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[donpost]

I see from searching the forum that there have been lots of threads about MDs not picking up bolts, but I have a new twist on the problem that I can't see mentioned in any of those threads....

I have large stocks of bolts, some in ammo stockpiles and some not. (however I have seen MDs picking up bolts from stockpiles so maybe that's irrelevant). My squad are set to have 100 bolts between four (material not specified). They are set to be used for both combat and training.

My MDs WILL pick up bolts, but only NEW bolts that I produce. The massive stock I hold from captured enemies and previous production are never touched. If they run out of "new" bolts, they won't refill. This is a pain as I have no metal and want to use all these old bolts.... Per the stock screen none of the bolts are forbidden and no burrows are in play.

Any ideas?

In the same vein, one of my dwarfs refuses to pick up a leather buckler despite me having lots available and building some "new" ones. According to the squad equip screen there are green marks next to all of the other equipment for that dwarf except for the buckler/shield, and the rest of the squad have all green marks. Do the green marks mean they have that item on them? My other squad have all green marks, but if I look at some of the members using "q" they are missing parts...

Soooo confused!

[oldark]

Make sure the melee weapon that your shield-less dwarf has isn't 2-handed.  I've had them claim large weapons before and never fill their shield slot.

[sirdave79]

Ive never had problems with marksdwarves and bolts in the past, however I am having trouble with it in my current fort. At the moment my dwarves are currently picking up bolts rarely and/or some are not picking them up at all. Ive not noticed the new bolts thing you describe, Ill have a look for it. If you can say if all your bolts are new you wont have a problem you could melt all yours and make new. I know youll lose some metal (can you not also mine more ?) but maybe it would be worth it to clear the problem. I plan on completely rebuilding all my squads from scratch and reequiping now ive just finished danger rooming my last dwarves for armour user. Possibly rebuilding the squad might alleviate the problem the same way new bolts do ? If youve got your squad set for 100 bolts I think that means each member will try to carry 100, which I think is a lot and may slow down move/fire speed. I set my combat squads to 50. Im not sure if they will carry 100. This might be causing you a problem.

With regards to armour its difficult to know exactly what your describing. If you use uniforms and all the dwarves list all elements of their unifrom with a green mark on the equip screen that doesnt necessarily mean those items are equipped in my experience. When these things misbehave I do 2 things.

1) make sure your dwarves are set to replace clothing with the r key on the equip screen. This shouldnt affect a shield equipping however.

2) equip a specific item. If you mark a dwarf for a specific buckler (cough, SHIELDS) and you have one sitting in a stockpile ive never seen them not equip a piece unless 1) above is not set to replace clothing instead of over clothing. Without replace clothing set ive seen dwarves equip partial uniforms or ignore certain equipment assignments you make depending on the clothing a dwarf is wearing.

It can all be quite fiddly!

[Telgin]

I've had similar problems with bolts, sometimes being unable to even get the bolts I embarked with to work.  I never found a direct solution, but I think part of the problem may be stack size.  I've noticed that sometimes invaders arrive with large stacks of bolts (30+) that the dwarves won't use.  I think it might be related, but I never tried did any experimenting to see if stack sizes were the direct culprit there.

In the mean time, you can try just melting down metal bolts from invaders and making new ammo.

[cdombroski]

Some of your bolts may be claimed by your hunters (that's what the green checks mean throughout the military interface btw, claimed, not necessarily held). Also, the 100 bolts is for the entire squad, and a quiver can hold 25. If I'm reading correctly that you have a squad of 4, this should be fine, but you'll want to increase the bolts available to the squad to at least 250 if you ever add more dwarves.

[sirdave79]

interesting. Guess I need to up my bolt assignment. This time ive got 10 man squads, so I guess I need 250 if I want everyone to hold 25.

I thought id seen 2x25 in 1 quiver, maybe im wrong.

[donpost]

Make sure the melee weapon that your shield-less dwarf has isn't 2-handed.  I've had them claim large weapons before and never fill their shield slot.

Can't believe I didn't think of that! I'll have to check.

