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[Berossus]

Ok, so i installed a goblin shooting range (pit surrounded by fortifications), got the gobbos in there, marched my Sqad right in front of them and tehy... just look at their bootcaps and dont really know what to do.
Apart from half of them being clad in cloth instead of the mandatory metal armor, some of them even have quivers (others dont) and several have bolts, which was made appearent the moment i told them to sod off and they left 3 stacks of bolts behind on the floor.

What am i doing wrong?

[Calech]

To fire a crossbow effectively a dwarf needs four things;

a) a crossbow
b) a quiver
c) some situation-appropriate bolts
d) line of sight to a valid target

So, tackling these in order -

a) and b) - check your dwarves' inventories to make sure they are actually equipping themselves correctly. If you have exactly the number of crossbows as you have marksdwarves, it may be the case that a hunter has absconded with one or something. If you have insufficient quivers, you can always make more at a leatherworks.

c) - in the military ammunition submenu you may need to check and/or amend the ammunition settings. Just because you have bolts doesn't mean the squad is allowed to use them - they may be assigned for hunters, even if you don't have any hunters! Also, if you have changed these settings, note that if dwarves are armed with the wrong type of bolts (ie. training bolts in a combat situation), they may not use them. Safest solution is to only assign bolts for both combat and training (ie the default setting).

d) - if you've ordered your marksdwarves to kill a target you will get (no reachable valid target) status showing up for them if they can't path to it. Station them nearby instead. Also, if your targets are on a different z-level, they may not be visible (hiding up against walls etc.); if you're on the same level, marksdwarves of lower skill levels must be adjacent to fortifications to shoot through them.

Hopefully that's some help... if not, posting pictures and/or a save may help to figure out the exact problem.

[Berossus]

Ok, i figured it out.
Appearently i underestimated the sheer amount of stupidity my dwarves are able to display.

Dwarves are only able to shoot over fortifications from a distance above a certain level of skill.
I knew this.

What i didnt know was, that those bearded autists would not move a freaking inch to stand adjacent to the fortification to be able to shoot over it, but remain where they are and declare their assigned target at inaccessible.

Solution: i created a 1x8 burrow alongside the fortification line, created an "execution" alert which confines the crossbow-squad to this burrow which alignes them to the fortifications, and enables them to bolt the goblins.

[itg]

About the "half of them clad in cloth" thing: Set the uniforms to "replace clothing" instead of "over clothing." What you're experiencing is the result of an annoying bug. Just make sure you have enough armor, or the dwarves who don't get any will just run around naked and probably go insane within a fortnight.

[Berossus]

I did that long ago, but some of them appearently dont feel like donning armor, or are clothing themselves in utter darkness.
The captain of that sqaud is currently wearing one right gauntlet, one left boot, greaves and a helmet...

But ive read in another thread that i could try setting their civilian outfit to "uniformed", so they wont run around half armored when i switch through their alerts too quickly.

[Berossus]

Im giving up, i think ill just magma them all.
My uniform says

metal Helm
metal Armor
metal Gauntlets
Metal Legwear
metal Boots
Shield/Buckler
Melle of Choice
Crossbow

I assigned the squad 1000 Bolts. Undefined, just any kind of Bolts.
I said "Armor replace clothing" and "uniformed when civil".

They spent the last 2 hours spamming equipment mismatches, running around invarious stages from naked to full armored, now theyre starting to tantrum.

[Zivilin]

Do You have enough armor to equip them all? I had the same settings ("replace clothing" and "Inactive = Uniformed") and everything was fine... until I added a few more dwarfs to the squad. I didn't have enough armor for everyone and the newcomers just threw of their clothes, and, having nothing to replace them with, became extremely unhappy due to being naked.

[Berossus]

Yes, i have several bins with Steel and Adamantide armor for every part of a dwarf, but they just dont pick it up...
I think ill go back to "over clothing" to at least cover their shame...

To add insult to injury, my Champion just slaughtered one of my legendary +5 everything swordsdwarves to make a bone figurine worth 8400 Urists... 

[krenshala]

Are your marksdwarves hunters by any chance?

[Starver]

To get a range set up where they have to stand next to fortifications, make it a 1-tile wide corridor between fortifications and a back wall.

Obviously in a defensive situation with enemy archers/bowgoblins firing back through it's useful to have an easy retreating position, but for this live-training situation I don't think that's an issue.

[Berossus]

Nah, actually my marksdwarves are swordsdwarves and hammerdwarves since they refused to train archery most of their lives.

I get them to stand in the Burrow, adjacent to the Fortification, and thats it.
They dont pick up Bolts.

I saw that most of the mismatch spam was due to the bolts appearently, so i dumped 3000 bone bolts and told them to get 250 metal bolts for the Squad.
While most of them managed to get some clothing and even a crossbow and a quiver, they appearently dont get bolts.
Im getting mad, seriously mad, at these mechanics.
Next fortress i do i wont even bother to get a single crossbow.

[Starver]

No comment, as I've never had any problem with either training[1] or 'proper' ammo acquisition (save for individual members running out after doing a Gatling Gun impression on the enemy, and having to go and get more ammo, at the time when almost every other crossbowdwarf is either on the way to get ammo (or food, or refill their flasks, or go for a sleep) or still on their way back from doing that...

But I understand that there's something else that doesn't work well, and I'm not really sure how my training/application-of-training manages to make that mostly moot.

[1] Range training.  I've got that down pat, it seems.

[doublestrafe]

The only differences I can see so far between your marksdwarves that don't work and my marksdwarves that do work is that mine 1) don't have melee weapons getting in their way and 2) have clothes (cloak, hood x3, trousers x3, mittens, socks) in their uniform.

[Berossus]

Did you set them to train?
If so, in a barrack or an archery range?

When i set them to train at a range, they freeze where they stand with "job: going to archery practice"
And thats basically it.
Thats the reason i built the goblin shooter, to get their skills up.

Also, what bolts did you assign? Default setting or a specific material? How many?
I had severe "equipment mismatch" problems with the stacks of 5 that my bone carvers produced, so i went back to taking the 25-stacks of imported assorted bolts of any metal, which seemed to work better (not perfect) than the bone-bolts.

[noushi]

Two somewhat related notes on this:

1) Make sure there is enough ammo to satisfy all of your squads.  Last night I found that one of my four archer squads was hording all of the ammo, and of course that wasn't one of the squads I send to deal with an undead siege.  In the end I had to go to (m)ilitary->(f)ammo and delete all ammo assignments from the greedy squad and re-assign a lesser amount of bolts.

2) I still have problems with streaking military dwarves, even with 'Replace clothing'; sometimes when military dwarves went off duty they would drop everything they were wearing, and then of course get upset about it.  I *think* it might be happening only when you get an order to a specific member in a squad and then cancel the order.  What seems to be working is to instead of cancelling the individual's order, give their entire squad an order and then cancel that.  I need to play with this some more to be certain.