I finally got around to fixing this.
GLORIOUS
I think I'm going to have to train a third weaponsmith to keep up with the demand!
It really puts it in perspective when you watch every bolt in your fortress vanish. Incidentally, if you get lucky with a fleshy FB or titan, bone bolts work wonders at supply problems. Bone only makes stacks of five, but your dwarves will load multiples in their quiver (up to 20 bolts total).
Now that I've had this running for long enough, I've noticed the following quirks
- The higher the archer skill, the more frequently they archery train
Here's all ten of them going at once:
- Ammo is *by far* the biggest blocker; two weaponsmiths, and three bone carvers BARELY can meet demand, and I still have marksdwarves lagging on the reload. My metalsmithing industry lacks magma or coal, so I have an addition SIX wood burners going flat out to run all my forges.
I've noticed that when they go "No Orders", they almost universally lack bolts. I'm starting to suspect archery practice may be higher priority, but the problem is they try and do that, have no bolts, get stuck, then wake up and reload. I almost always see Archery Practice following a Pickup Equipment. I think adding another weaponsmith or two/three bone carvers is going to be needed.
I've never had ammo problems like this, even when livetraining. I know bolt for bolt, live training is more effective, but I've had plenty of problems with them not reloading either with live training, which makes me suspect the entire issue with marksdwarves not properly training is them not reliably reloading, and after six months in game, I have some starting from scratch about to hit elite marksdwarves. If I had kept up with demand, I bet would be faster.
I've also devised a method to separate out the steel bolts (or any specific material) for when you want them for maximize lethality once your badasses hit badass status. All you have to do is have a bookkeeper, and just mass forbid steel bolts. When you want them to change over, forbid all the other bolt types, unforbid steel. They'll dump their quivers, and reload with steel. Reverse the process to get them shooting garbage bolts again. I notice they *always* take pickup equipment if they've gotten their bolts forbidden reliably.
EDIT: Here's how to get the changeover to work reliably, assuming you have forbidden bolts already.
1. Issue a station for the marksdwarves squad somewhere in your fortress away from enemies. This gets them to stop training, but also causes some issues with reloading (they don't always take Pickup Equipment if stationed).
2. Use the stocks screen to change the forbid settings. They'll dump the bolts where they stand (stationing in an ammo stockpile solves two problems at once)
3. Cancel the station, wait a moment, then issue it again; they'll immediately go reload
4. Once they're reloaded, send them where they need to go.