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[brucemo]

Is there a point?  Or should I put them in full steel?

[Proteus]

Depends on your wishes...
leather armor against bolts has the same protection value as Star Wars stormtrooper armor against blaster bolts or ewok arrows
so, if you really want to protect your dwarves against bolts, steel armor is definitely better

[OmnipotentGrue]

If steel is accessible, then steel. It's definitely worth spending the extra resources to make it.

[CognitiveDissonance]

It's cheaper and faster to make, and your marksdwarves will move somewhat faster due to lower weight.

Otherwise, no, there is no defense-related reason to go with them. Just sheer practicality that claims if you have a layered army, and your marksdwarves are in melee, they're not getting away anyways.

With that in mind, if you're going above leather, then steel is the best alternative. Check out the link for material density etc. information - steel is "second best" in material weight, coming after leather. In reality though, leather is fairly poor for defense.

http://df.magmawiki.com/index.php/Metal

[brucemo]

Yeah.  It's normal in games like this to have archers in leather, but if there's no penalty for wearing steel, that should be the way to go.

[Khift]

I usually have my marksdwarves wearing my melee dwarve's hand-me-downs. Usually I produce bronze armor prior to getting magma because it is so efficient with regards to fuel, then steel once I have magma, then adamantine once I get to full on adamantine mining (map permitting). As my melee dwarves upgrade out of their previous suit it goes to the marksdwarves. Works out fairly well.

[Alastar]

Leather does too little to be worth it really. I sometimes give them all available bone armour pieces and round it out with leather if I expect them mostly to stay behind fortifications and don't want to slow them down with excess metal.

[Shoku]

The penalty from carrying the steel armor is trivial if you send them into a danger room to learn armor wearing something good.