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[blainemono]

My soldiers behave in a way I don't quite understand. What I did was: elected a figurehead militia commander, like a fisherdwarf or something, installed two captains, drafted two 10-dwarf squads, equipped one squad with crossbows and another with axes; made a full-time training schedule with 5 dwarves minimum for both squads; disabled all labors for all soldiers; built two barracks, one regular, one with an archery target; made all the necessary quivers/bolts, designated bolts etc.

What I hoped for was 20 dwarves training their little hairy asses off 24/7

What I got was 3 axedwarves (tops) training at once, one marksdwarf shooting at the target (if the weather is right, adding more targets didn't help), stupid training exercises (like marksdwarves going for wrestling demonstrations and axedwarves training crossbows in barracks designated for another squad etc.). Also just 2 of 11 untrained dwarves managed to raise their weapon skills to novice level in about 2 years, the rest are happy being ballista fodder. Also, all the soldiers are constantly changing their professions, going from recruit to axedwarf to civilian profession, which is very annoying.

So, can anybody please explain it all to me, preferably slowly end deliberately, like talking to a dumb person?

Also, hospitals! If I make a hospital zone and add some chests - all the chests get filled up with threads, like 300.000/75.000 thread, but no soap or plaster gets stocked up. If I add a soap stockpile inside a hospital zone, it gets filled up with soap, but it still shows 0/900 soap in the hospital info. AAARGH IT HURTS MY BRAIN HALP

[KrazyDocK]

Actually everything you are describing sounds about right.  There are still lots of bugs to work out.  As for explanations, I'll do my best to go in to detail some of the things you discussed, in no particular order.

Minimum# training:
This caused lots of grief in previous versions because lots of dwarves would be "waiting for dodging demonstration" or whatever and end up starving to death.  So we all got used to keeping this number as low as possible.  BUT, it seems to be working more or less as intended now... which is to say military dwarves will "rotate" in and out of the military (and back to civilian).  For example, you set the minimum to 5.  This means (theoretically) that 5 dwarves will train, the other 5 will remain civilian and do whatever labours they have assigned and also eat and drink and sleep as necessary.  When one military dwarf rotates out, another civilian dwarf in the same squad will rotate in.  Thus, the minimum # is still training or patrolling or whatever.

Soldiers constantly changing profession:
Described above.  The solution is to keep the minimum# at 10 at all times.  That seems to do the trick and they no longer die of hunger or dehydration waiting for a demonstration.

Marksdwarves:
You'll need several separate archery targets, all of which are made into rooms with the "r" key.  Remember to set the direction.  I have always had these at the end of a long hallway.  Visually it makes sense to me that way.  I suppose it's possible to have them out in the open but I've never ever tried it.  Anyway, each target will also need to have the squad enabled (with "t" for training as you've no doubt done with other training furniture).  Another thing I've noticed is that if I allow my marksdwarf squad to train at the "melee" barracks, it messes them up when I try to de-select them there for training.

Hospital:
Yeah, it's still quite buggy.  Having stockpiles of soap nearby makes sense.  Or just don't make any soap at all.  You may have also noticed that despite the hospital being overstocked with cloth and thread, they will still go all the way to your cloth stockpiles instead of taking the stuff in the hospital.  Nice, eh?

I hope that explains most of what you are feeling frustrated with.  The good news is that it mostly sounds like the problems are about existing bugs rather than anything you are doing wrong.

KD

[blainemono]

The good news is that it mostly sounds like the problems are about existing bugs rather than anything you are doing wrong.

Hurray for that, I guess.

Thanks for the answers, although the thing about rookies not getting the novice level in weapon skill still mystifies me. Wiki says noob dworfs won't train if the train order is set, but rather get the novice level in some esoteric way while unassigned and only then will begin to train regularly. I tried to set an axe squad to do nothing for half a year or so - no effect. What's up with that?

[KrazyDocK]

My experience has been that when training level zero ("dabbling") recruits, the gains are painfully slow indeed.  It takes forever just to get to "Novice".  The speed of training tends to pick up somewhat after that though.

I have never actually done the dwarven science on this, but I think if I were to make a new squad with one experienced dwarf with a decent teacher skill and make him the squad captain, then put completely green recruits with him, that SHOULD allow them to progress faster than a squad entirely of newbies.