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[Robsoie]

It's been like that since several versions, but it is still happening in 44.xx
I don't mean the "jump through fortification" that happened everytime before, i mean the fact that sometime marksdwarves will stop staying at their shooting station and they just go climb anything to move near their target instead of staying at safe range.

In 44.03 i have built an archer tower, surrounded by fortification and with roof.
As i was experimenting i had made a copy of my save when a gob army came.

Half of the time i have my marskdwarves station in my archer tower and shoot, at least the one that are placing themselves correctly.

So far it's good enough, but half of the time, i observe marksdwarves leaving the location (despite they were shooting from there) climbing down the tower , walking the distance between the tower and the fortress wall, climbing the wall (amusing considering the gobs in all my df2014 and 44.x games have never ever been able to climb my fortress walls despite i never smooth them on purpose), then dropping on the ground and then shoot from this ridiculously open area.
Obviously being murdered horribly as they're then not protected and are then very close to the gobs.

Anyone found a setup to prevent this , as i'm starting to get out of idea with those morons ?

[martinuzz]

Nope, can't figure out how to prevent that. I just make sure that my archers are great wrestlers / hammerdwarves / shield users / dodgers by periodically removing their crossbows (and ammo designation!), and having them spar in a barracks without weapons or shield for the wrestling and dodging skills, and with shield and hammers for the other two. Note that removing the crossbows and ammo is required. They will not spar in a barracks when equipped with either. They will do demonstrations and individual drills with ranged weapons, but they won't spar. Need remove them.
It takes some micromanagement, but it definitly improves their survivability in close range combat.

[Robsoie]

I didn't thought about training them first into melee skills, thanks for this suggestion.
That's actually a very good idea to prevent those stupid death, at least when the AI code goes that bad they will still have a chance to survive if they have good enough melee skills instead of just being butchered there, wasting all the time you spent training them to use their crossbow correctly and all that time spent in building nice towers for them.

Because it's not really fun to lose all dwarves because their AI code just go wrong half of the time, ruining all your defense and building planning without you being able to do anything to prevent this.

[mobucks]

Did you try an Alert for that squad that is tied to a burrow that only covers inside the archery tower? Or just station them there through the squads menu?
If no, it might be worth a try. I'd be interested to know if that were to make a difference. I would experiment with different sized burrows as well, like if the tower is a 3x3 paint a 3x3 burrow there but if they still leave it to go outside then maybe try a 1x1 burrow in the center of the tower to see if that helps.

[Robsoie]

I didn't experiment with burrow for military only (i usually only do them for civilians), next time i get an invasion, i'll have to make more test.

Meanwhile, for reason i still don't understand in my previous experiment, there's a specific location (an expansion i did in my archer tower) from which the marksdwarves never exited to climb walls toward their dead, they just shot bolts after bolts from there (the area i marked with that red selection box).


As you can see from the broken bolts down there, they have indeed shot a very lot without obvious problems.

Now as the gob horde was circling around the fortress, i could try the other shooting area in that tower , both from north, west and east they always ceased to shoot after a minute or so, ran down the exit stairs of the tower then rushed to climb my fort walls and moved outside ready to be stupidly slaughtered.


Can't figure out , out of the orientation (and the material that is obsidian instead of wood bu i doubt it makes a difference) what is really different that make the marksdwarves code going stupid.
I'll check if burrows for those marksdwarves may help or not on the next invasion attempts from those filthy gobs.

edit :
i wonder if the orientation/direction is actually a part of the problem.
I had this other, smaller tower , it's much older as it was the first one i made in that fortress


It is completely in obsidian , but i didn't made it to allow shooting to the south (as the bulk of my fortress is south)
Yet, i abandonned that tower quickly because whatever was the direction my marksdwarves was shooting to, they always did the same broken ai stuff : stop shooting, climb down, run to the wall, climb it, jump outside, get destroyed in melee, this despite the gobs had always been in shooting range from that tower.

[Robsoie]

Some update, i got some more invaders, so i could experiment a bit with making a copy of the save.

I had built a new tower for the experimentation, as it's been a long time before new invaders came.

I setup a burrow in the tower shooting positions and scheduled the alert so the marksdwarves squad would be affected to that burrow while the civilians were in a civilian only alert.



The scheduled alert worked well as i didn't had to use the station order, all the marksdwarves equipped themselves and ran toward the shooting position on their own.

But unfortunately once the gob squads were in range, at first the dwarves started to shoot then after only a couple of shots they all jumped through the fortifications and started to climb down the 2 levels of that tower and landed safely on the ground.
From there they resumed shooting and of course the gobs started to rush them as usual leaving them no chance.

