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[Psieye]

How exactly do you give them these patrol orders and why would they only follow the order after they're out of ammo instead of constantly running back and forth while shooting.

Girlinhat answered the second question. How to execute it:
- Place a 'N'ote on the shooting platform and another at the ammo pile.
- Press 'r' in the 'N'ote screen to get the route editing up.
- Add those 2 notes as waypoints to the route.
- Now go to the military schedule screen.
- Create an order on the schedule (for an entirely new alert if you want) to use that patrol route you just defined.
- Set marksdwarf squads to that alert level.

[Girlinhat]

Dwarven priorities seem to fall roughly in the order of Drink, Eat, Sleep, Clean Self, Break, Party, Work, Off-duty military drills.  HOWEVER, these priorities change according to distance.  At one time, dwarves would abandon any task when thirsty, and this would result in a lot of wasted time as your miner ran down to the quarry, mined one stone of microcline, and then went for a drink all the way back up.  Now, you'll notice that miners especially, due to the distance, will "stick it out" and continue mining even when thirsty.  This seems entirely based on distance, if their work site is much much closer than their need for drink or food, they will resume working, with a weighted desire.  As their thirst grows, their desire to continue working lower, and they eventually decide "I think I will walk all the way back" before they dehydrate.

On the same account, patrolling dwarves seem to have a similar weighted desire to patrol and attack.  If they see an enemy, but the pathfinding is too long, such as if you build a tower with tunnel access, then they will fire all their bolts, and then decide "I want to attack him, but he's so far away, and my patrol order is only two steps away." so they will resume their patrol route.  When that patrol route takes them to an enclosed ammo stockpile where they can't see the enemy, they decide "I cannot see any enemies.  My quiver is empty.  I have moved to the next waypoint and need to decide what to do.  There is ammo three squares away." so they will reload.

It all comes down to understanding dwarven desires and priorities.  If you can pin down what takes place first, and what checklist the dwarf runs through when deciding their next action, you can design your construction to abuse their priorities and make them act to your will.

[Werdna]

Great stuff.   Could someone explain in detail the "defend burrow" method of getting marksdwarves to stand in a narrow file behind fortifications?  I can never get this to work correctly.  Can this be combined with the patrol technique?

[Saiko Kila]

Dwarven priorities seem to fall roughly in the order of Drink, Eat, Sleep, Clean Self, Break, Party, Work, Off-duty military drills.

Except they do not need to make some of these things, or sometimes it it impossible for them to execute. For example I've never had a party in my forts, only read about these. And my dwarves do breaks, work and train.

[Noir]

Great stuff.   Could someone explain in detail the "defend burrow" method of getting marksdwarves to stand in a narrow file behind fortifications?  I can never get this to work correctly.  Can this be combined with the patrol technique?

I tried, and burrow alone is apparently insufficient. I could be wrong, but from my personal experience you must arrange your firing positions so that there is no walkable tile in a range of 3 tiles from the line you want them to line up.

I accomplish this by building a 3-tiles thick wall behind the line, and making sure that the area on the other side of the fortifications is inaccessible (open air, or simply a place that cannot be pathed to).
You can see a Stonesense picture of my solution on the first page, in a spoiler tag.

The burrow makes sure that your dwarves go there, but some of them still risk of being around that area.

[Girlinhat]

Dwarven priorities seem to fall roughly in the order of Drink, Eat, Sleep, Clean Self, Break, Party, Work, Off-duty military drills.

Except they do not need to make some of these things, or sometimes it it impossible for them to execute. For example I've never had a party in my forts, only read about these. And my dwarves do breaks, work and train.

Of course, if they're optional, like parties, then they won't be performed.  But if the need for any of these occurs, then any lower priority actions will be postponed.

[Darkmere]

This is my (mildly ill conceived) entry defense. From above:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

and from the front:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The blue line is the defense burrow. I've never had my marksdwarves fail to line up directly behind the fortifications, empty their quivers into a siege, reload, and keep firing. It's also central to the wall patrol route, so if they snipe skorses they'll walk by the ammo stocks and refill while on patrol. Not sure what's causing the defense errors with everyone else, but I haven't had to wall block or anything to make my guys stand where they should.

[Noir]

Interesting... I will try your solution at some point - I want to get to the bottom of this story.

