Getting your crossbow troops to useful is tricky in dwarf fortress. The violent little maniacs want so badly to bash things with their crossbow rather than use it for its intended purpose. There are a lot of ways things can go wrong, and any one of them can stop your troops from being useful for the amount of effort put into them.
The melee weapons in Dwarf Fortress are very powerful, so much so that some people skip crossbows entirely. I don't blame them. You can train them up, equip them, deploy them wisely and still have them charge in, biting dragons and bashing them with their crossbows rather than firing them.
But crossbows are also a form of magic in the game in that they are a ranged attack. They allow a dwarf to hit opponents from a distance, even doing so from behind defenses. They are useful for bringing down opponents in the air or getting monsters that are stuck on the ceiling of your cavern.
So first I'm going to talk about everything that can go wrong with crossbow teams. Then I'll talk about how to put together an effective one. Last I'll talk about everything I did in my fort to get the crossbow teams to be as useful as possible.
Here are the reasons why a crossbow user fails:
They would rather bite things than shoot at them. You kind of have to force them to use the ranged attack. Even highly trained crossbow teams try to do biting, kicking and wrestling attacks. Oh, and shield and crossbow bashing. They love that.
They fire, but miss. Even high level teams miss. Being higher level helps.
They want to shoot, but have no ammunition, or run out quickly. And the nearest ammo is far away.
Their uniform doesn't have "carry ammunition" toggled on
They're using bone or wood ammo vs armored targets or monsters. Sure you can hunt normal animals with that stuff, but against any armored target, I don't think you're even tickling them. My sole exception for this is if you've managed to capture yourself a bronze colossus. Then use that for infinite target practice.
Battlefield conditions: they are falling, drowning, webbed, on fire, exhausted, give in to the pain, whatever.
You order a team to go somewhere and none or not very many show up.
They don't like your leadership and this is their mean spirited way of getting you back by causing you frustration. I may have made this one up, but it sure feels like it.
So here's what you can do to make them use their crossbows roughly in order of how easy it is to do.
Put them behind defenses. Make them fight from behind fortifications and make the enemy come to you. Just a wall or fortifications isn't enough on the surface. A dwarf with even the slightest bit of climbing skill will climb over them to get at their opponents. In my fort I have siege entrances into the caves where teams can fire on invading forgotten beasts, and if I see them tearing off for the entrance to fight them hand to hand I have doors I can lock. They know instantly when the door is locked no matter where they are.
Train them up. I feel like until they hit level 5 in skill use they are way more likely to bash with the crossbow than fire it, and after about 5 there is a good chance they will use it properly. There are several different ways to train them. I'll get into it more when I talk about what I did.
Use metal ammo, have plenty of metal ammo. I like to train with it and use it in combat to save time on their part and hassle on mine. This is harder to do on worlds with resources turned down. It's still entirely possible through trade or goblinite.
When you set up your crossbow squad, make sure you have enough quivers for everyone. Make sure any target you mean for them to use is individually toggled on so they can use it. Make sure if they are training successfully to keep up their ammo supply. Two teams can go through literally hundreds of bolts in a single month if they're practicing a lot.
If you give them armor, make sure they get trained in using it. A dwarf with a high dexterity in full plate mail can outrun a kobold thief. A low level dwarf with no dex and no armor use can barely move in heavy armor. It doesn't take long for them to learn how to use it even if they are low dex, and then they can get around as fast as the others. When you add a new lower level dwarve to a squad you might notice this effect when you send them to train and the new guys who needs the training the most are the slowest and last to show up.
High level crossbow teams can stand well back behind fortifications and still shoot. But they take it too far. It's better to keep the area they are in narrow so they shoot as soon as possible.
The same goes for enemy goblins. An archer of high enough skill can stand well back and fire through the defenses. This is one reason I like to train up crossbow teams in all combat skills. One of those skills is dodging. Even when they are behind defenses sometimes enemies kind of teleport through walls. This is why I like to have my team to have armor and other fighting skills than just firing crossbows.
I prefer to keep my troops away from open water as much as possible because they dodge into it. Never fight fire breathing creatures on dirt. The dirt can burn and I don't think the dwarves can dodge that.
I will send crossbow troops into battle outdoors or in caves, but I always have other troops in front of them. The more capable melee teams will arrive first and the crossbow teams will support them by firing at least a few shots before charging in like little maniacs.
