So, I haven't touched marksdwarves in a while and while I know how to get them trained up in the use of their crossbows (i've no problems getting them properly equipped or with them using archery ranges, thankfully), I decided this time that in addition to setting up a squad of snipers to take out that Armok-be-damned giant eagle I'd use them as hunters to supplement my tanned hide food stocks.
I could swear that I read a thread in here recently about how if you put the dwarves in the military, equipped them with their crossbows and then assigned them to be hunters that you would not get the odd equipment mismatch errors, but would instead have marksdwarves that performed hunting during their off duty time.
My google-fu is weak so I couldn't find that thread again this evening when i tried it and got a (mostly) unexpected result.
So, I assigned my guys to teh military, originally with their hunting skill enabled. Since their squad was not active most of them immediately acquired arms, bolts and headed out to try and kill my local yak population (yay!). A few gave the (Soldier cannot follow orders) error, which I figured was the uniform mismatch bug. I wanted to make sure there wouldn't be problems so, as I mention above, I stripped them of their hunter assignments and waited for them to pick up quiver and crossbow; they all did in a relatively short amount of time.
Once I had verified they all had crossbows and quivers I reenabled their hunting skills (they were still off duty) and, much to my dismay, they each immediately ran to the weapon stockpile and dropped off their crossbow and bolts, then to the main stockpile to drop off their quivers, and are currently idling in the meeting hall (the lazy bastards!).
So, what did I get wrong? Did I misremember/misunderstand what I had read, or was it something I either did or failed to do that caused this?
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Topic: Hunters and the military, or What am I doing wrong this time? (Read 963 times)