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[Huffers]

This is driving me up the up the wall...
I'm running Dwarf Fortress v0.31.12.

• My fortress has 8 crossbows, 8 quivers, and 24 bolts.
  
• I've designated a militia leader
  
• I've put him in a squad with 5 other dwarves
  
• I've set their equipment to all be crossbows
  
• I've set their training ammunition to be 10 bolts
  

• I've set the squad's active schedule to training all year round.
  
• I've set the squad as 'active'
  

• I've made a shooting range target at the end of a room.
  
• I've set the direction of shooting to be towards the target
  
• I've assigned it as equipment to the squad
  
• I've assigned it for training for the squad.
  

And yet the squad still insist on being hammerdwarfs, axedwarfs and recruits, and still don't train their crossbows. On the units screen it shows their jobs as "Soldier (cannot follow order)"

Any ideas on what's going on?

[Proteus]

Did you make one shooting range, or multiple?

I assume only one dwarf per shooting range can train
(even if multiple targets are in it)

[Still Standing]

I assume he made multiple, because this is the same thing that happened to me last time I tried marksdwarves.  I had 3 dwarves and 3 targets, but same problem.

[Proteus]

Strange..
the only other possibility I can imagine is, that the number of bolts per squad is too low
(i.e. 2 dwarves get 5 bolts  each [or even just one dwarg 10] and then no other dwarf can get some, as the limit per squad has been reached).

I usually assign 100 bolts / squad and have no problems

[Huffers]

I actually built four targets, with walls between them and marked as being separate rooms.
I did wonder if the number of bolts was too low, but even when I booted everyone else out of the squad, the militia leader refused to train on his own :-(

[Still Standing]

I built hundreds just to be sure. :p

[Stardrinker]

Set them to inactive instead of active/training. They seem to only like using the range during solo drills.

[Jayce]

Theres a massive wait for allocation of ammo i hear,its bugged.

[Huffers]

Set them to inactive instead of active/training. They seem to only like using the range during solo drills.

What do you mean? If I set them as inactive they go back to doing their civilian jobs...

[Proteus]

Stardrinker is right...
usually soldiers on inactive do "individual combat drills"
which also includes shooting at archery ranges.
My military is almost all of the time set to inactive
and, as mentioned, my dwarves train at the shooting range without problems

[Arekis]

Are the soldiers doing anything else like demonstrations or group training?  How big are the groups?  I've had decent luck with smaller sized groups like 2 or 3 (also helps that I have no more than 2 marksdwarves in my entire fortress, but they're both legendary).  As far as ammo assignments, I haven't touched the default assignments and they seem to acquire bolts fine.  I also have several thousand they can use.  For archery ranges, I built 3 ranges for my 2 dwarves side-by-side and I've seen them use 2 of those at the same time.  I'm not sure what "assign as equipment to the squad" does as I've only ordered squads to train at the archery ranges.

And then there is live training which if the dwarves can pick up bolts and can move near their target is almost guaranteed to work.

[Huffers]

I made a barracks, and set that to have Training, and the guy instantly ran over to do an individual training drill. He's currently in his own squad of 1.

I think I'm going to give up on training crossbow dwarves. They're either going to have to learn by shooting real enemies, or not at all.

Thanks for the advice anyway.

[Still Standing]

The way I got around the bugged crossbow dwarves is by removing ranged weaponry from enemies and then not bothering training any.

[Huffers]

I got it working!!!

By building lots of wooden bolts and then setting him to use them instead of the copper bolts (after setting his schedule to Inactive).

I have two theories on why this worked:

• You can only train using wooden bolts.
  
• He couldn't pick up the copper bolts because they were in some other quiver, and he was too dumb to just swap quivers for one with bolts in it.
  

Pity I wasted over a year in game time just trying to work this out..

[manboricua]

The Xbows always work fine for me, here's how I build their training room:

wwwwwwwwwwww
wAwAwAwAwAwAw
wSwSwSwSwSwSw
wSwSwSwSwSwSw
wSwSwSwSwSwSw
wSwSwSwSwSwSw
wSwSwSwSwSwSw
wSwSwSwSwSwSw
wxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxw
wbbbbbSSSffffFFFw
wwwwwDDwwwww


w = wall
S = Space/floor
x = bolts stockpile
D = Door
b = bed
f = booze(drinks) only stockpile
F = Food only stockpile

Make sure each one of the Target Range is designated as a training room. On the alarms, make sure that the Active/Training is set to Two months of training with over half of your marksdwarves active for training(set the minimum to 4 if you have 6 guys on that squad for example). and set one month off-training, then two more active, and so on. Also, make sure you set each one of the the archery ranges to actually train the squad, optionally to sleep too. You already mention you have quivers, backpacks, bolts, and crossbows, so there's everything you shall have, but also make sure to have TONS of bolts, wooden ones are excellent for training, and the metal ones are of course for live action/combat, so when you are assigning the ammunition, set about 20 pack of wooden bolts for training, and about 20 packs of metal bolts for Combat. (You will notice that a C appears next to the selected bolt when it's for Combat, and a T when it's for training, and a CT when it's for both. To designate the materials of the bolts, use M.

If your dwarves are using the metal ones for training, then use two stockpiles, one for "Other materials"bolts, and the other for Metal bolts, when in training, Forbid the metal bolts, and your dwarves will be forced to use the wooden ones. Do the opposite when in combat.
Just in case, make sure you assigned an uniform that includes a crossbow to the squad.

Have fun buddy! Otherwise, FUN will have you!