when they're on different z-levels. Is this normal? Also, any tips on taking on undead? Sometimes I get a musk ox or similar and they absolutely destroy me. Sort of on topic.. how do I get military to retreat or move when enemies are nearby? It's as if once there's an engagement, it's a fight 'till the death.

Once dwarves engage the enemy, the blood mist clouds their minds and they are naught but killing machines, with no thoughts for their own safety.  Best bet is to have them fight in an area with walls and obstacles that block line of sight so that once visible enemies are dead, they can go back to obeying orders.

On stockpiles are you unable to pick the stockpile to link to?  Or do you have a link set up but it just doesn't work?  I've had a few weird issues that all go back to one of the items being part of an orphaned job somewhere in the system.  One time, all jobs related to cloth were messed up.  I guessed which partial stacks were causing problems, dumped them, reclaimed them, and everything went fine.  More recently, all marble hauling stopped working.  I found some wheelbarrows idle with marble in them, marked the marble for dumping, and it started working again (apparently one of the pieces of marble was mid-job when a stockpile was deleted?  And since that couldn't resolve, all marble was unusable?  Once it was re-assigned for dumping, the whole system started working again).  I have no idea if that's the problem you're describing.

[omg_scout]

Can anyone verify that they've successfully had marksdwarves train at the range when on a training schedule? Or does it only happen when inactive?

I can confirm. I keep all of my dorfs on training schedule. I have squads of 10 marksdorfs though, and always 2 of them must defend some burrow, so there is some rotation... but rest is training more or less in archery targets. But it is wasting ammo considering that after first disguised necro you have infinitive training targets outside of your fortress, and real combat training is much more effective than archery range.

[Damiac]

I wanted to add, you don't need to set minimum to anything other than 10 for sparring.  At least, they will spar, even when it is set to 10, although I understand squads of two are more likely to spar.  Unrelated to the original topic, but I just wanted to dispell that myth.

The minimium below 10 thing is required if you want them to spar. Sparring is a lot better then regular combat drills.