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[Vigilant]

I've been scratching my head at this for a while. I can have military squads training for years and they never really get beyond dabbling/novices. Even when there's a few migrants we've obtained that do know what they're doing. I try and make them captains so they'll spread knowledge around, but nope, still people train for months and don't get anywhere. And then they day because even with masterwork steel armor/weapons, dabbling dodgers don't do so hot.

Am I doing something wrong here?

[FuzzyZergling]

Two pieces of advice:
Use small squads, 2-3 dwarves. This lessens the time for demonstrations to take place waiting for every member to show up.
Train full time, every month with no breaks.

With this you should be able to get at least competent level military skills within two years.

[Xheia]

I think I'll summarize most of the military based threads for you:
You need: (in case you haven't already)
1. Squads - obviously, with dwarves in them, perhaps with special equipment (and ammo)
2. Schedules - make sure they're enabled to train (seems like you did that)
3. Barracks - with squads set to train in them
(4. Archery targets for archers)
(But now that I read your post again, it seems like you've done that)


There are other methods of advanced military training:
1. Encourage sparring - make your melee squads only 2 or three people, set training for two dwarves minimum, and hope for the best. I've done this, and it seems to work for 4 of my 6 melee squads.
2. Live training - either cage-trap hostiles or set your dwarves to attack wildlife (especially archers). This may be especially necessary for dabbling or novice military. (By the way, I think some forts (like mine) get a lot of competent-level migrants, while some get only no-combat-skill dwarves. That might make a difference.)
3. Danger rooms - basically poke your troops with weak traps until they improve dodging and other skills. I've never done this personally, and it's considered kind of gamey/gimmicky.

Are even your archers not improving? I think they should improve more than dabbling and novices, with the enough ammo and archery targets.

[Vigilant]

The archers can shoot well enough, but they need some defensive ability for the current problem of "Opps! Out of ammo, lets go run up to them and beat them with my crossbow!"

I'll try the smaller squads. How much would having a legendary organizer help? I could take the most skilled migrant i have (adept combat skill collection) and powertrain his organization skills.

[Finn]

If I were you, (and didn't want to use danger rooms to increase dodge) I would either give my marksdwarves 5-10x the amount of bolts/quivers, or physically prevent them drom melee with resupply nearby.  Your mileage may vary.

[DTF]

Do not make too many quivers. Sometimes marksdwarves store their quiver loaded with combat ready ammunition in a finished good stockpile and seemingly all other ranged soldiers get so confused by the presence of that full quiver that they refuse to pick up new bolts (and consequently prevent archery practice).
Going through your finished goods bins and dumping the bolts in the quivers (not the quivers themselves) helps. Your best bet to stop this completely would be to only have the exact 1:1 ratio of quivers:marksdwarves. The 'bug' probably fixes itself after a couple of game months when said dwarf picks up the full quiver again, but thats valuable time between seiges wasted on not training.
As for bolts: yes, if you have magma forges going, just set one to bolts/R and produce training bolts with whatever abundant metals you have. A dwarf armed with masterwork steel bolts that doesnt hit anything is no better than a super-sharpshooter equipped with bone bolts. If given the supply they need, training dwarves can go through ammo really quickly.
Do not assign them too many bolts and dont fiddle with "wood bolts for training, steel for combat". Having a too complex equipment system can cause equipment mismatch errors, long response times and overall confusion or every dwarves favourite: all of them together.
Build fortifications. Force your marksdwarves into a position where they can see the enemy, but not path to it directly. Build archer towers or carve some fortifications that are only accessible through the baracks around your entrance area, a simple moat, etc. do whatever you need to do to keep them from pathing to the enemy.

Ultimately, you want your melees to spar while training. It is basically a toned down danger room - they will go through combat without any real danger to themselves. Dwarves with widely different skills do not spar (at least that is what I've found). DF is really close to reality in that regard as it doesnt make any sense to pit a totally unexperienced teenager into your veteran squad. They will try to teach him instead of sparring. Try to make several small well balanced squads and a maybe a rookie squad with a very competent and experienced teacher as a leader.
It will still take a long time to get kickass soldiers with only training, though. As already mentioned, setting up an arena where you can have controlled fights with captured prisoners skyrockets combat abilities in comparison to normal demonstrations.

Other than that if push comes to shove, only the strong or the lucky survive and come out on top with more experience... the others simply weren't good enough and will not hinder training any further.