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[MegaGrubby]

I searched "hunter archer" and could not find a good answer to my topic. My apologies if this is common...I do enjoy reading the wiki and went back quite a few pages on this forum.

I have numerous level 7 or higher archer/marksdwarf dwarves. They got this way hunting. I love hunting dwarves because they are honing combat skills while feeding the fortress. I would love to use their abilities to defend my fortress and feel like making an Archer Squad with my hunters would be a waste of talent (because they will skill up much slower as archers and won't be bringing me any food).

I would like to control the hunters like a squad (move here, attack X target, etc.). Unfortunately, they are lumped in with civilians at this point. I see the bug described in the wiki about archer units grabbing different bows if they are moonlighting as hunters. I thought I could solve my problem by creating an Archer Squad and setting them to inactive (but I really don't want to deal with that bug).

Any suggestions?

[Garath]

It's given enough people a headache that the general concensus is "don't try"

either have them wander around as hunters, or have them as a marksdwarf militia squad and manually order them to kill stuff. It might work in special occasions, such as when they're already almost standing on top of the new target, but in generally just gets you frustrated as they first go back to get a new xbow and quiver

[MegaGrubby]

Thanks for the response!

Do you know if it's been requested to break hunters out as a separate group? Make them like civilians where they can be assigned to burrows.

[Lida_Brainbroken]

Thanks for the response!

Do you know if it's been requested to break hunters out as a separate group? Make them like civilians where they can be assigned to burrows.

You cannot control hunters.  You can assign them to burrow, but you cannot force them to hunt.  As stated before, they're either military Marksdwarfs, or hunters left to their own devices.  If assigned to the military, disable the hunting skill first.  If you want your Marksdwarfs to practice on creatures, assign the squad to kill them manually and they'll gladly empty their quivers.

[MegaGrubby]

By "requested" I meant is there an enhancement request...

[Garath]

There is a seperate forum with suggestions as well as a regular df talk. The current worked-on update is to animate the world during fortress mode so consecutive play becomes more enjoyable. It is very likely that hunters and military in general will be the subject of a reworking in the future, but when that will be is anyones guess. Do keep in mind we're now at version 0.34.11, roughly at 1/3rd of the -alpha- version of the game