I'm also very interested in this topic. I know military in general & marksdwarves & bolts specifically have always been pretty fickle, but I've been successfully using them up through 47.04. However, so far in Premium I have not been able to get any marksdwarves to pick up bolts, either by attempting to follow my old habits, or trying some of the rumored fixes for Premium such as:
- Place extra coffers in the barracks assigned to the marksdwarves for them to put bolts in
- Place stockpiles for bolts inside the barracks assigned to your marksdwarves
- Place separate stockpiles for metal or wood/bone bolts, metal in the barracks, wood/bone within an archery zone
- Use the default "Archery" uniform for marksdwarves, not a custom one
- Use "Move" orders to move your marksdwarves near the stockpiles with the bolts
- Toggle your marksdwarves squad from Off DUty to Active/Training to get them to equip bolts
- Click "Update Equipment" in the uniform menu for their squad
I've been trying all of these, but still no luck. However, I keep seeing messages from people claiming they have gotten marksdwarves to equip ammo, and often attributing their success to one of these tips, so maybe it is possible? I think maybe the best thing to do is try to get anybody who HAS gotten them to equip ammo to chime in and say / post a screenshot of exactly what their uniform/squad settings are, and what their barracks/archery range/bolt stockpile settings / locations are, and hopefully we could pin down a common trait?
Of course it's also quite possible that there's just some obscure bug that is active in most saves, but randomly not affecting some saves
EDIT:So while not a total fix for all outstanding issues, I think I just had a minor breakthrough:
From some quick tests, it appears that a squad that had
the "Archer" uniform any uniform with crossbows selected
when it was created,
and then never had a different uniform set via the "Assign Uniform" button, will equip and use bolts properly. Editing specific parts of the uniform on individual dwarves in the squad with the "Details" button afterwards is fine
, however if you "Assign" a different uniform, that squad will never use bolts again, even if you "Assign" it back to "Archer" later and so is "Assign"ing to a melee uniform and back to a ranged one.
Still don't see a way to specify bolt material, however I have a stockpile of wood/bone bolts in bins very near to the room with all my Archery Targets, with a stockpile with bins of metal bolts a few rooms away in their main barracks, and so far they are all using bone bolts at the Archery Targets. Haven't tried them out in combat yet.
Hopefully this can help others work around the bugs somewhat for now.
EDIT:Turns out it stills works even if you delete the "Archer" uniform!