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[zwei]

I got nothing against dfhack, but calling df unplayable without it says more about the poster than it does about df.

It really depends on what you want to do.

For example, I want to get to place that is less than kilometer from me. Walking is okay and Riding a car seems like pointless luxury. You can even consider it excercise and roll eyes on anyone who would drive that kind of distance as lazy.

But then you get ot sotuation when you want to get to palce that is 10, 100 or even 1000 km away. That kind of distance is increasingly more "impossible" to travel to without mechanical aids. And anyone can full right to consider walking beyond inadequate.

---

Anyhow, DFhack offers great fixes:

 * drybuckets to fix how water in buckets is handled
 * clean all to fix contaminants, fps and contakminant spreads.
 * embark to help with sandboxiness/pointless limimations.
 * various binary patches like fix for allowing marskdwarves to train even if they carry combat ammo.
 

[Starver]

* various binary patches like fix for allowing marskdwarves to train even if they carry combat ammo.

This needs a fix?  I've never actually noticed this problem.  I'm not sure, now, whether I'm doing something wrong or doing something right...

Spoiler: For what it's worth... (click to show/hide)

I know there are difficulties, and everyone's always complaining that archers don't train unless you don't set them to train and other silly things like that, but while my little guys aren't eager to train, I set up my ranges and, within a season, there's signs of practice having gone on (single bolts littering the 'recovery' stockpile, on the Z-level below, and "broken ammo" symbols showing a direct hit on the target), even if I don't catch them in the act, and they usually get enough practice firing down on hostiles from the parapets, when mustered for real, anyway.  I usually tell them to have training ammo of wood (which I rarely make, but might buy) and bone, and combat ammo of metal, but it depends on circumstances sometimes.  Not quite knowing how my natural approach differs from that of others, however, I'm pretty useless at getting other people to work with 'my' method, and someone else's answer usually gives results first.  Recently someone suggested putting a stand/rack near the range area, overlapping, also assigned to the respective archers.  Someone else then said don't do that.  I'm not sure how that one turned out, though.

[Rose]

Archers need a regular barracks in addition to the firing range in order to train. It doesn't need to overlap the firing range, and probably shoudln't, but it needs to exist, and it needs to be set for your archer squad to train in it. This is because archers will use that, rather than the archery range, to train wrestling and hold dodging demonstrations and stuff.

[Starver]

Like I said, I seem to be doing things differently, because mine seem to use the ranges without any other barracks designation involved.  (Once I've already had them "boot-camping" some hand-to-hand techniques, but I put that as low priority for the troops I intend always to be firing upon the enemy from some fortified overlook or other, so some never even get that.)

It was someone else's suggestion that the barracks concerned should overlap, in this last remembered "Heyulp!" thread about archery... and then someone else said they shouldn't...  <sef>

[Rose]

Well my experience was that if they don't have a barracks to do non-archery training in, they tend to queue up the mele training, and then just stand around with the job "Going to archery practice" without actially going there.

[zwei]

Issue there is that if dwarf had quiver full of ammo that is not enabled for training, he would be unable to just pick up stack and train with it.

[Sutremaine]

* various binary patches like fix for allowing marskdwarves to train even if they carry combat ammo.

This needs a fix?  I've never actually noticed this problem.

Bolts can be set to combat, training, or both. Combat bolts will be reserved for firing at enemies, and training bolts will be reserved for firing at archery targets. That's how it works with the patch in place, anyway -- in the unpatched game, bolts have to be set to both training and combat for the dwarf with the bolts to do both training and live fire. They're set this way by default.

[kefkakrazy]

It's really a matter of personal opinion and views, as has been stated.

For me, personally, it's only "cheating" if the goal is to make something easier. If something is bugged out and acting really weird/unplayable, then I don't mind forcing a fix with DFhack or something similar.

For example, during my turn on Deathgate I, I found an issue where a goblin from a siege had been bridgeflipped onto a naked pillar. There was nothing I could do to get rid of him and mustering marksdwarves to get rid of him would have taken the better part of an hour under that period's FPS issues.

