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[khearn]

I'm more and more thinking marksdwarves are just a waste of time. Almost every bolt gets blocked, and those that don't seldom do much damage. Maybe it would help if my marksdwarves would shoot the copper bolts that I have marked as "combat use" and not the wood bolts that are marked "training use only". And then there is their tendency to charge into melee with a full quiver instead of staying back and shooting. Given all the effort it takes to get them to actually shoot useful bolts, I'm more and more thinking I'd be better off just taking away their crossbows and handing them real weapons so they can do something useful.

Then there are macedwarves, who also seem pretty low on the utility scale (but better than marksdwarves). They seldom seem to break bones like hammers do, and they don't lop off limbs. All the bruising they do might be useful against goblins, but against undead and weres (which are what I'm been facing mostly lately) they don't seem to accomplish much at all. Had a fort where the first 2 migrants with military skills were both macedwarves, so I started my first squad with them. Then an axedwarf showed up, followed immediately by a bunch of undead. The axedwarf had a copper axe and no armor, the macedwarves had silver maces and full armor. In the end, the axedwarf killed all of the undead, except for one that got killed by a lucky blow to the head from a mace. But I saw dozens of headshots from maces fracture the skull, but not enough to drive it through the brain like hammers would have done. What can a mace do that a hammer can't do better?

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

Training/combat bolts is bugged. My advice with marksdwarves is the age-old doctrine of MOAR DAKKA! I have 3 squads of random dwarves given crossbows, in order to kill enemies by weight of fire.

[tiresius]

I was having trouble with ammo and training but cleared it up on my own I think?

Make sure that in the military screen you have enough assigned bolts (wood for Training, metal for Combat) and confirm you see the green checkmarks next to the actual sets of ammo.

[Bradders]

As I_G_H said, the training / combat bolts selection is bugged, dwarves won't carry both kinds and they won't switch to a different ammo type until their quiver is empty.  You have to make them drop their quivers, or dump their ammo out, individually, to get them to go grab the right ammo type.  Only slightly obnoxious.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

I don't train marksdwarves. Instead I let them use the same barracks the melee dwarves use. They will shoot anything hostile getting near the barracks. It is good to drive those annoying flying birds away.
Quantity makes quality, just recruit a bunch of them and make enough bolts.

[khearn]

But is it worth making a bunch of marksdwarves, when you could make a bunch of axe/sword/spear/hammer dwarves?

I can see the utility of putting all your civilians in militia crossbow squads so they're armed all the time and can contribute *something* in a fight while hopefully staying out of harm's way (yeah, right). But is it worth having fulltime marksdwarves when you could have fulltime melee dwarves instead?

The one reason I can see is in the case of a forgotten beast with deadly dust (or fire or webs, depending on circumstances), where you don't want to engage in melee at all. But that's why I build complex traps (that generally work at least as well as my marksdwarves). Well, that and the fact that building complex traps is fun.

And what about macedwarves? Anyone actually find that they are effective?

Hmmm, it would be nice to write up a gamelog.txt scanner that parses the combat output and can "score" the various hits and see if it's just a matter of perception, or if macedwarves don't really accomplish much of real value. They hit as often as anyone else, but their hits just don't seem to do much.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

It depends on what targets you are fighting. What if there's a flying titan or something like that? Besides, there are too many rangers/hunters sometimes, I just recruit them and give them some crossbows to play with. Birds sometimes can be annoying, they interrupt jobs so you may want to shoot them down as soon as possible.

As for macedwarves, it is said they are good against undead (you know, cutting weapons create more parts, and hammer tends to break bones which has less effect against undead).

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Edit*

I recuit soldiers based on their initial skills. If he is a macedwarf, I buy or forge a mace for him. But you are right, it is probably more efficient to give him something else, unless he's already a macelord.

[Killgoth]

I think marksdwarves are super useful.  I never bother with training bolts because copper is cheap.  I build my depot's outside and always build a three story roofed tower to guard it (accessed by tunnel).  If you make the tower with only a one tile walkway with carved-fortification walls on each side you can make sure your dwarves are always close enough to shoot the enemy. After two or three sieges you should get a few legendary marksdwarves (they are not great at killing things outright, but that just means they get a lot of practice shooting crippled enemies).

The main thing they are good for in my opinion is crippling enemy units by breaking bones and opening arteries before they hit my melee units.  Also, there are just some forgotten beasts/titans you can't send melee units in to fight that a squad of skilled marksdwarves can easily make mincemeat out of (not to mention GCS).

