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[kaijyuu]

I'm having trouble making actually effective marksdwarves. Even legendary ones with masterwork/artifact crossbows and masterwork copper/silver bolts barely harm things. Do I need steel bolts these days?

Back in the day, conscripting one's entire civilian force into marksdwarves would kill just about anything (in fact that's exactly how I conquered hell the first time). Doesn't seem like it's the case anymore xD

[delphonso]

I think silver makes for weak bolts. Copper ones are okay, but if your enemies have iron armor or a better equivalent, they might be sort of useless. Steel is a solid, reliable bolt type.

[TheyreAllGullyDorfs]

All metal bolts (Except candy) perform almost identically in all the tests I've read about.  So make them out of whatever metal you have the most of

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.0

Making them out of iron is a bit of a waste of iron and steel bolts are actually slightly worse because it's lighter and so much more labor intensive.

[kaijyuu]

My marksdwarves have to fire their entire quiver into something before they can kill it is all. Because they're so bad about reloading and so weak, I've be considering not using them at all.

[Orkel]

I do not see marksdwarves as "killing" machines. They are mostly there to injure, slow down and weaken enemies. Having a bolt chip a leg bone and make the enemy crawl, pop a lung, damage arm/hand nerves to drop the enemy weapons, cause them to collapse from pain, etc is very helpful.

They soften up the targets like that - then you can send in your melee dwarves to finish the job. The only way marksdwarves can kill is if they hit the brain or the heart, but that can take quite a while.

I think it is quite realistic this way. Bodkin arrows are quite thin, afterall, and they have a hard time "instakilling" even real people.

[Bumber]

All metal bolts (Except candy) perform almost identically in all the tests I've read about.  So make them out of whatever metal you have the most of

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=116151.0

Making them out of iron is a bit of a waste of iron and steel bolts are actually slightly worse because it's lighter and so much more labor intensive.

That thread is from before the combat changes of 2016. Stuff was rebalanced so material matters more.