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[Urist McHendrix]

¡Saludos desde España!
Greetings from Spain! Land of castles and conquistadores, which seems to fit into the early game settings, tho I've never seen any magma cannon around these parts. Also land of the Necro, for some reason (ÑÑÑÑÑÑÑÑÑÑÑ).

So I've been playing for a few months, mainly with .31 LNP that some friend shared with me, lately I upgraded to 2014 and boy is this awesome... Everyone goes off to build walls!! Excelent...

As I don't wanna make this a huge fkin TL;DR textwall I'll just state 2 things, first, how insane (and for some reason, logical and genius) this community is. I feel at home.

Second, Marksdwarves. I don't see enough rage on how they tend to scratch each other ba... beards around  any statue instead of training. I've seen quite an improvement compared to .31, now it's just 8/20 of them slacking, instead of 15/20... Still I feel they are overall training faster on Crundle hunting routines, which also keeps docs from rusting, but I don't like this workaround, I usually end with half the squad dead this way(every 2 seasons).

Ahhh... I thought I was kinda pro when I figured out to make soap on my own (No wiki-peekin at that time)... Then...Obsidianize magma sea... Magma pump stacks... NECRO BACON!!!!!!!

[Baffler]

Do the marksdwarves have a barracks assigned? AFAIK they need one in addition to an archery range in order to train properly during scheduled drills.

[pisskop]

  Welcome!  You'll find that we are all different, but overall it works like any other forum. We have an 'upper board' for DF, a 'middle board', for other games that fit into Bay12, and the 'Lower board', where all the other stuff happens, like debates and games and hahaing.  Just be yourself, an be productive, and you're going to find a home just fine.  You could even try a 'community fort' if you want to directly impact other people's gaming experience!

  Good luck, Love the Wiki, and ask if you must, there' always somebody who wants to help!


-Training and marksdwarves.

  -Yup, they don't do the archery enough, and the ai of them kind of lacks.  But its not something I cant deal with.  I send them to training in the barracks like everyone else, and give them some freetime to go train.  You could try not giving them a barracks and only assigning archrey ranges to them, but . . .

  -I think dwarves get XP too fast, personally, and that includes all skills but climbing, just about.

---

Do the marksdwarves have a barracks assigned? AFAIK they need one in addition to an archery range in order to train properly during scheduled drills.

You can do this.  You can separate training and sleeping into different places.  So you could set the archery target for training and the barracks for only sleeping.

[Goblins]

I started off on this community sober and sane.  I don't know what happened, but everything afterwards has been a frightening blur.

[Urist McHendrix]

Yeah I give em more than enough archery ranges, and I always setup sleeping/storage barracks inside, shared by every squad (again with more than enough furniture to sleep/store unused trash) and a surface melee training yard. I don't assign them to the surface as in my experience they tend to not slack, but instead 3/4 of the marksdorfs are training melee and maybe 3 of my 20 guys are shooting. Also they tend to develop unhealthy habits, like wrestling wereturtles or  jumpin over a 3 level wall to go bash some giant in the head, with the corresponding loss of teeth and limbs.

  -I think dwarves get XP too fast, personally, and that includes all skills but climbing, just about.

This is so true, my melee squads are legendary on most skills in less than 2 years with 0 fighting, that's a bit overkill compared to how slowly they trained in the older version I played, maybe I'll release them from training after they got talented or so on their weapons and wait a year or so before more training. I must point, I never ever have my military offtraining duty, I gotta play around with defending burrows, as I didn't really fiddled with that, but they never should go off duty, ever.
Thanks for the speedy advice and nice welcome! ¡Golpear la tierra! err... Strike the earth!

[Numeroid]

I do believe marksdwarves have to be set to Inactive for them to train at their archery ranges. Enable the squad at the Archery Range with q but leave them Inactive in the Military menu.

[Urist McHendrix]

Interesting, I've seen off duty soldiers sparring and whatnot, ignoring hauling or crafting. I guess I'll do some !!SCIENCE!! regarding the amount of time spent training with labors enabled on some of them versus no labors at all versus active soldiers (the point here would be the best archery training/general laboring ratio, dwarves shouldn't be pickin their noses when there's work to be done).

I'll open a new post to share whatever I can learn, if anything. Just gimme a few hours...

