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[arcturusthelesser]

I can't get my marksdwarves to actually shoot. They're all wearing quivers, and all of my ammo stockpiles are set to no bins, but the quivers are empty. I have five archery targets, each one designated as its own range and assigned to the squad. I've given them plenty of bolts. Why won't they train in something besides hammerdwarf?

[shadowclasper]

are you making sure that they're assigned to pick up bolts and not arrows?

[Finn]

You might have more than one problem, but the first is that you have to understand that archery practice is something they (may) decide to do on their own when they are idle.  It is not something they do because you gave them an order to "train".  Making them train (or do anything else) will interfere with archery practice.

Second, bolt allocation is tricky.  Make sure the squad is assigned bolts for practice and make sure you have several thousand bolts.  Also, there is a conflict with the hunter "uniform" so make sure none of them have the hunter labor.

Most likely though it's just the first problem.  They won't pick up bolts until the first time they head to the range.  Make sure your marksdwarves are idle as much as possible and they will start to practice.

[Larix]

You might have more than one problem, but the first is that you have to understand that archery practice is something they (may) decide to do on their own when they are idle.  It is not something they do because you gave them an order to "train".  Making them train (or do anything else) will interfere with archery practice.

This is not the case. Marksdwarfs _will_ schedule archery training as part of their active training regimen if they have both an active barracks and an archery range. They'll occasionally go and do "individual combat drill" to pick up and improve dodging, but if you haven't sent them into a melee battle and/or equipped them with war hammers in addition to the crossbows, they'll normally abstain from learning the fine art of the crossbow bash.

Active training is the fastest way to get small numbers of legendary marksdwarfs. Inactive, spare-time training is the easiest way to get largish, decently-skilled marksdwarf reserves.

Apart from that, i agree - making sure the marksdwarfs don't have the hunter labour solves many common marksdwarf problems. In addition, make sure the squad actually has ammo assigned (and that bolts are the assigned type). I vividly remember wondering why my beards wouldn't pick up ammo when i was using a squad generated as "leather armour", i.e. an "unarmoured melee" squad, which comes without a default ammo assignment.

[Finn]

You might have more than one problem, but the first is that you have to understand that archery practice is something they (may) decide to do on their own when they are idle.  It is not something they do because you gave them an order to "train".  Making them train (or do anything else) will interfere with archery practice.

This is not the case. Marksdwarfs _will_ schedule archery training as part of their active training regimen if they have both an active barracks and an archery range.

I've done a fair amount of science on this and I'm pretty sure I'm not wrong here.   What do you usually set your minimum number for training to?

[Larix]

However many dwarfs are in the squad, one order only.

The critical point is that to train, an active squad needs a barracks. If they have none, they'll just stand around like dopes. Having few skills worth training at a barracks also helps a lot - i used a pair of dwarfs, one with no military skills, one with a single level of marksdwarf, and they became legendary in five seasons of full-out active training.

I also switched a squad trained inactively to an active schedule, and the archery targets saw heavy traffic, while the rest of the squad trained dodging; and when i gave them hammers, they sparred. All of that happened in active training, they were all registered as "marksdwarf" or "elite marksdwarf", not with civilian professions as during inactive practice.

To train a large levy to skilled-proficient, i generally use inactive training, because it requires no attention to happiness and burns much less ammo. But for quick training to high levels, active training is the way to go.

[arcturusthelesser]

Do they need barracks in addition to a range? I un-roomed the barrack so that they wouldn't melee. I think the hunter conflict thing is most likely the issue, most of them still have the labor enabled.

. . .

Disabling the hunting labor seems to work . . . for now. Now to query a crapton of bolts.

[Larix]

If you switch off the barracks, they'll only train if they're set to "inactive". Setting them up with no barracks and a permanently "inactive" or "no orders" schedule avoids sparring and dodging demonstrations, avoids long duty unhappiness and trains them a bit slowly but reliably. They can also perform civilian labours on short notice if desired. If you want marksdwarfs as backup for your melee line or just want to keep your pre-trained (via hunting) ranged squad in shape, setting them to inactive is a good choice.

[arcturusthelesser]

I assumed that archery ranges replaced barracks for marksdwarves, due to the ability to set the squad to sleep there.

While training at least is no longer at a complete halt, I still get the distinct impression I've made a mistake. Somehow, bins got into one of my ammunition stockpiles despite me setting them to zero. As a result, Urist McRanger has been saying he's going to practice for about a week when he's really loitering in the storeroom.

[Baffler]

I had the same problem with bowmen a few weeks ago. They seemed to go and train at the range when I made them go to the range by stationing them there but even then they only fired a single arrow at the targets and went back to loitering around the well, or in the pub. There were no bins in the ammo stockpile though, so I don't know what could be causing the problem.