Print

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

[VerdantSF]

Ah, thanks for the tidbit re: active training of marksdwarves by using an overlapping barracks!  My marksdwarves are FINALLY training like they're supposed to.  They get most of their xp from live combat, but this is very helpful for preventing skill rust.

[crossmr]

Just tried this...4 archery targets, all set TIQ for the squad
an armor stand set TIQ for the squad (overlapping the targets
set them active

They're doing a dodging demonstration...
and one guy is waiting for a striking demonstration

They went back and forth doing dodging and striking.. as soon as I set them inactive they all started shooting..

[Larix]

Yes, demonstrations will interfere with archery practice of active squads. If you have any luck, they'll eventually level out on their supplementary skills and start shooting. If there are many military skills present in your squad, it may be more effective to set them inactive. On the other hand, if you have some completely skill-less recruits and make a squad out of them, they should actively train up quite nicely.

AFAIK, training dwarfs don't really assign themselves to a particular role, but rather look at the skills and equipment they have and go from there. Which might be less than useful when there's a dwarf with hammerdwarf skill in a crossbow squad...
BRB, gonna try this out.

[Tirion]

So, guys, how do you think the inactive squad method would work as a whole population draft? If I draft every civilian (minus hunters miners and woodcutters) into squads with a uniform containing a crossbow (armor optional) to wear off-duty, assign them bolts for training and combat, will they go to practice archery when idle, instead of standing in my meeting areas, socializing and throwing parties? What do I need to set up for this, only archery targets assigned to each squad, or barracks too?

[entelin]

I tried starting with two dwarves with teacher 5 + weapon skill 5 as mentioned above and that worked quite well.

[chevil]

Having everybody carry a crossbow in a inactive squad is a effective defense strategy and it will decrease socializing. I would also give them wooden or leather shields and a barrack.

I usually have at least two inactive marksdwarf squads and one active squad. If someone dies in my active squad I have a half trained replacement and if the need arises I can deploy a large amount of marksdwarves.

[Werdna]

So, guys, how do you think the inactive squad method would work as a whole population draft? If I draft every civilian (minus hunters miners and woodcutters) into squads with a uniform containing a crossbow (armor optional) to wear off-duty, assign them bolts for training and combat, will they go to practice archery when idle, instead of standing in my meeting areas, socializing and throwing parties? What do I need to set up for this, only archery targets assigned to each squad, or barracks too?

For inactive squads, you just need targets.  But for what you describe, you'll need lots of targets to maximize usage, and OBSCENE amounts of bolts.  Mass bolt production can chew through metal supplies quickly if you don't recover it and abuse the metal exploit; or you can go with more easily available bone/wood like I do but then the bolts are less effective.  Use trenches behind the targets to recover ammo to reduce waste.  Also, I'm not positive but IMHO making them fire at targets from further away (and leaving larger gaps between targets) results in more misses, and therefore a greater % of recoverable ammo. They still get xp from misses.  One plus is that if you use metal bolts, you can keep a ton of dwarves busy doing archery practice/bolt melting/forging new bolts; you just need to periodically do a mass melt designation on the bolt trenches.  You also may generate more bars of metal than you started with thanks to the exploit...

Entelin: Try adding some dodge skill at embark, at least 1.  Dodging is an extremely valuable skill and it levels much slower than weapon skill.  They'll learn then teach dodging naturally, but giving them some to start with will accelerate it.

[Eddis]

I tried starting with two dwarves with teacher 5 + weapon skill 5 as mentioned above and that worked quite well.

Yep. I'm now about 8 years in and have 8 killer axemen (2 per squad still for tactical positioning to guard caravans). waves of siege/ambush come, i throw 4 of em towards them and watch as it rains body parts flying all over  too bad that increases cleanup time tho  (I prefer a spotless surface map).

The original 2 are at 20 teacher now, the next 2 are at 12.

I have noticed that raising dodge and armor user is significantly slower than weapon, shield and fighter skill. I had to make a danger room to train these up to a decent level, but even a dwarf with 20 weapon/fighter/shield will rage through packs of mobs like a white guy going through japanese girlfriends in tokyo (cough... yeah ). Did I mention that I live in Tokyo? 

In fact, only 1 of my guys has gotten injured and that was early on before he got higher skill. All of them are rock solid.

[VerdantSF]

too bad that increases cleanup time tho  (I prefer a spotless surface map).

I know what you mean!  The majority of my dwarves wield axes, but now that the growth bug is fixed, I'm thinking of favoring hammers and maces.  Blunt weapons still kick butt, but without all those body parts all over the place.