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[ManaUser]

I've got a nice walled courtyard at my fort and I thought that would be a good place to set up a marksdwarf's range, but they completely ignore it. It's sized reasonably, marked to shoot in the correct direction and assigned to the right squad but nah let's just socialize!

Has anyone else ever noticed this as a problem? Or is it just the usual thick-headedness?

Also the archery target is on a roof if that matters for some reason. Obviously they have access though, because they were able to build it just fine.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Do they go to archery practice normally if you build a range underground?
Asking because some people seem to have trouble just getting marksdwarves to go to any archery practice at all.

[Immortal-D]

Do they go to archery practice normally if you build a range underground?
Asking because some people seem to have trouble just getting marksdwarves to go to any archery practice at all.

This.  If they train at an underground range, then its' a bug.  If they don't train at all; check your Status screen and move down to that squad.  Military squads have Active & Inactive statuses just like Civilians.  You must set a squad to Active/Training, otherwise they are free to do whatever job they want.

[ManaUser]

Yes, I've been able to get someone to train underground. I should probably mention that it's a pretty small squad just yet, 2 dorfs (I was hopping to get a head start on training so they can pass on their wisdom when I recruit more) so random goofing off may be obfuscating the results more than usual. And I've been doing everything else I can think of to get them working too, finagling ammo stocks, tweaking their training regimen etc, so I'm not totally confident about what's going on. But it seemed location is what made the difference.

I think I'll give it a little more time, maybe even do a semi-scientific test before I make a bug report, but it definitely feels suspicious.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Yeah, it's possible that it's a bug. But archery training in general seems to break as soon as people start 'tweaking' to get it working the way they want it to.

Start from scratch, try underground archery. Once that's working and you know roughly how often your squad go to the range, switch to outside archery - try making a route to the outside with stairs once, then try again with just ramps.
Yeah, it'll take a while and might end up not being a bug, but hey, testing is what helps improve DF in then long run.

High level marksdwarves tend to spend more time at archery practice than others (I think), so you might want to assign a bunch of veteran hunters as your test squad (remove hunting labour first).

[Pirate Santa]

Also the archery target is on a roof if that matters for some reason. Obviously they have access though, because they were able to build it just fine.

Can we get a screenshot of the range?

[ManaUser]

As I said, it's on a roof. The chest and ammo pile were added after I noticed they were ignoring it, so I don't think either of those themselves are the problem. (But they clearly didn't help either so I suppose I should get rid of them.) In the mean time I also stuck a target in a normal building (above ground, but indoors) and so far they're ignoring that too. I think I'll follow the suggestion of getting marksdwarf squad properly up and running underground--assuming I can even do that--and then verifying whether they'll practice above ground or outside.

General marksdwarf question: What exactly does they ammunition setting do? For instance if I set it to 100 bolts, when there aren't enough dwarves to carry that many could it cause problems? Or conversely if I set it to 20 and there are only stacks of 25 available? In other words, what setting is the most foolproof? (I'm aware of the combat/training issue; they're set to use any kind of bolts, and for both purposes.)

[Shonai_Dweller]

Leave bolt settings at default if you're just trying to get an archery range working.

Make sure a workshop or two are making bolts on repeat that marksdwarves can get at. Give them a regular barracks too (it might make no difference, but it might be that they're waiting permanently for a good biting lesson before they go to the range).

Make sure training alert is on. Make sure each archery stand is set for your marksdwarf squad and set to fire in the right direction.
Turn off hunting labour, make sure everyone has a crossbow and a quiver.
Then leave them be for a while.

Leave most of the options on default (like 'minimum to train', etc).

[Urist McVoyager]

Used to be you needed a regular barracks as well as an archery target in order to get marksdwarves to do anything.

Personally, I'd just use live training. Each shot counts for more, and it's just less buggy than using ranges. Hunting's a good one, as is pitting hostiles and letting the marksdwarves go at them with wooden bolts.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Used to be you needed a regular barracks as well as an archery target in order to get marksdwarves to do anything.

Personally, I'd just use live training. Each shot counts for more, and it's just less buggy than using ranges. Hunting's a good one, as is pitting hostiles and letting the marksdwarves go at them with wooden bolts.

Probably still true. There seems to have been a couple of threads where marksdwarves won't visit the archery range, in which it's mentioned that there's no barracks for whatever reason.

Ranges will continue to be buggy until someone works out specifically what's wrong. This is a good chance for some specific bug hunting (get it in now while Toady's on this 10 bugs a day roll he seems to be on right now...)

[ManaUser]

Okay I finally got a dwarf to train at the rooftop range. Presumably it was just bad luck that they seemingly refused before. All I did different this time (that I can think of, anyway) is assign a larger squad to train there, which probably just upped the chances that one of them would finally get around to it. They're still showing a severe lack of motivation, but that's apparently normal.

[Baffler]

I don't know if what this thread talks about still applies, but it's worth going through as a checklist. I'm still using version 42.06 so something might have been broken in the meantime but doing it this way works for me every time.

[ManaUser]

It seems almost miraculous, but I did finally get them going pretty well this morning. The final barrier fell when I spotted a spurious assignment of bolts to another squad, once that was removed they actually started training consistently.

That trick about using 10 separate Train orders is interesting though. I might see if that improves things further. Being fresh recruits they all have zero hammer skill, so perhaps preventing sparring will become important if that changes.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I don't know if what this thread talks about still applies, but it's worth going through as a checklist. I'm still using version 42.06 so something might have been broken in the meantime but doing it this way works for me every time.

I dunno, that always struck me as one of the many well-meaning beginner guides which then started throwing in clever optimization techniques before beginners ever get a chance to work out how a vanilla marksdwarf squad should work.
Training rates are much faster than a few versions ago - get a normal squad, training normally and they'll do their job normally and help defend your fortress. When you can do that every time, start tweaking.

[ManaUser]

I'm inclined to agree, considering some of that didn't prove necessary for me, but with as many glitches and gotchas as marksdwarf training has, a "basic guide" shades into clever optimization pretty fast.