Ive never had problems with marksdwarves and bolts in the past, however I am having trouble with it in my current fort. At the moment my dwarves are currently picking up bolts rarely and/or some are not picking them up at all. Ive not noticed the new bolts thing you describe, Ill have a look for it. If you can say if all your bolts are new you wont have a problem you could melt all yours and make new. I know youll lose some metal (can you not also mine more ?) but maybe it would be worth it to clear the problem.

I have been blessed with a mountain that seems to contain the square root of smeg all when it comes to metal, except for the odd few blocks of tetrahedrite...I'll give melting a go. Some of the unuseable bolts are wooden though - there's nothing I can do to recycle them correct?

With regards to armour its difficult to know exactly what your describing. If you use uniforms and all the dwarves list all elements of their unifrom with a green mark on the equip screen that doesnt necessarily mean those items are equipped in my experience. When these things misbehave I do 2 things.

1) make sure your dwarves are set to replace clothing with the r key on the equip screen. This shouldnt affect a shield equipping however.

2) equip a specific item. If you mark a dwarf for a specific buckler (cough, SHIELDS) and you have one sitting in a stockpile ive never seen them not equip a piece unless 1) above is not set to replace clothing instead of over clothing. Without replace clothing set ive seen dwarves equip partial uniforms or ignore certain equipment assignments you make depending on the clothing a dwarf is wearing.

It can all be quite fiddly!

Yeah all of my soldiers are on "replace clothing". I guess I could go through and assign every piece of armor/clothing/weapon/shield for each soldier but I really don't fancy the micromanagement 

[Merendel]

I have been blessed with a mountain that seems to contain the square root of smeg all when it comes to metal, except for the odd few blocks of tetrahedrite...I'll give melting a go. Some of the unuseable bolts are wooden though - there's nothing I can do to recycle them correct?

depends on your definition of recycle.   a pit of magma will recycle them into lovely smoke, other than that not much.   What you could do is sell half the stack to a merchant and then buy it back.  Thats the only way I can think of to seperate out bolts if the marks dwarves wont take them.   incidentaly this also works for coins if you feel like exploiting the melting mechanics to duplicate metal.

[donpost]

Right, I may have found out the problem. I think what is happening is that the dwarves are being assigned items that are unreachable (at the bottom of a lake etc) or, and this is stupid, in the case of clothes they are being worn by another dwarf....

The unreachable ones I can fix, but how do I make a dwarf drop an item of clothing?

[Bumber]

The unreachable ones I can fix, but how do I make a dwarf drop an item of clothing?

Add them to a squad and assign different clothing? Just hope it's not clothing that's worn by yet another dwarf.

[donpost]

Would dumping the item in the stock screen make the dwarf that is wearing the item dump it?

[donpost]

Apologies for the double post but I have some more information. The bolts that my markdwarfs wont pick up are purple in the stock screen. Apparently this means forbidden, but they are not, and toggling forbidden status changes nothing. These bolts are not inaccessible, they are in the same pile as the bolts that the dwarves can use perfectly fine...

Is there an explanation for this?

[WhimsyWink]

Is not the dump designation the purple? 

I have 3 quivers that came on embark sitting on the ground where I deconstructed the wagon.  the marksdwarfs wouldn't go get them.  I tried to dump and reclaim, but in 2 years everyone was apparently too busy to make a dump run.  So I reclaimed them in original location and stationed the MD's right on top of them.  No luck. 

[Bumber]

Would dumping the item in the stock screen make the dwarf that is wearing the item dump it?

In my experience, no. They'll wait until the dwarf in question has dropped the item on the floor before hauling it off.

I've never tried forbidding. Does that do anything?.

[Sutremaine]

This time ive got 10 man squads, so I guess I need 250 if I want everyone to hold 25.

I thought id seen 2x25 in 1 quiver, maybe im wrong.

You wouldn't have seen 2x25, because either one of those would be enough to fill the quiver and prevent any further claiming of bolts. 24+25 is perfectly valid, though unlikely.

If you're using bone bolts, you'll never have more than 29 bolts in a quiver and will only need to allocate 30 bolts per dwarf. If you're using metal or wooden bolts, you'll probably need some more to compensate for the larger maximum size of a stack. Not sure how many exactly though -- I'd start with 30 and see if the last one or two dwarves in the squad end up with full quivers, and then allocate more bolts until everyone is fully stocked.