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[stuntaneous]

My marksdwarves never pick up bolts and try to hammer enemies to death with their crossbows. There's plenty of available ammo made from various materials, that has not been forbid. I've set ammo to be used in both combat and training. Hunters curiously still go out with bolts and fire away.

Also, both my marksdwarves and melee guys don't seem to get very far in their training. Unless they initially rock up with nice skills, they only ever hover around dabbling or novice and forever suck on the battlefield. I spot them doing their individual drills and lessons so they must be doing something occasionally but without real progress.

I've tried to read up on all of this in other threads without much success. I've tried assigning different numbers of bolts to the squads (250-1000). I've tried specifying materials of bolts or none at all. I found out that I've gotta give marks inactive time to get them training.

How do I get my marksdwarves to do something useful and how can I get my military in shape? For the latter I'd prefer not to do anything too shifty or exploitive such as the danger room idea.

[decev]

For the marksdwarves... does everyone have a quiver?

For the soldiers... you have to get them sparring instead of watching each other demonstrate how to suck at swinging an axe. Putting them in squads of two or three is an easy way to do this. The bonus to doing this is you can send a single squad of 2 out to kill the forgotten beast without setting 10 dwarves on fire.

[hanni79]

May I redirect you to : http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=112352.0

I think this thread helped me the most.

Something I actually found out myself (Wohaaa ), which you may want to check too, is , that marksdwarves need a straight walkable path towards their targets. Even if they could walk around a channel in front of an Archery target, they will not start to shoot, if the channel channel is in front of your target.

Also, you should put up one Archery target for each dwarf and set up each Archery target as a single training room. I actually didn't try if multiple Archery targets in the same defined room works, but lots of people said it can cause trouble.
Also, the Archery-Target area has to be set to "T" for Training, despite the fact Marksdwarfes train only while Schedule (s-t) has to be set to "Inactive".

And last but not least, normal training sucks hard. Much better way is a Danger Room ( seen as Exploit by some, I like it for it's 36 Chambers of Shaolin reference ) and live Archery target training. Just put up lots of cage traps, get some wild animals and let them free (build the cage, link it to a lever and pull it). Shooting/Fighting Live targets grants roughly 4 times the experience Training does, says the wiki.

[stuntaneous]

decev:

Yep, they all have empty quivers.

I think I'll go with small squads in the future.


hanni79:

A decent thread, lots of useful stuff. I've got heaps of bolts to go around. Not using LNP. Individual archery targets which now that I think of it, I have seen used on occasion I vaguely remember. I didn't know about the straight path. I do actually source many marksdwarves from hunter migrants. I turn off all hunting professions and hauling, etc. They would often still have the hunting related skills, though. I wonder if their presence causes problems. Also, I make a barracks with just whatever is lying around at the time, i.e. maybe it's an armour rack one time, maybe a weapons rack another time. Would it be at all possible that I need a barracks defined by a weapons rack for ammo to be noticed? Just a bizarre, reaching thought.

After that read, I'm still at a loss as to why they don't shoot.

As for the training techniques, I might try a lighter version of the danger room. I think I'll be okay with that I'm currently keen on evil embarks and I've been thinking I might make a live fire range where the victims get up after being put down for endless training.

PS I can't test things right this moment as the last fort just finished getting a thrashing, in part because of my useless guys.

[Urist McSpike]

Do they have bolts at all, at this point?  If it's a training issue, it might help to set training to about 2/3 of the squad, instead of all.  If it's an inventory issue, I seem to recall something bug at one point about quiver availabity at the time you create the squad.  I was having that problem in my current fort, and I think I fixed it by disbanding the squad, unpausing a few moments, and then creating a new squad.

[Ari Lazarus]

I ran into this issue like 2 days ago.

1. Bolts - there seems to be an issue with reloading bolts after the initial volley. I found that making ammo stockpiles that DIDN'T have bins really helped with that. Whenever my guys finished firing they would go back to the stockpile and reload IF the stockpile was closer to them than the target.

