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[Azated]

I have a few questions about the military system in DF.

I've got it pretty much figured out, but the training is really confusing.

First of all, marksdwarves. I used to be able to get them to train fine. I could usually get legendary dwarves before my first siege. I had 5 archery targets, all designated on their own, with channels to preserve the arrows. I recently updated to the latest version and then the issues started. My dwarves that have metal bolts won't drop them and pick up wooden ones, but if I tell them to train with metal bolts, they waste my precious steel. However, new dwarves to the squad will pick up wooden bolts and fire away, happily leveling while their masters sit in their rooms, with their status as 'Soldier (Cannot follow order)'.

Second, melee dwarves. I can't get them to train weapon skills. They train dodging, wrestling etc alright, but no matter what weapon I assign them, they seem to completely forget about it and go for a sucker-punch instead.

I was also wondering what the purpose of Training weapons are. I assume it's a weapon they use during training sessions so they don't lop eachothers heads off practicing their side-swings, but my dwarves never seen to use them either.

[Qc Storm]

I have a few questions about the military system in DF.

I've got it pretty much figured out, but the training is really confusing.

First of all, marksdwarves. I used to be able to get them to train fine. I could usually get legendary dwarves before my first siege. I had 5 archery targets, all designated on their own, with channels to preserve the arrows. I recently updated to the latest version and then the issues started. My dwarves that have metal bolts won't drop them and pick up wooden ones, but if I tell them to train with metal bolts, they waste my precious steel. However, new dwarves to the squad will pick up wooden bolts and fire away, happily leveling while their masters sit in their rooms, with their status as 'Soldier (Cannot follow order)'.

Second, melee dwarves. I can't get them to train weapon skills. They train dodging, wrestling etc alright, but no matter what weapon I assign them, they seem to completely forget about it and go for a sucker-punch instead.

I was also wondering what the purpose of Training weapons are. I assume it's a weapon they use during training sessions so they don't lop eachothers heads off practicing their side-swings, but my dwarves never seen to use them either.

Possible answer to training weapons : Sparring was once pretty violent. Dwarves would often gore themselves while training. I think Toady implemented training weapons to prevent that. After that probably came the "safe sparring" we have now.

They can also be used to violently bludgeon prisoners for exp.

[Urist Imiknorris]

-Dump your marksdwarves' metal bolts.

-Danger rooms.

-Justice, danger rooms (training spears), woodcutting (training axes), and arena combat. They were originally used, as Qc Storm said, for non-lethal training.

[krenshala]

If for whatever reason you haven't made enough "real" weapons to equip your troops you can still do training by giving them training (axe|spear|sword)s.  I know training axes (used to be able to?) cut down trees, but I don't think any of the weapons do much in actual combat.  My six training spear equipped noobs (in .22) provided bruising and knock downs (but not knock-back) of the two goblin thieves and allowed the two dwarves with iron spears time to wake up and decide they wanted to join the fun.

When everybody sucks with the weapon they are training with they seem to use wrestling attacks more often.  After six to nine months of continuous sparring, however, I had two level 5 spear dwarves without using a danger room.  With a metal spear (even iron or copper) they quickly take down non-metal armoured opponents at that skill.  If they only are at level 2 or 3 it takes about twice as long to do the same damage, giving more opportunity to the ambusher of course.

[Dutchling]

Dwarves will use training weapons if you tell them too (uniform). If you don't, they won't use them