I can't really comment on macedwarf efficacy because I usually try to have my smiths accommodate the weapon skill a given dwarf is highest in already and let things play out.  A legendary wielder of any weapon is deadly IMO.

[khearn]

I've found them to be pretty worthless against undead. All they do is cause bruising, which doesn't bother the undead very much. I guess after a few dozen bruises in the same location it will get pulped, but one or two axe hits and it's removed. The undead I've been encountering don't have limbs that come back to life on their own. Their necromancer bosses tend to head for the hills as soon as they uncloak and don't stick around to reanimate dismembered limbs. Maybe in an evil biome that has auto-regeneration it would be different. But your run of the mill reanimated corpses I see go down very nicely to an axe in the head, while a mace just fractures the skull (which has no effect on undead if it doesn't also tear the brain).

I can imagine maces would be decent against living foes that feel pain, like goblins and their companions. But hammers seem to do that job even better.

I have always recruited based in initial skill, too, but I'm seriously rethinking that now. Given that almost every melee type that migrates to my forts starts at just 3 in some weapon, and given that sparring works well enough to get skill up from 0 to 3 fairly quickly, I'm thinking of just retraining every migrant macedwarf into whatever other melee weapon I happen to be short of (not a height joke). It looks like level 3 is 1.8k XP, while 14 is 16.1k and level 15 is around 18k. So by the time he's approaching legendary, that extra 1.8k is about 1 level. Would I want a legendary+1 macedwarf when I could have a legendary axedwarf? The macedwarf would be really good at cracking ribs and making bruises, but the axedwarf would be nearly as good at sending heads flying.

My recent fort where my first two migrant soldiers were both macedwarves really made me realize just how poor they are. If I hadn't gotten an axedwarf just before the first undead attack, it would have been ugly. About all the macedwarves did was distract the undead and act as targets so the axedwarf could do the actual damage. Without the axedwarf, those two macedwarves would have just kept bruising the undead until dropping from exhaustion.

Dunno, I may just have a bad perception of them. That's why I asked, to see if others find them more valuable than I do. Maybe I just don't end up with the kind of fights where they shine? Or maybe I'm just noticing their useless hits and not noticing the useful ones because of my expectations?  I think I really do need to make a gamelog.txt parser to see if they really are as bad as I perceive. I just need to figure out how to tell "useful" hits from "useless" hits. Sometimes it's not clear until the target gives in to pain or bleeds out. And finally crushing the skull of an unconscious opponent after 30 hits certainly isn't as good as doing it on the first try. But how much worse is it? It's hard to quantify DF combat reports.

[jwest23]

I don't have any science to contribute, but I do have an anecdote from 40.24.  I'm playing a 40.24 fortress at the moment, and I decided that I'd train up macedwarves because I never had before.

My combat logs generally end in a pile of goblins with pulped hands, legs, heads, or torsos.  I can't speak to how they might compare to hammerdwarves against the same targets, but I'm pretty pleased with them so far.

[Libash_Thunderhead]

Against normal goblins, it doesn't really matter because you have more than enough time to train weapon lords before the first siege.

[slashnul]

Warhammers are king but not for long, I think.  Toady said its a problem hes going to address that something like a toe bone fracture KO's a creature.  Maybe the larger impact area of maces will be more beneficial soon. 

[Robsoie]

A great use of marksdwarves is when you are settled in an area that see tons of keas visiting your map.
Having your marksdwarves barrack in the exterior will make you appreciate them a lot when the kea problem is no more a problem and instead will help you getting nicely skilled marksdwarves.

[darkflagrance]

Don't train marksdwarves. Just prepare some squads of civilians to be turned into marksdwarves during each siege.

You can easily camp marksdwarves directly adjacent to fortifications and let them shoot goblins from almost complete safety. This is the best policy for using them in combat.

If marksdwarves can reach the enemy by foot, they will eventually charge them, even jumping off roofs to do so. Don't let them do this.

[Robsoie]

I don't know if it's still happening in 42.x as i don't use this wall/fortification setup anymore, but in 40.x marksdwarves were stupid enough to jump - through - fortifications that were on top of my walls after a few seconds of shooting at an enemy. I had lost several of those idiots against a serpentine-like titan with their stupid stunt.

Though i always wondered how it's even possible to move through this kind of thing , those dwarves must be incredibly thin to be able to do such a stunt, without mentionning those gigantic megabeasts/forgotten ones that can do that too.

Bug is still floading on the tracker
http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/mantisbt/view.php?id=8160