I wound up using DFHack to drop a 7/7 tile of magma on the goblin's head, causing him to evaporate and solving the issue of unending, unstoppable job cancellation spam messages caused by an utterly trapped melee goblin soldier.

I feel no guilt.

[Garath]

the actual problem, as I recall, was that they wouldn't do any archery training as long as they still had combat ammo. So you'd have to get them to empty their quivers at something and then hope as hell that they didn't go and pick up -another- batch of combat reserved bolts, though some tricks help there

[joeclark77]

I tried Therapist a couple of years ago. It was definitely nice, but starting up a separate program got a bit tiresome

Fortunately, DFHack replicates the basic Therapist behavior right into the normal DF interface.

Does it?  What's the command to do that?  I wouldn't mind going from 3 windows down to 2...

[Victor6]

Does it?  What's the command to do that?  I wouldn't mind going from 3 windows down to 2...

No command. Just go to the units screen and press l (not I, or i, but lowercase L - stupid fonts).

If you have DFhack installed it should run automatically.

[Starver]

* various binary patches like fix for allowing marskdwarves to train even if they carry combat ammo.

This needs a fix?  I've never actually noticed this problem.

Bolts can be set to combat, training, or both. Combat bolts will be reserved for firing at enemies, and training bolts will be reserved for firing at archery targets. That's how it works with the patch in place, anyway -- in the unpatched game, bolts have to be set to both training and combat for the dwarf with the bolts to do both training and live fire. They're set this way by default.

Wasn't wanting to pollute this thread with this singular issue, but I'll say more about what I said later than the above quote.  I take the default of "generic bolts for both training and combat" and turn it into "metal bolts for combat only", then add "wooden bolts for training" and "bone bolts for training" as additional items (lower numbers of bolts, though).  And it works as expected.

If YMMV, then there's obviously something else I do that kicks the game into shape.  Or I'm just more patient (and I'm often oversubscribed on archers, anyway, more than enough to hail down combat ammo on anyone bothering my walls) and it takes a while to kick in.  But they definitely train.

So I assume the binary patch makes it work more logically for most people.  Not sure it's essential, but I wouldn't advise against it either...  Some where in the grey area between a bug-squisher and an enabler, by my original, ad hoc, classification.

the actual problem, as I recall, was that they wouldn't do any archery training as long as they still had combat ammo. So you'd have to get them to empty their quivers at something and then hope as hell that they didn't go and pick up -another- batch of combat reserved bolts, though some tricks help there

Hmmm.... don't think they ran out of combat-only bolts.  I'll look into it next time I've got time to actually play the game, but I'm fairly sure the latest fort has a shed-load of copper bolts being produced from the copious[1] ore I keep digging up, in my search for anything more iron-based.  With the training bolts being limited to some traded ones (plus some traded arrows, for the longbow squad[2]) and a small number of crafted bone and wooden ones that seem to recycle well in my bolt-recovery ranges, I'm definite that they're outnumbered in quantity by the combat-only metal ones.

[1] Or, indeed, "cuprinous"...

[2] A result of accidentally buying a large quantity of steel arrows, at one point.  So with with a few (non-cross) bows scavenged from the corpses of enemies I made a small longbow squad.

[kingubu]

Say I want to cross some woods.  Some people believe backpacking would be the best.

I would take a jeep.  Some people would think that is wrong.

I would also have a cooler full of beer.  More people would think that is wrong.

I would also have a .50 cal mounted on the roof.  For deer hunting.  Many people would think that is wrong.

But screw them, I'm a drunk with a machine gun.  What are they going to say?

[Hamsmagoo]

I don't think the OP said it's unplayable I think he just said he HEARD it's unplayable, which obviously isn't true.

I don't use dfhack, but I don't see how fixing certain bugs is "being coddled."  Technically, you're playing the game as it intended.

Your "exploitable bugs" point may be valid in games that have been released.  But, to exploit bugs, rather than try and fix them, when the game is in its alpha stages kind of goes against the spirit.

[Garath]

I don't think I actually said so far, but I constantly have dfhack running in the background when playing, just in case I stumble upon one of the bugs. Otherwise I don't use it. Yes, I could install and remove it every time I get a bug that is fixable with dfhack and have dealt with it, I'm just lazy