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[Nilsou]

Hi everyone,

I have marksdwarves sqad and various towers in my fortress, and i used to store ammo in each of these tower (for example metal ammo only to let dwarves refill quickly in battle)
Buuuuuuuuuut ... in fact when i check what happened in battle i just see that dwarves refill in their barack rather than picking up the ammo where there stand ...

I don't really understand ...

So, my question : is the "squad equipement" option in the barracks a limitation that force dwarves to pickup ALL the equipment, including ammo, in the barracks ? I have not seen any clear answer to this nor on the wiki nor on search on forums and web ...

If it is the cas, does it solve the problem if i defined multiple barracks where ammo are ?

Thanks

[Loci]

I have marksdwarves sqad and various towers in my fortress, and i used to store ammo in each of these tower (for example metal ammo only to let dwarves refill quickly in battle)
Buuuuuuuuuut ... in fact when i check what happened in battle i just see that dwarves refill in their barack rather than picking up the ammo where there stand ...

Dwarves don't pick up convenient ammo; they are assigned ammunition through some combination of ammunition menu reservations, squad order, and ammo quality and vintage. These assignments are further complicated by storage in bins due to locking/access issues. I don't know if barracks or burrows figure into the assignment logic, but I wouldn't count on it.

The net result is that "convenient" ammo stockpiles are nearly pointless since they rarely contain the "correct" ammo (and can cause dwarves to travel farther when the "proper" ammo is stored in a distant tower). You might be able to compensate by only stockpiling a specific type of bolt (e.g. bronze, bismuth-bronze, etc.) in each tower and dynamically assigning your squads to use bolts from their local tower.

So, my question : is the "squad equipement" option in the barracks a limitation that force dwarves to pickup ALL the equipment, including ammo, in the barracks ?

If it were then your dwarves would never upgrade their equipment when your armorer produced a better helm (unless you stockpiled it in their barracks too). My understanding is that dwarves will *store* their equipment in a barracks, if for some reason you tell them to unequip when going off duty (or if they have the mining, wood-cutting, or hunting labor enabled). Keeping your dwarves equipped off-duty is the default, and the generally-preferred setup, so barracks storage isn't particularly useful (if it even works).

[Fleeting Frames]

They'll go pick up newest highest-value ammo available to them, iirc. That often means the latest batch of bolts in forge. Given the weight of bolts vs bars, might as well put forge in barracks and not use any stockpiles for ammo.

[Nilsou]

Hum Ok, thanks... i will try to figure out a solution to that :p

[mikekchar]

might as well put forge in barracks and not use any stockpiles for ammo.

That is a brilliant idea! If you assume that marksdwarf shooting locations are generally safe, then having a forge with a bar stockpile instead of an ammo stockpile is really useful.  Every time you run out of ammo, there is basically no hauling left to be done.  And if you have a *lot* of bars you can even put the bars in bins because the forge is single-use so you won't have (much) contention on the bins.   Of course you need to have more than x bins worth of bars (where x = the number of forges) to make it work.  Still, having a 16 tile bar stockpile around the forge will still give you capacity to build 400 bolts, which should be enough time to haul bars to replenish the stockpile.

[Fleeting Frames]

I never produce bins (so that they can't possibly screw up my qsp where I forget to set bins to 0), but I imagine the 16 tile surrounding space is better than 2 bins having 10 bars each - the first will break if the smith can produce 16 stacks faster than hauler takes to move a single 47 urist* steel bar, the second will break if the smith can produce 2 stacks faster than the hauler takes to move 1 bar.

* Twice as much as wooden log, which can already slow some dwarves, but if all your smiths have maxed strength due cross-training could do without separate stockpile.

[Nilsou]

Sooo ... if i conclude, currently there is no real way to fill external towers and others archer defense spot with the "good" ammos ?

Another question, i understand that there is a kind of attribution mechanic that attribute the "best available bolt" reachable currently.

-Is this possible to simply lock my dwarf inside their burrow with locked door ? As it works with my entire fortress (they don't stack looking at the fortress door to grab the beautiful masterwork steel bolt just outside, as they does (burrow or not, it seems to be a bug) when it's open, they just refill with an other bolt... so i guess if the "best bolt" is unreachable they take an other one ?
Is this also true with food and drink and so is it possible to make autonomous towers during battle to minimize the refill time ?

- If my production is made, finally, by the same dwarf that create masterwork steel bolt in loop, i guess there is no problem? Did the "best bolt" at equivalent quality, always be the "closer best bolt" ? Or is it random (or the last produced or whatever ?)