I know I've ragged on the crossbow teams like they are useless, but they are really not. In a well set up fort I've seen crossbow users stationed during a siege use up all their ammo, go resupply, and come back in time to fire more shots and wound more goblins. One time in a battle versus a dragon the very first combat report was that crossbow bolt sailed out and hit the dragon in the heart. It didn't kill the dragon outright, but the battle was fairly short after that, and I feel like it helped. If I'm not mistaken the force of crossbow bolts allow them to damage enemies armored enough or made of tough enough materials that other weapons would harmlessly bounce off.
Here's everything I did in Swampcavern to make them useful.
The fortifications on the fort let them fire out side the fort or into the central area if that's where we wanted to fight. If we shut the other doors the enemy would have no choice but to bring it to us there. If a crossbow user wanted to abandon their post and go fight outside they had a journey ahead of them. They would have to walk down several flights of stairs and go down a long hallway to go fight hands on. In the history of this fort, this worked really well.
The starting front door of the fort had these fortifications right away. We had a fancy siege entrance set up to the surface if anything spectacular enough came along we would have stationed crossbow teams near the ballista firing area. At every cave entrance there was a place with lockable doors, a draw bridge, and a place for the crossbow team to stand. In the future I would make these entrances longer to make them more useful.
The hardest part of training a crossbow team is getting them to pick up the crossbow for the first time and take some shots. This is easily the trickiest and hardest part. Getting crossbow teams to train is often like getting a bunch of stubborn idiots to do something that they really don't want to. Part of the problem is shooting at an archery target builds up xp towards the skill only very slowly, like 1/10 the speed of shooting at a live target. It's still worth it, I use both methods.
That's one of the reasons I like to trap wild life and cave creatures. I repeatedly let them loose in this training area with one or both crossbow teams stationed in a narrow hallway behind fortifications. When they're not doing that, this fort is in a untamed wilds so there is a never ending supply of mosquito men to shoot down on the surface or crundles and hungry heads to practice on in the caves.
Eventually one of the teams hit level 20 in crossbow skill and I turned off target practice for them to save on ammunition. They fought enough stuff on a daily basis they were not going to get rusty.
In earlier forts I would assign a few dwarves to be hunters, even set them up with dogs. In a less hostile biome hunters would sharpen their skills on ducks, deer, whatever you have, and they would train up far faster than teams shooting at unmoving targets. If they wandered into caves they would have even more targets, but often get themselves in fatal trouble before I could even notice. For a while I liked to set several people to hunters and then drop any survivors into the crossbow team and forbid them from hunting any more. In Swampcavern I didnt' do this, I just relied on lots of training time and the hostile environment for practice. One problem with the hunters is the separate uniform issue. Instead of having hunter hunt the wildlife I would just send out a crossbow team for a semi annual hunt and target fire practice.
If cage traps are too gamey for you have your guys go out and kill wildlife for practice, or go into hostile caves with backup and proper equipment.
Swampcavern had tons of metal but any fort in any world can supply their crossbow team just by focusing on it enough. I tried to store a lot of it close by where it would be used.
Silver ammunition is the best. Steel is extravagant, but I make a few steel bolts any way just for fun. The other metals are fine too I'll buy them from traders just to have more to have around.
I really kept my eye on my military teams to make sure they had weapons at all times. When you set up a squad check on them to make sure they are picking up everything they are supposed to.
I had my crossbow teams all set to train with the other warriors. They probably practice dodging and biting as much as firing the crossbow but that's fine, they still get really good in a couple of years. They got good at using the high quality armor that was issued to them. They got practice deflecting blows with the shields issued to them.
When it comes to getting troops to show up, that can be a problem for any squad. Even under good circumstances order a squad of 10 to go somewhere, what are you going to get? Usually maybe 7 if you're lucky. Someone is sleeping or eating or endlessly shuffling equipment. That's partly why I like having 2 squads of crossbow teams. I'd have more if I had more dwarves in the fort.
If you give orders for troops to station and few and no guys show up that can be a sign you've been pushing them too hard, for instance having them stationed for too long a period of time so their needs build up. I think training non stop can do this also, just not as badly.
So short answer is
Make them. Put them where they have to shoot the crossbow or go out of their way.
Train them up so they're more likely to fire / do any good when they do
Give them all the equipment they could every need, have orders to carry ammo, make sure they never run out of bolts.
When they do use up their bolts in combat try to keep them nearby so they can get more and come back
If you give them armor make sure they get trained in how to use it. If you don't give them armor keep them out of harm's way.
If they see a better chance of biting a monster, or bashing it with their crossbow, that's what they are going to do, no matter how ridiculous it is. You did what you could. If they get stomped on by a mega beast, that's pretty much on them.
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Topic: My tips for making crossbow teams useful (Read 2156 times)