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[WCG]

... defending burrows is the only way you can get precise placement for where your dwarves are going to stand. Station and patrol orders just don't do the job.

OK, that sounds like it might work. I tried to restrict the marksdwarves to a burrow (while also ordering them to patrol it), but that did nothing. However, I forgot about the "defend burrow" order, which I've never used.

Thanks for the tip!

The reason your dwarves are jumping off the waterfall is because the part where the water falls is less than 4/7 full.
This means that dwarves can and will try to walk across the flowing river to try to get to the other side, and are getting swept away.

Building a bridge/floor/whatever in that spot means that the dangerous path is blocked and a new, safe path opened. You can also build a bridge at another point and designate the dangerous tiles as forbidden traffic, but this is less effective.

OK, I never thought of that. That does make sense.

Note that I'm not sure that's what's happening in all cases, because my dwarves often seem to fall in the water upstream from the waterfall a bit. And this happened even when the whole river was restricted traffic (we can't actually forbid traffic, can we?), except for the bridge over it, which was set as high traffic.

But it's hard to say, because I didn't see most of the dwarves make that final mistake. At the very least, this would minimize the problem, I'm sure. But I wonder if a bridge over the waterfall would be a better construction than floor tiles? I can just see my dwarves trying to stand in the water to build the floor!   

Anyway, thanks for the explanation!

[WCG]

Hmm,... well, I used "defend burrow," but it didn't help much. My marksdwarves wouldn't stay in the burrow, even when they could easily shoot from behind the fortifications. Instead, they moved around them, wherever they could, until they were out in the open where they could be easily shot. (Eventually, when my defenses are complete, they won't be able to do that, but that's going to take years to finish.)

Even worse, some marksdwarves insisted on marching forward on the level below, until they were at the bridge opening where, again, they made perfect targets. Note that the burrow didn't extend to this level at all.

I finally had to close the bridge as one after another was being killed. That saved the fort, as the goblin bowmen tried to cross the river at the waterfall - unsuccessfully. 

At any rate, I'm not sure if I gained anything by using "defend burrow." And note that I didn't use it long enough to find out if marksdwarves will leave the burrow to get more ammo. Will they? (You guys said they wouldn't refill their quivers unless no enemy was in sight, so a patrol would work better for that, I'd think.)

[Intrinsic]

Captnduck's recent vids cover using burrows to define areas for your marksdwarves to defend, mine work like a treat now.

DFVIDTUTS2012 part 08 - Defence and Trading.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUSyDYgjNLc

I think this one is where he actually sets the schedules and burrows.
DFVIDTUTS2012 part 09 - Digging Down and Military Scheduling
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUcjn5EqePA

[loose nut]

Hmm,... well, I used "defend burrow," but it didn't help much. My marksdwarves wouldn't stay in the burrow, even when they could easily shoot from behind the fortifications. Instead, they moved around them, wherever they could, until they were out in the open where they could be easily shot. (Eventually, when my defenses are complete, they won't be able to do that, but that's going to take years to finish.)

...

At any rate, I'm not sure if I gained anything by using "defend burrow." And note that I didn't use it long enough to find out if marksdwarves will leave the burrow to get more ammo. Will they? (You guys said they wouldn't refill their quivers unless no enemy was in sight, so a patrol would work better for that, I'd think.)

Come to think of it I have had some of these troubles.

If it's like what happened with my one fort – a fort where I had to carve out an impromptu fortification in a hillside to fend off a siege – what's happening is that the marksdwarves are taking any available path to the burrow area, including the wide open outdoors. What I had to do was physically block off the other paths so the marksdwarves would march down the right hall to the burrow.

The marksdwarves do leave their burrows to get more ammo. Advice: put an ammo stockpile near the marksdwarves' fortifications, but separate it by a door or something. Dwarves who come to replenish the ammo will turn and run as soon as they get in LOS of enemies.

[WCG]

... what's happening is that the marksdwarves are taking any available path to the burrow area, including the wide open outdoors. What I had to do was physically block off the other paths so the marksdwarves would march down the right hall to the burrow.

That's not quite what was happening for me. In fact, there's no path to the burrow from the surface. The only upward stairs are underground, and the stairs down into my fort are in the other direction.

Instead, it appeared that some of my marksdwarves went under the burrow, instead of pathing to it. They were close to where they were supposed to be, but one floor down. That meant that they couldn't see the attackers at all until they went forward to the bridge that leads over the moat (and through the walls). That left them completely unprotected.

The marksdwarves who did get the level right still tended to move out of the burrow in order to get closer to the goblins, even though they could shoot perfectly well from inside the burrow, behind fortifications. But that will be fixed as soon as my defenses are complete (since, eventually, they won't be able to get past the fortifications). I don't know what to do about the dwarves who can't even get the right level! 

[Tryble]

Patrols can be scheduled, but they can't be issued as orders from the squads interface.

You can have an alert schedule with 'Patrol the fortifications' set on all months, and simply activate it on your marksman squad when enemies turn up, which is more or less the same thing.

I typically use a "3/5ths squad train all months" normally and a "all marksdwarves patrol fortifications constantly" and selectively turn it on to fend off sieges. 


[/quote]

[WCG]

Patrols can be scheduled, but they can't be issued as orders from the squads interface.

You can have an alert schedule with 'Patrol the fortifications' set on all months, and simply activate it on your marksman squad when enemies turn up, which is more or less the same thing.

This works, of course, but it's awkward when you're not always patrolling at the same location. I've got a very large compound, with a wall all the way around it. I have to regularly change the patrol routes depending on where the enemies arrive and where they go from there, plus a separate patrol route for executing prisoners (which seems to work better for me than defending a burrow, at least at that location).

Once I start attacking the creatures in the caverns, I'll want patrol routes down there, too - probably many of them. So a simple squad-based solution to this would be very welcome, at least to me.

[DTF]

Once I start attacking the creatures in the caverns, I'll want patrol routes down there, too - probably many of them. So a simple squad-based solution to this would be very welcome, at least to me.

In my experience, the patrol/burrow thing is the only reliable way to position them right other then leaving them only one tile to move to.
It would be nice to implement formations. So that your squads arrive in a useful fashion (as in you can order the strong ones in front, the marksdwarves in a row etc) and not in the total clusterf.. they often perform.