2. Training - for Marksdwarves it seems best to use live targets, but I found they trained mostly in their off time. 'Training' time would probably be more for hammer / armor user / shield skills.

[Damiac]

I had an issue where it said I had tons of bolts, yet my archers wouldn't equip them, and my hunters were equipped with 1 bone bolt...

I had the proper number defined for the squads and all that, but I was having no luck.  I created a new archer squad, same deal.

Then I produced some silver bolts of my own.  Suddenly my archers started equipping those.  It's like the other bolts got bugged somehow and wouldn't allow themselved to be equipped.

Now I'm over that hurdle, I have a military of 40 or so, and no sieges in 4 years .  I was getting the occasional goblin thief, but even those stopped.  I'm considering starting a war with the humans, just so I can have some FUN

[hanni79]

Hmm, lets try step by step :

First, http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=112352.msg3409974#msg3409974
He stated that hunting, mining and woodcutting can interfere. Especially for hunting it makes sense, since marksdwarves train when they are inactive - at which point they will take their hunting equip and hunt. It then often happens they have the wrong bolts in their quivers etc.

Second, the training room for marksdwarves has to be set up from the Archery target itself. Also, note you have to set the direction from which they are supposed to shoot.

Third, it may help to use a stockpile which only holds the bolts your military is supposed to use and set the bins to zero. I vaguely remember something about a bug with bolts not being recognized when stored in bins.... could be wrong on that though.

It definitely does not need to be placed inside your barracks area my stockpile is completely outside of it and it works fine.

[Berossus]

Assign them one defined kind of bolts.
Not "metal bolts" but "iron bolts" or "copper bolts", this can help them sort out what stack to take, at least it did the trick for me (mostly).
Also just take 250 per squad, more than that and mine have been running in circles again...

[sadron]

I've had this problem as well. This is obviously a major bug, because I can't have a functional marksdwarf squad if they do stupid shit like this.

[stuntaneous]

Ahh a new game and the same thing. It was my first encounter. I sent in two hunters. They were outside happily shooting away at wildlife. I assigned them to a squad, activated them and sent them off to take out a cavern dweller. Of course, they run in and start bashing it.

Do others generally not have this issue? I can't seem to avoid it.

edit: I just saw a marksdwarf shoot at a hostile creature while inactive. What changes when they go active?

editedit: I just had two marksdwarves shoot at some undead, on a move order while inactive.

[Urist McSpike]

I'm not sure if it has any bearing or not, but I usually disable hunting from all of my dwarves.  I prefer to keep them in the fort, instead of running around the map.  So maybe there is some problem with hunters in the military?  Also, I'm sure you do, but since I didn't see the specifics... you did assign them uniforms with ranged weapons, right?

[sadron]

I'm not sure if it has any bearing or not, but I usually disable hunting from all of my dwarves.  I prefer to keep them in the fort, instead of running around the map.  So maybe there is some problem with hunters in the military?  Also, I'm sure you do, but since I didn't see the specifics... you did assign them uniforms with ranged weapons, right?

Hmmm, might have to make a squad without any hunting training.

[PlasteredDragon]

I have similar problems.  A squad of 10 marksdwarves, more than enough quivers (don't know for sure if they are wearing them because there doesn't seem to be a way to assign them quivers or view quivers from the military screen), and they show as having bolts equipped.  Send them out to fight the baddies and only 2 guys shoot while the rest stand there with their crossbows and do nothing.  Battles would certainly be more successful if everyone holding a crossbow and bolts actually fired their weapons.  Not sure what the problem is.  I have hundreds and hundreds of silver bolts, the squad is set to use them for combat and training.  I've just sort of gotten used to the fact that when I assign my squad to fire it will take forever for them all to show up, and when they do only one or two of them will actually fire their weapons.

[Asra]

I've never really seen this problem. Have you made sure to assign their weapons accurately on the military menu, especially the types of bolts? Maybe if you forced them to use different bolts to hunt with than for military and training use they wouldn't have this problem. Though you couldn't use them on the field unless you want them to crossbow bash people.