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[dexxy]

Suppose I station a squad of soldiers somewhere. After sending them off duty, they turn back into civilians and walk back whereever they want to  go. The weird bit is that they drop their bolts first, so there are piles of bolts left where they were standing. Has anybody else seen this happening? Any ideas how to stop it?

[Sphalerite]

Do any of the soldiers have the hunting, woodcutting, or mining jobs enabled?

[dexxy]

Do any of the soldiers have the hunting, woodcutting, or mining jobs enabled?

No they don't. I assigned each squad 3 sets of ammunition, metal bolts for combat, and bone and wooden bolts for combat and training. Each squad gets assigned about 300 of each type of bolt. Maybe they are just going to get new bolts so they dump their old ones?

[magicwalker]

If you are stationing them outside of their scheduled "On Duty" time, could it be that they are reverting back to their Civilian uniform- which would make them drop their military gear/ammo?

[DTF]

Do any of the soldiers have the hunting, woodcutting, or mining jobs enabled?

No they don't. I assigned each squad 3 sets of ammunition, metal bolts for combat, and bone and wooden bolts for combat and training. Each squad gets assigned about 300 of each type of bolt. Maybe they are just going to get new bolts so they dump their old ones?

It's properly the different bolts for combat and training. Try letting them only use one type of bolts for both situations. I've never encountered this problem and I use only one bolt type.

[Garath]

^
this probably
every once in a while I just remove all ammunition, wait untill all bolts are stored, forbid anything I want to keep for emergencies and then let them pick whatever bolts they like. I usually let them use bone or copper bolts all the time and keep silver and iron bolts for just in case

[rhesusmacabre]

I usually split my marksdwarves into recruits and elites. The recruit squad(s) is assigned bone/wooden bolts for both training and combat, and the elite squad is assigned just metal bolts for combat only. The elite squad isn't even assigned an archery range but they can still train in a barracks. This and live combat are more than enough to level them up, and there seems little advantage in really high ranged skills anyway, unlike melee skills.

[knutor]

Don't station ranged squads.  Station doesn't prohibit the soldier from charging into melee when his quiver runs dry, and if your micromanaging material type, that could be after just one shot, if they are picking up and reusing metal bolts, see they don't stack...  So that one bolt he grabbed some time ago, could be his first AND his last bolt.

Use Defend Burrow and paint a Burrow, where you want them stationed.  Don't delineate between material for soldiers.  If anything just set Hunters to use wood.  This will be enough to down even giant animal types, in most cases.  Since animals have no armor.   

A Defend Burrow assignment, unlike Station will restrict the soldier's movement, to inside that burrow, for the duration of the siege, this forces a nice long ranged battle.  Much much safer for perched sniper battles.  Use Station command for your melee-mixed squads.  Take care, Knutor

[DTF]

A Defend Burrow assignment, unlike Station will restrict the soldier's movement, to inside that burrow, for the duration of the siege, this forces a nice long ranged battle.  Much much safer for perched sniper battles.  Use Station command for your melee-mixed squads.  Take care, Knutor

Hm, I've stopped using burrows for military positioning some time ago after some bad results due to dumb behavior. Does defending a burrow stop your dwarves from charging into the battle and hunting down every enemy as soon as they see one? That would be useful to keep them together and the battle restricted to a defined area.

[knutor]

Yup, it keeps them nice and tight up in there behind the murderholes.  Paint a small burrow, see the Marksdwarfs in DF have no stack limit, so two squads of 12-20 dwarfs can all be defending the same burrow-block, behind 1 murderhole, raining death and destruction on a causeway.  Assign them to defend it via the military scheduling, and always assign the accurate number, for the squad size.  Do not make them burrow citizens tho.  We want them to leave, when they are off duty to party at the tables, too.  Take care, Knutor

[Fredd]

This is a fairly good technique for managing bolts, using a 4 member marksdwarf squad for example.
 1. Create a reasonable supply of practice bolts, assign to the squad, amount 100.C/T
 2. Create a large supply of combat bolts, when made and stored, forbid all. Assign 100. C/T
 3. Only create practice bolts when you want them to train some.
 4. Under combat conditions, unforbid at least 4 stacks of combat bolts, give the order to move to their fighting positions. I prefer to create a military alert for these situations. The dwarves will rush to pick up the combat bolts before moving where they are assigned. If they run out, unforbid another 4 stacks.
 5. Every once in a while check ammo under stock screens. Using TAB, dump any single bolts, and either melt or destroy them.
 6. VERY IMPORTANT!!. Do not create any more combat bolts till they use up the ones assigned to them at target practice. To check to see when they are gone, use the military screen/equipment/ammo. Remove then the metal bolts assigned to the squad. Create new combat ammo, forbid again when stored. Repeat entire sequence again.
 I know this is micromanaging, but when raw materials are low for bolts, it helps to conserve.

[NTJedi]

^
this probably
every once in a while I just remove all ammunition, wait untill all bolts are stored, forbid anything I want to keep for emergencies and then let them pick whatever bolts they like. I usually let them use bone or copper bolts all the time and keep silver and iron bolts for just in case

Bolts are currently extremely unbalanced so copper bolts are basically as effective as steel\silver bolts because they can commonly pierce targets with even adamantine armor(there's a bug on this too).  I usually make only copper or bronze bolts which is definitely more than enough.  I only use silver for hammers, maces, and spiked balls.  I only use iron for armor, weapons, making steel and a few traps.

[WCG]

Hm, I've stopped using burrows for military positioning some time ago after some bad results due to dumb behavior.

Well, I'm certainly getting some dumb behavior from "Defend Burrow." I posted about it here...

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=110754.0

... but basically, when I set my marksdwarves to "Defend Burrow," they all instantly turned into civilians and headed off on other jobs. I tried over and over again to fix it, even deleting the burrow and creating a new one. But nothing worked. I finally had to order them to patrol the area, instead (which tends to have its own problems).

Note that my problem is not with "stationing" dwarves, and they don't drop their bolts, either. (But then, I do have different types for combat and training.)

[knutor]

What uniform are they using?  Archer or Custom? 

Could the soldiers in that goofy squad, be on leave?  Instead of Active/Training. 

They won't do orders if they are on leave, WCG.  Individual Drills, yes, while on leave.  But not orders.  This would make them change to uniforms to Civilian.  I'm guessing, its a normal Archer that isn't activated, that's where I'm putting my money.  I always forget to activate mine.  Think its, t, from within the squad menu, to activate. 

Just a rehash.  They won't do Squad Orders of anykind, until they are activated.  Only Individual training is done on leave.   Knutor

[WCG]

Could the soldiers in that goofy squad, be on leave?  Instead of Active/Training.

No. I double-checked it. Triple-checked it, in fact. They were definitely set to "Defend Burrow." I created a brand new alert, but that didn't help. I deleted the burrow and created a new one, but that didn't help, either. (And yes, I checked the squad menu, too.)

Note that I've got a "Training" alert and a "Patrolling" alert, and I switch between them as necessary. Originally, I had them "Patrol" a route, but that worked out so poorly that I changed it to "Defend Burrow" instead. (They wouldn't patrol close enough to the fortifications to shoot at anything.) Until now, that's always worked fine. As I say, I tried a completely new alert and a completely new burrow, too, without any luck.

I've done this before, in the same fort and the same version of the game (34.07), and it's always worked. But not this time. Eventually, I switched their schedule to patrol, and they went back to being military again. They just would not defend a burrow. And they still won't.

Oh, and they're using the archer uniform, though I added a cape to it, I think.