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[Morcaster]

I seem to be running into a lot of bugs. Most of them I saw in the bug reporter.
Dwarfs do not pick up ammo to fight and it is extremely hard to get them to do what I want.
Read the advanced markdwarf guide and that does not help much. I have spent hours trying to find work around's.
 The only one I know so far that is sure to work is:
1. Deleting the squad and resigning it. DF therapist helps with resigning very well.
2. Disable hunters and hunter ammo, Disable woodcutter, miner etc.
3. Only have one ammo type along with CT for all ammo materials because having T for wood and C for metal in combat while dwarfs have wood bolts is bad, they will not fire.
4. Have a patrol route to lead to ammo stockpile without bins out of line of sight from hostiles in a secure, sealed area otherwise dwarfs won't fire ammo or they'll charge with their crossbows as hammers

-There just needs to be a simple way for dwarfs to just, pick up un-stacked/stacked ammo to the nearest assigned ammo material in a stockpile when in combat when given a order. Or at least an order called "Reload" in the squad screen to do this. Forces the dwarfs that don't have ammo to go pick it up even when a order was previously given such as Move/Station etc where dwarfs that already have ammo stay and shoot.
-The ability for dwarfs to pick up un stacked ammo with 1 bolt vs 10 bolts could help until that dwarfs has 25 bolts total.
-what would be better is if ammo would just friggin stack to 25 so I don't have to create a massive stockpile. The only way out of this is to forbid ammo pick up and keep making stacks of steel ammo. And I cheat to do this because it's to much of a hassle and process to counter act it.

There's just so many issues with range combat in this game I don't usually bother with range units anymore. but the usefulness and potential is great.
Some of these bugs are very old to, or keep popping up.

Any pro tips that I may be missing?   

[PatrikLundell]

I've given up on ranged combat for the time being because of the issues you mention plus others:
- X-bow dorfs ordered to kill enemies they can't reach will use up their ammo and then desert their order because they have no ammo and the target is unreachable for a suicide change, decide to train, and then pick up ammo to do so.
- X-bow dorfs ordered to kill fliers desert their orders and sneak off to train rather than move three steps forward to get into range because they think the target is unreachable.
- X-bow dorfs didn't attack the fliers above (crows) when stationed, probably because they (the crows that is) weren't hostile enough, so the mostly failing kill orders had to be used.
- X-bow dorfs are unable to hit camping critters sitting in a large clump 2 or 3 tiles above ground, despite standing just below. All the bolts miss and end up on the ground (I've counted them), even if the dorf has spent a fair bit of time training.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I have my crossbow team shoot all the invaders that arrive from their bunker (defend burrows) and they always have plenty of ammo to do so with. The only thing I take care to do is not assign different ammo for training/combat/hunters. Yes, that means they're mostly shooting wood and they're not the most flexible military squad in the world, but they tend to slow down the goblins enough to be of little challenge when the axe team come along to finish them off.

Actually, I also make sure bolts aren't put in bins. I forget if that's still an issue but I seem to recall it being so at some point.

Also, there's a chest in the archery range which peasants keep stocked up with ammo so the squad always have loads on hand. Does that happen in vanilla, or is it a DFhack thing?

[vanatteveldt]

I think it works reasonably well with the following procedure:

- disable all hunteres
- have only one type of ammo, usually copper or iron depending on the map
- use that ammo for training and combat
- use a workshop repeat order to have way too many arrows

I just assume that my marksdwarves will only empty their quiver once for each combat situation, which is normally fine, so I have no clue how to get them to reload in mid-combat.

[Treah]

I actually have very good luck with my ranged combat units. Some points that I do/keep in mind are below.

• Assign a ranged and melee weapon with no sheild/buckler - Allow them individual melee weapon. Assign crossbow as the ranged weapon.
• Never put bolts into bins. As far as I know this is still broken
• Never put weapons/armor in bins
• Designate archery ranges one at a time and actually set the squad to train there - gotta select them and then hit T
• Station dwarves to shoot at enemies then cancel the station order to have them get more arrows/food/drink
• Channel out an area behind your archery targets and used ammo for training will fall down and be able to be picked up if its not broken. This can save you quite a bit of making bolts and keeping large stockpiles of it around. Just be expected to have to claim the spent bolts all the time and have alot of haulers to move it around. I usually check once or twice a dwarf month and claim everything in the pit. I also remove the ramps and make a way underground to recover the spent ammo.

With this I find that I can have hunters and ranged with no ill effects, I even have mixed ammo and they seam to have no issues with it as they consume ammo and clear out their quivers faster then they getting stuck with 1 arrow in their quiver of a type and wont mix them. Remember also that training and hunting will expend a metric ton of ammo so make ALOT of it and it breaks quite a bit.

I also play with dfhack and it might fix some of the issues with archery as well, I find archery works quite well to soften/break a siege of gobo and trolls. My last attack had quite a few dangerous lashers and a bunch of trolls and was broken by my single 10 dwarf archery squad stationed on a 1z level fortified wall. below is the construction that I use.

W - Wall
F - Fortification
_ - Floor

SIDE VIEW
============
 F_
W

TOP DOWN
=========
F_
F_
F_
F_

[Montieth]

I too have good luck with archers. I usually arm them with swords and shields after a time and they do fine after a few years of training. The shields help immensely with deflecting arrows fired at them by goblins.

With any fortifications, add an overhead roof (floor) to prevent agressive dwarves from going over your fortifications and climbing/jumping down to go to hand to hand. Some dwarves will charge and that usually ends badly. Best to build walls and the. Carve them out as fortifications, as a wall has a floor on its nex z level and a built fortification does not.


So you build the following in profile:

Code: [Select]


 _
W_
W