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[Garfunkel]

Does a military squad need as many weapon racks and armor stands as it has members?

Do military dwarves need personal bedrooms if they are sleeping in the barracks? Conversely, do they need beds in the barracks if they have bedrooms already?

Does every Marksdwarf in the squad require their own archery target?

I assigned my Sharpshooter squad to train 5 at a minimum, every month, in the hope that the 5 not training melee would on their own train archery but they didn't do that. Do I need to have all 10 training for one month, then the whole squad without orders the next month? Wiki talks of inactivity but if I set the squad Inactive in the Alerts window, they only do their civilian jobs.

And finally, is there a minimum space required in the barracks for sparring?

[Mobbstar]

Weapon racks and armour stands are not used as storage if there is any suitable stockpile, I believe. Barracks function perfectly fine without weapon racks and armour stands.

Beds are not needed in the barracks if no dwarves are assigned to sleep there. I have no experience with military dwarves sleeping in barracks, but I doubt they get a good thought like they would for personal bedrooms. Consider adding a chest for each bed so the dwarves can stash their hoard of tattered scarves, assuming you let them wear non-armour clothing to begin with.

Archery targets can only be used by one marksdwarf at a time. As soon as one dwarf stops occupying a target, another dwarf can start training with it. So in your case, 5 targets should definitely be enough.

I have no experience with limited training schedules, but the one time I had marksdwarves, they didn't start training until after I changed their alert a few times (alternating between inactive and training). This may be coincidence. I forgot what their alert was when they finally started practising archery.

There is no minimum space requirements to my knowledge. I have witnessed a dwarf sparring while prone (underneath another dwarf). I do not know how to measure the effectiveness of sparring, so I don't know how effective prone sparring is compared to regular sparring.

[PatrikLundell]

As mentioned, weapon racks and armor stands are currently essentially broken as storage containers.

DON'T add chests to barracks: In the good scenario they'll just do nothing, but in the bad one you'll get the same behavior as when dorfs have overlapping bedrooms with a cabinet in the overlapping section, i.e. one dorf puts a piece of clothing into it and the second one gets locked into an eternal loop of trying to put its clothing into the cabinet only to break off at the last instance because the cabinet is "claimed" by the other dorf, only to immediately take up the task of storing the same piece of clothing in the same cabinet... While chests are mostly useless anyway, dorfs DO put the rations they picked up when on duty into their private chests when going off duty, never to pick them up again, so you can potentially get the same dance around chests as you can get around cabinets (if the dorf doesn't have any chest to put the rations in they'll just drop them onto the floor in their room, where they'll rot and won't be cleared away since the rotting mess is still owned by the dorf).

Currently you need as many archery targets assigned to a squad as you have active squad members for them to train on them (that is going to change with the Premium release). As far as I understand you shouldn't change the sparring numbers unless you absolutely know what you're doing (or following the advice of someone who you trust does, or want to experiment and expect it to probably fail). The defaults work well enough, while fiddling with it causes loads of problems, partially because they seem to work differently from what the names imply, if I've understood it correctly.

[Garfunkel]

Okay so if I understand correctly:

I'll put 1 WR and 1 AS in each barracks - not that they need them but it's a good reminder to myself that the room is a barracks. I won't use chests since they can cause bugs. No beds. Little bit of open space for sparring but no need to have a 10x10 open area. No need for 10 archery targets unless I have 10 Marksdwarves training all the time - I'll probably make do with 5 yeah. On a second notice, my Marksdwarves had been training, I just somehow never noticed. Their skills have gone up and there's a bunch of broken bolts at my range.

And to ensure good thoughts, each military dwarf should have their own bedroom but I should run the DFhack command to remove ownership of stuff they leave rotting in the cabinet, chest and floor in their rooms.

Thanks!

[PatrikLundell]

Since I don't use full time militia units, I try to make sure they don't carry any food (so nothing is left to rot in their rooms), but since there is no problem with drinks, I give them drinks (and containers for the booze).

[Broms]

I am pretty sure if you allow them to carry drinks with flasks/waterskins that they get a negative thought from drinking without a cup/goblet. I think it is best if you don't allow military to carry any food or drink but I could be wrong.

[Starver]

A note for the future (Steam release and its non-Steam graphic-poorer kin) is seemingly that rooms-as-zones will stop the "single item of furniture as a nexus" of the current version.

Though you've made me think, now, as I've pretty much ignored Stands and Racks (except as a choice of Barrack definition, with no other use, or as items required to fulfil a higher Noble's room-demands as - as far as I could ever tell - just passive additional decor like statues).


I don't think I ever put containers in barracks (or overlap their extents, anyway), but I may put food'n'drink stockpiles[1] there (flasks for military but no carried food, for the mentioned reasons) and never noticed the bad thoughts from cupless drinking, but maybe I just never had it acute enough to be obvious/they satisfy themselves enough whilst off-duty and sitting in civilian rooms dedicated to the tinkling of tankards...

[1] Perhaps as part of a general policy of adding 'branch' dining areas in the increasing reaches of the fort, with staging-stockpiles to try to impart some resupply efficiency in shuffling such things out from the supplying workshops and the central commissary/refectory 'grand hall' that I don't expect the more distance-working dwarves to retrace to. But as I tend not to set up the obvious "take from/give to" settings that I think is best, it's possible that I'm actually encoraging all kinds of counterfactural cargo-hauling as branch-end stockpile items get chosen to back-supply nodes closer to the manufacturary at some point. This is not one of the many aspects that I actively micromanage to death.

[Thisfox]

Marksdwarves had been training, I just somehow never noticed. Their skills have gone up and there's a bunch of broken bolts at my range.

If you put a ditch on the sides and around the back of the target, they won't break as many bolts, the bolts will fall into the ditch to be collected later for remelting purposes.

[Garfunkel]

Is it possible for marksdwarves to dodge throught the fortifications in front of them if they are being shot?

I have a single archery tower - it's just 1 z-level above ground - with a side of 4 fortifications. There are lot of goblins and their thralls, some of which have bows/xbows. At first my dwarves were shooting but then I noticed that, one by one, they appeared outside on the ground and then got mauled by the goblins. If they are dodging towards-and-to-the-side of the incoming projectiles, then my shooting place is worthless.

My archery tower also has a staircase to the roof as I use that to access other parts of my big inn/tavern combination, so it is possible that the dwarves decided to climb up and then fell down.

[Mobbstar]

My archery tower also has a staircase to the roof as I use that to access other parts of my big inn/tavern combination, so it is possible that the dwarves decided to climb up and then fell down.

Definitely yes. Marksdwarves love bludgeoning (not sure whether they enjoy the giving or receiving end) and will intentionally climb over fortifications or take other short routes to engage in melee. Easiest fix is to place a hatch and lock that when under attack.

[orius]

You only need one armor stand or weapon rack to  designate a barracks, you don't need both.  I usually just make a single 11x11 room and put an armor stand in the middle of it.  I have three squads of dwarves trained to fight hand-to-hand all assigned to the same barracks and they're scheduled to fight 4 months a year, once a season, each squad training in a different month each season.  It works well enough.  I don't have them set up to store equipment, I just have them wear it all the time.

[Urist9876]

I like to combine weapon / armor stockpile with barracks and ammo store in shooting range.
Training dwarves seem not to be bothered by stuff on the ground. This saves some space. but even more important, it saves a lot of walking.

[ldog]

Since the bug with training ammo and some other bugs were fixed (several versions ago) putting a coffer in marksdorfs barracks for ammo storage works as expected.
There's no longer a need to keep stockpiles all over the place. Granted I still run binless (QSP FTW!), although I think it behaves properly with bins as well.