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[Lagslayer]

I ask because they keep on crippling enemies to where they can't fight back, and it would just be quicker for them to rush up and hit beat their head in than going back for a full quiver of bolts. I'm not saying make them melee as a primary mode of attacking, but to just make them finish them off with a melee hit when I want them to.

[Eric Blank]

I don't know whether there's anything you can do menu-wise to change their behavior, but if you have a door on the entrance to the bolt stockpile, you can forbid passage and prevent them from even trying, or forbid the bolts in the stockpile themselves. Just remember to unlock the door/unforbid the bolts after the fight so they can reload.

[ThrowerOfStones]

As someone who experienced DF back when most marksdwarves ONLY beat enemies with their crossbows, I'm unconvinced that it would be faster for them to beat the enemy's heads in.

[Hyndis]

Have two sets of dwarves. Your first group will be your crossbow guys behind the battlements.

Then you want a set of melee dwarves, armed with swords, hammers, spears, or other melee weapons. You can leave them on active training at the barracks at your entrance for passive thief/ambush/siege defense if anything gets through the crossbows. Once the crossbows have softened things up set the melee guys on defend burrow. Zone the entire above ground area as a burrow.

Your melee guys will then rush out of your fortress and stab at all hostiles in that burrow, including goblins crippled by crossbow bolts.

Crossbow dwarves are really not very effective in melee. They probably have little or no skill at melee combat, and crossbows make for poor weapons. A dabbling axedwarf will be more effective than a legendary marksdwarf in melee.

[Lagslayer]

I was using them for hunting.

[o_O[WTFace]]

I think hunters try very hard to avoid getting into a melee fight with their prey.  Its annoying when they stand around shooting bolts into unconscious creatures but it was more annoying when they would try to wrestle elephants, I guess. 

[MijRai]

I find this a little funny. My last well settled crossbow-dwarf squad were all better melee fighters then rangers. I mean, I had a spear master (I modded my crossbows to have bayonettes) and never got an elite crossbow dwarf. They worked perfectly. Fire their quiver of bolts, rush into the conflict, and stabbify everything. I'd armor them fully anyways, so it wasn't too much of a problem when they did get close. I only had one death, and he was the idiot who shot his bolts and ran in while the rest of his squad was still 40 tiles away or so. He killed 6 before he went down.

But no, I don't know how to make them go and smash the enemy with their crossbow rather than reload and come back. Maybe have an ammo dump close to the exit so they can reload faster, at least?

[Shogger]

I've always wondered if it were possible to outfit marksdwarves with some sort of secondary melee weapon, maybe a dagger or shortsword? That way when they run out of ammo they could switch to their melee weapon and not be so useless in combat. But I've never tried it.

[Pukako]

Strange - I was looking somewhere to share my experience of The Disembowelers of Creation, a four-piece of crossbowdwarves.

A goblin master thief managed to escape and I found these guys close.  They proceeded to (I counted) pump 51 copper, steel and bone (mostly copper, with about 6 or so bone and steel) bolts into him, until one of them ran out of bolts, and beat the goblin's head in with his steel crossbow.

In my experience, they won't attack hand-to-hand if they have bolts left, but after that, who knows? I usually try to STOP them taking on a goblin lasher or 10 with their crossbow...

[Psieye]

Give them a kill order, which translates to "move on top of this moving reference point". That'll get them to melee.