So yes, sadly marksdwarves definitively do NOT respect their burrow limits when they start shooting, same as if i would have used the station order
Still no idea why the location i showed in previous post is the only one in which no marksdwarves try to jump through fortification or try to walk all the way to the stairs then climb out of the fort to resume shooting, the only thing i can imagine is the actual orientation (they shoot to the south in that case).

I'll have to try to build a new tower with south-only shooting position when i'll have more time to confirm if that bugged behaviour is linked to their orientation, after all dwarves ai often walled themselves in depending on the direction they were building walls.

But anyways, marksdwarves are still badly broken in 44.03 .
Looks like the only solution is indeed to give them lots of melee training instead of marksdwarves ones, so at least they still have a chance to survive their bugged ai, no workaround it seems.

[Shonai_Dweller]

I put a roof on my crossbow bunker and have the only entrance as a tunnel from deep within the fortress. Seems to work ok as a workaround (well, sometimes one or two will dodge through the fortifications...).

[Robsoie]

It's not much the dodging that is a problem (as it is probably already related to another bad bug still ongoing with dwarves dodging through hard walls).

It's that those dwarves decide by themselves to cross/jump through fortifications (as i have them covered with roofs too) , because on my test it happened even when there were no bow/crossbow gobs used in range.

[martinuzz]

are those forticfications built directly from blocks, or carved? IIRC built fortifications don't count as a full height wall

[Robsoie]

Ah now that was something i didn't knew, thanks for pointing this to me.
My fortifications are directly built (b c F) , they're not carved from a wall.

So after just checking the wiki for confirmation indeed i wasn't aware at all about this difference in height.

I'll have to remove all my built fortifications and build walls at their place, then carve them into fortifications to see if it makes a difference in this extremely annoying marksdwarves problem. Hopefully it will as it's one of the worst obnoxious bug i face with my fortresses since df2014 went live.

[Shonai_Dweller]

Ah, that might explain it. Yeah, I build a box first, then carve.

[Robsoie]

I have removed all my built fortifications and replaced them all in all my towers by walls that were then carved into fortifications.
Took a while but fortunately i could complete it without problems.

Just in time for the big test, as a +100 gob/troll/beak dog invasion came.

I have made a copy save from the invasion start, so i can experiment further.
So far i have tested my biggest (and safest as it is the one that is the most inside of my walls) and marksdwarves are shooting without having jumped through them.
I have not yet observed too the other annoying behaviour too (when they stop shooting, go to the stairs, go down to the ground, run to the fortress wall, climb them and drop outside and continue to shoot at point blank and of course get absolutely destroyed) .

But more testing will have to be done, the worst offender was the external tower (access only by underground from my fort) in which the dwarves were jumping through fortification then climbing down the tower walls without a pause, hopefull those carved fortification will help too.

Spoiler: pictures (click to show/hide)

(i'll have to make an even larger wall inside that big tower to force all of stationned dwarves to stand at the fortification sights)

edit : just tried from the external tower this time and it seems to hold very well, the dwarves do not seem to jump outside anymore.
And i was happy to see the gobs climbing my tower, that's probably the first time i saw them do that since i play df2014 where usually they only roamed stupidly around easily climbable defenses.

What a big melee it was when my 2 melee squad joined the gobs on the tower top to prevent them to enter in the marksdwarves level , though without fortification once they had cleaned the top, they were very happy to climb down to continue to fight instead of holding their obi-wan "i have the higher ground" advantage.

Spoiler: pictures (click to show/hide)

But at least for melee troop it's to be expected to stupidly run into melee .

But all in all, while i will do more test it seems making walls carved into fortification instead of direct b C F build makes a -huge- difference in wanting or not to delete DF from my hard drive in a fit of non simulated rage.

So note for later : NEVER EVER build fortifications directly ( b C F ) , always build walls ( b C w) then carve ( d F ) them into fortifications instead , if you want to use marksdwarves without wanting to throw your monitor through the window.

[mobucks]

Good find!

[Urist9876]

First step is those fortifications. Next is micromanagement of doors.
Dwarves that run out of bolts still have a tendency to run into melee when they run out of ammo. So if there is any path available they mess up things. Don't give them any available path.

[Kat1e]

Question : if you incorporate an overhang into your fortifications does it prevent the wall-climbers?

Additional question : since they didn't seem to want to climb when you had built fortifications instead of carved, if you (in addition to the carved fortifications) incorporated a built fortification as an overhang on the outsides of your fortification, would that deny access to wall climbers?