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[Mimodo]

I'm just wondering, why do we use leather armour for archers, instead of metals like the rest of the military. I'm sure there's an obvious reason... I've always assigned them leather because that's what I've heard of everyone doing, and that's what the default is, but is there any reason why I shouldn't give my archers steel armour?

[Ieb]

Unless you have some specific training going on, like a danger room, your ranged attackers generally will only train their shooting skills. With steel armor, they rarely(hopefully, at least) get in a situation where they end up within melee range of enemies and get XP for their Armor skill, which is required to move faster while wearing armor.

Leather offers okay protection and doesn't weigh much, so your crossbowers and so on can move faster to whatever location they are needed.

[Mimodo]

So it's purely a weight issue?
if I want to protect my legendary marksdwarf a little more, adamantine wouldn't go astray due to the low weight...

They generally have pretty low armour skills, but they do attend the occasional armour demonstration etc.

[darklord92]

I throw mine in at least copper. I've seen a bit of a higher survival rate than when I used leather so it does help as for speed thats never been a huge issue because my fort design puts the archers straight from the dining hall to the barracks to the central tower within 10-20 seconds.

[Panando]

If you use marksdwarves for reserve troops (i.e. not permanently training) then it makes a tonne of sense to give them mostly leather armour and leather or wooden shields. Why? Because when they aren't fighting, they have to haul and stuff. Putting them in full metal will slow them down quite a lot, and there's not much point in making them generally inefficient just for the sake of protecting them from attacks which they shouldn't be subjected to in the first place.
A dwarf who isn't trained in weapon skill, fighting and shield user, simply can't survive in a real battle. Your archers are not going to have those skills (well I guess unless you're cheap and danger room train them). If they are being attacked by melee invaders, they will die. So basically if the fight is easy, they'll just peg the enemy with a bolt and it'll run away or be crippled by pain. If it's a hard battle they're screwed whether they have armour or not because they have no defensive skills.

With that said, as a compromise, gauntlets, high boots and helmets don't weigh much, so you may as well give them those made of metal. A mail shirt is heavy, but, combined with the previous items, it gives full body coverage (a mail shirt covers the upper legs, and high boots cover the lower legs, and it's the same with the arms). Add leather armour and leather trousers, and they have full body metal coverage, without the significant weight of a breastplate, greaves/leggings and metal shield.

[Mimodo]

What is this danger room thing???

Anyway... I have one that managed to train all the way to legendary just from normal training routines (generally filling goblins with bolts from a raised spot), and he does pretty damn well in battle with silver bolts. I guess I should focus on my other military just as much, but they've got a habit of doing suicide runs and killing off the best of them before they can train up others

[weenog]

What is this danger room thing???

  Quickly training dwarves in the skills used to avoid harm by subjecting them to a barrage of extremely rapid, extremely low-consequence attacks.  Also makes them offensive powerhouses thanks to weapon skill being used to parry attacks.  See the wiki page on the subject.

[Mimodo]

Okay... Now I see why some people frown on using that... genius way to quickly train troops though

[Scott Cee]

Real dwarfs train in live fire exercises. Any who survive their first engagement with an enemy is a proper dwarf.

It's like... if you've played Mass Effect 2, Gatatog Uvenk says that Grunt isn't a real krogan because he was grown in a tank. This is what you're doing when you danger room your dudes.
Except Grunt is bad ass, tank-grown dorfs are not.

[weenog]

It's pretty handy if you don't want to bother having and managing a bigass military.  A handful of dwarven superheroes need even less supervision than a handful of green recruits, seeing as they don't get upset from long active duty and they don't often run into situations they can't handle.

Hard as it may be to believe, sometimes you don't have enough dwarves to throw four or five 10-dwarf squads at every big problem, and replace the inevitable losses.  A squad of three steel-clad spear masters backed up by the hunters in a pinch start looking pretty good at those times.

[Scruffy]

Okay... Now I see why some people frown on using that... genius way to quickly train troops though

Nothing more dwarven than seeing the militia commander sleeping in an enclosed box while his helmet gets repeatedly stabbed by wooden spears. (Urist McGrumpy slept uneasily due to noise lately) Once saw 3 dwarves sparring in a dangerroom while their pet cats were getting killed by the very same room. (Catten, militia commander with 34 pet cats.)

[weenog]

Once saw 3 dwarves sparring in a dangerroom while their pet cats were getting killed by the very same room. (Catten, militia commander with 34 pet cats.)

There is nothing more dwarven than having a legendary murdersmith flip out and decimate the fortress from the inside, because he just lost 50 pets in three seconds thanks to poor player planning.

[Triaxx2]

I usually give them a mail shirt to protect from return fire from gobbos. It also ensures hunters don't get mutilated as easily by anything that tries to fight back.

[Mimodo]

I learnt the hard way not to give your best dwarves pets... I accidentally assigned all my war animals to my best dwarf... Then halfway through the siege he went insane  cause all his pets died (as well as his wife and 2 of his 3 kids)

[forsaken1111]

Really nobody says you must use leather on your marksdwarves. I put mine in steel chain personally.