[Damiac]

NOO! They do not have to be set to inactive. That piece of bad info has been floating around forever, but it's not true.

For marksdwarves to train at the targets, the following must be true:
An archery target must be set as a room, and assigned for the squad with the marksdwarves to (T)rain
The archery target must be set for the correct direction (Fire from north, fire from south, etc)
There must be bolts available, and the squad must have bolts assigned to them.
The squad needs crossbows.


I am less sure about the following items, but I always do these things:
Put a bed in the room with the archery targets, set that as barracks assigned to the marksdwarf squad.
Make quivers for all the dwarves.

When I do those things, my Marksdwarves do a lot of target practice, while on active/training duty.

Alternatively, forget about the targets and order your marksdwarves to kill the local wildlife.  Live practice works very well!  You might get annoyed with all the bolts laying around everywhere though.

[Nikow]

My xbow dorfs trains as usual, but i am marking all archery targets as barracks.

[Urist McHendrix]

By marking them as barracks, do you mean overlapping the archery target room with another weapon rack/armor stand's room? And setting them to sleep or store things there? Also I see a tendency of givin me some nooby advice like.. Having crossbows hehehehehe... I'm no pro but I learnt a darn lot with my first succesful fortress, til the circus came to town. Jolly, unspoiled times.

Edit: Ohhhhh so you meant, like every single target must be marked, yeah, if you only activate (q)(r) 1 of them, only a single dorf will shoot at it no matter how many other does it overlap. I'm not so sure if I'm making it any clear lo.

[thegoatgod_pan]

NOO! They do not have to be set to inactive. That piece of bad info has been floating around forever, but it's not true.

For marksdwarves to train at the targets, the following must be true:
An archery target must be set as a room, and assigned for the squad with the marksdwarves to (T)rain
The archery target must be set for the correct direction (Fire from north, fire from south, etc)
There must be bolts available, and the squad must have bolts assigned to them.
The squad needs crossbows.


I am less sure about the following items, but I always do these things:
Put a bed in the room with the archery targets, set that as barracks assigned to the marksdwarf squad.
Make quivers for all the dwarves.

When I do those things, my Marksdwarves do a lot of target practice, while on active/training duty.

Alternatively, forget about the targets and order your marksdwarves to kill the local wildlife.  Live practice works very well!  You might get annoyed with all the bolts laying around everywhere though.

Really odd, the inactive trick is how I trained my marksdwarfs just a few versions ago (40.19), worked for me then...

[Damiac]

I know they will train when inactive, and some people report getting better training results that way, but in my experience they will train quite a bit while active, as long as the archery targets and everything are set up right.

The most common reason for them not to train is that they don't have the bolts assigned.  Oh and use the same bolts for combat and training, if you use different bolts there it seems to mess everything up.

When I said designate each target, I mean hit 'q' on each archery target, and '+' until it's the size you want.  Also, on each archery target make sure the marksdwarf squad is set to 't'rain. 

It may be that when inactive, they don't care about some of those things, which is why it works better for some people.

[GhostDwemer]

It's not that the inactive trick doesn't work, it is that it is not necessary, and less efficient than doing it right. Let me clarify the one thing Damiac seemed unclear on: the squad MUST have a separate barracks they can train at. Without a barracks to train at, they will do no training at all when active. When inactive, they will only train if they have nothing else to do, and even then, it's hit or miss.

So, the checklist is:
 Marksdwarf(s) in a squad with crossbows,
 With assigned quivers and ammo,
 Assigned to a regular barracks,
 Archery targets set up and assigned to the squad, with direction set correctly,
 Lots of accessible, unforbidden spare ammo

The barracks they train at does not need to overlap the target. A target is always singular, you can not designate multiple targets for practice from a single overlapping target. Each must be set up and assigned individually, and you should use at least 1 target for every two marksdwarves, preferably one per dwarf.

I have never had a problem with marksdwarves training when I follow the checklist, not one single problem in years of playing. Nor have I ever seen a verified problem on the forums that was not caused by not following the checklist correctly. If it does not work, it is not a "bug," you are doing something wrong.

[Naryar]

i have seen marksdwarves train no problem, but only the marksdwarves that actually HAVE marksdwarf skill.

Somehow like sparring but less intense, seen a novice marksdwarf train.