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[anewaname]

More seriously, training via hunting is something I haven't considered.  What kind of skill gains do you see there over the course of a year or so?

If there is enough wildlife for several dwarfs to hunt almost continuously, they will become legendary in maybe two years; but that involves using wood bolts and crossbows, which are slower at hurting the animals (animals leave vomit trails across your map). I believe the math is that dwarfs get double xps for shooting at live targets. So, hunters gain xps faster when they are actually firing, but they spend less time firing than archery-target dwarfs do. If you can capture an extremely tough creature for live target practice, military dwarfs will gain xps faster (someone had a metal colossus with a hundreds or thousands of bolts stuck in it). But, hunters provide leather, bone, meat, and immersion enjoyment for the overseer.

[soulsource]

My approach: Just draft them all, and let the goblins sort them out.

To elaborate a bit, I've got one squad of marksdwarfs, that will at some point patrol the yet to be finished fortress defences. As the walls are not yet finished, currently each and every dwarf assigned to a squad gets tossed at invaders, meaning that most marksdwarfs don't get enough time to properly train and survive those encounters. A few of them are either skilled or lucky enough and make it to the next year. The constant influx of migrants never leaves the marksdwarf squad empty for long (though most of them end up being untrained recruits).
To be honest, I'm still looking forard to having the wall finished, as that will give marksdwarfs fortifications and an elevated position, so they'll have less chance of meeting an enemy in melee, and also some protection from projectiles. Then maybe even the completely unskilled recruits might make it for more than a year, and slowly turn into trained soldiers...

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

Since the uniform bug is a thing, it's often a good idea to hunt using squads. 

[Grim Portent]

Since the uniform bug is a thing, it's often a good idea to hunt using squads.

Generally when people say they use hunting to train marksdwarfs they mean they retire hunters from their civilian job when they draft them, so the uniform conflict isn't a problem.

I retire hunters when I draft them then replace them with a random assortment of nobodies to keep the animal corpses flowing and train up more archers. Rinse and repeat as each new generation of hunters becomes skilled enough to be worth using.

[anewaname]

I retire hunters when I draft them then replace them with a random assortment of nobodies to keep the animal corpses flowing and train up more archers. Rinse and repeat as each new generation of hunters becomes skilled enough to be worth using.

I do it this way but also put all them in a squad. The squad with the "noob civilian laborers" has no uniform, no barracks, no training schedule, and is never given squad orders, so there is never a uniform conflict (the fort's one woodcutter is the squad leader and noob hunters/miners are cycled in and out of the squad). This means that I can sort the fort's pop in Dwarf Therapist by Squad and only children, babies, and new adults will not be in a squad. When there are dwarf losses or mining/woodcutting is not getting done, I check that squad to see if I messed up some dwarf assignment or missed a need for replacements.

[onehellofatable]

i'm currently playing on an aquifer and not gonna even try and pierce it until later when i wanna get some candy, so no stone unless i trade for it and everything is made of wood. the village is a sort of martial commune where 64 out of 95 of my dwarves spend half the time training on archery targets or at an armor stand, and the other half doing village work (construct buildings, make bolts etc....). so far everything that's wandered onto the map has met a quick end, but only had the first goblin visit a few seasons ago after 6 years or something and a couple legendary beasts. most forts though i just let whatever hunters migrate onto the map wander around hunting or doing whatever, and don't bother training them at all other than that

[Pvt. Pirate]

my forts tend to always lack dorfs and would crumble if i pulled 10 out of their precious hauling jobs. so in most cases i draft a squad of 5-10 dorfs who have none to a little experience with the crossbow - mostly hunters and rangers - whenever it is needed.

[Grand Sage]

My whole fort (daggertemples, Uristrath in dwarven) was based on the idea of a long entrance with fortifications on both sides. Now I have a squad of somewhat trained marksdwarves that use full metal bolts. And man the fortifications. Not as usefull as I hoped, but it thins out the herd a little, with 0 risk to themselves.

[FingerBlaster3000]

i always play high FPS forts so i limit my dwarves at 20. because of that i cannot really toss migrants around and i cannot have squads properly segregated for range and melee so i always end up making a 10 dwarf squad that is trained in both melee and range. i equip them with steel axe/sword/spear , steel crossbow (for hammering purposes), a wooden shield and full set of steel armor. depends of availability of resources i either set up archery range or not but i always make sure to have combat bolts around. if there is a deadly beast (webs or syndrome id rather not test) i man the ramparts, if the issue can be solved without risk in melee combat i let my dwarves loose. effect is that with 10 dwarves i got all niches covered but supplying the ammo can be bothersome af due to bugs

[pamelrabo]

If I've got a lot of wood and/or copper, I love to use small squads of crossbows.

I make them archery-train in the sunlight and usually build a system of stone bunkers/pillboxes, with a 2 tile ammo stockpile and underground only access. When the sieges come, I move them from bunker to bunker, avoiding point blank shootings from enemy archers.

Even if they don't score magnificent kills, they cause a lot of injuries and make the melee squad's work easier (great if you don't have weaponmasters in full iron).

[Ulfarr]

After many attempts I've finally found some success with a marksdwarf squad and a basic archery tower overlooking my fort's entrance. (The tower was mostly for decoration since most of my previous attempts at using such a setup had failed)

 The squad was not meant to become marksdwarves, but melee fighters so they have some melee training. To cut a long story short, at some point I needed more daka to help my axedwarves during a siege, but I didn't want to just toss them to their death, so I gave them whatever ranged weapon I had in the fortress and stuffed them into the tower.  After using them that way for a few more sieges I decided to turn them into dedicated marksdwarves, gave them some archery targets to train and set up a mixed order schedule so a couple of them is always on the lookout (inside the tower) and the rest are doing target practice at their range.

Performance wise they aren't anything special, they have a few (<10) direct kills among themselves but they can cause (with some help from various traps)  enough panic to rout the enemy, before I send my axedwarves to dispatch any strugglers.

[Starver]

I tend to deHunterise any arriving hunters (like fisherdwarves, who also are annoyingly off-piste and (otherimportant)work-shy whilst being suboptimal in their productivify towards the fortress if I don't remove the labour right from the start) and then when I'm militarising individuals they (unlike most fisherdwarves) have martial skills, and are squadded into what will be a ranged-attack unit. They also all brought a suitable (starter) quantity of weapons, ammo, etc, so saves early messing about.

But I do start them off with weaponless/armourless regular barracking (without a fixed plan as to how much dedicated professionalism there is and how much "help with hauling or other more suitable task" time they get - depends on the fortress's state and immediate needs) get into supplying them with leather armour items according to the time and resources I can apply to that. At some point, usually before the coverage is complete, I then give them stints on the bolt-saver built-target range I'll have been (usually) digging out or (sometimes) building a storey or three aboveground. This may be needed to scour off the layer of skill-rust that happened whilst I was having them hurry-up my magmaduct smoothing, as civilians, or had left them sparring too long.

If some threat first comes to the fort, though, then hopefully I've set up the appropriate defences (helped by the archers in their civvie side-roles, directly or by supporting those others who did build them) to emplace them and to try some genuinely live-live-training whilst crossing my fingers that they'll do more harm than harm comes to them.


No plan ever totally survives contact with the enemy, sometimes going too well rather than badly, and I've not yet zeroed in on that one perfect general-purpose solution to that part of the fortress formula.