[Fredd]

 I use the same set up as darkmere, and never had problems either. As for line of sight being the determining factor for stationed troops, I have my doubts. In Adventure mode, have traveled across landscapes in flat areas with companions, who only seemed to rush off after wildlife , yes in their sight, but at a certain range. Range seemed to be max bowshot range at archery targets.
 They behave the same way caravan guards do, if this makes any sense. As for not reloading bolts, check to see if the bolts are designated CT, not just T. Look at dwarves quivers at the archery range, after they quit firing at the target. If bolts are designated T, they will not immediately refill their quivers. If they are CT they will reload.
 Another problem with reloading is the bolts allocated to hunters. You might have 200 bolts in storage, and allocate 200 to that squad. If its a 4 dwarf squad, will load 25 wooden bolts in their quiver, 5 if bone). With 100 bolts being allocated to hunters, after they fire off a volley at
the goblins, and since the remaining bolts are allocated to the hunters, they quit firing, and stay at station as melee dwarves.
 Latest experiment is to find reaction distance for dwarves on patrol, station, and defend burrow.  Another  test is to see what order they chose bolts in, whether by value,  position in list, or material. This could influence whether they decide to re-arm, especially with several ammo bins  scattered out. I think each stack of bolts is a single item when they decide. Say you assign 100 bolts, whose material is wood, but made from pine, cedar, oak, beech. You then make a separate ammo stockpile, which contains 4 stacks all made of pine. Will the archer go to the original stockpile, and grab the stack of pine bolts, or since the second one also contains pine, will the archer go there?
 Final advice, if you have a version with the Armorer as a noble, upgrade to a version without one. Armorer causes delays.
 Best advice is that if you have 500 bolts made for combat, assign all to a squad, if you have several stockpiles spread out. If you have walkways behind fortifications on walls, assign all the walkways as 1 burrow, and give the archers a defend burrow alert. Defend burrow is similar to radar. If a dwarf is loitering on the south side of the fort, and goblins appear outside the north wall. Dwarves with that order will rush there. Fortifications fool dwarves into thinking they can path through them. When the fortification halts there movement to the target, they unload on them. Stationing is bad behind fortifications. Since they all do not stand on the same spot, their line of sight can be blocked to the target. As stated above, go to adventure mode, and visit a old fort, with fortifications, and windows, and see for yourself their line of site

[Darkmere]

I had serious problems with their picking up ammo. Cleared the hunter jobs and hunter allocation, they all had gear, were restricted to bone bolts for training only.

Infinite pick up equipment order. They'd just march back and forth from the archery range (with bone bolt stockpile) to the old temporary stockpile, stare longingly at the wooden bolts, then walk back to the range. Repeat forever.
Then they started shedding properly assigned equipment (mail shirts) and continue walking around between the armor pile, ammo pile, and range.

I booted them ALL back to civilian. Remade the squad, they refused to empty their quivers of the metal bolts they had, so this time I didn't specify any material type. They fired the metal bolts in training, then picked up wood to continue training. When stationed, very rarely they would pick up metal bolts on the way to station, mostly sticking with wood and continuing to completely ignore bone.

Short summary:

Code: [Select]

Schedule:                         Ammo preference:
100% training                     Wooden > metal > bone (ignored)
40% training 20% patrol           Wooden > metal > bone (ignored)
100% patrol                       Metal > wood > bone (ignored)

Fully 1/3 of my fort's ammo is bone bolts that have been untouched for 12 years. I'm going to train up some newbies to replace attrition losses, I'll see if I can force them to use bone over wood, to get some of the 1000+ bone bolts used up.

[Duntada Man]

You have saved many dwarven lives this day! And ended the lives of that scourge of hippies my marksdwarves won't stop glaring at to reload. Two victories for you this day sir!

[AutomataKittay]

As far as I know C and T setting for ammo are bugged, at least as of .18 and possibly later versions I haven't played. I recently saw some dwarves emptying the quivers of their bolts when free space on ammo stockpile presents themselves. I recall there being some mentions and discussions of bugs of bolts in bin being untouchable, more particularly mixed material bins, but I'm not sure if it's still happening even as of version I'm on. I never bothered to make wood bolts, since bones are so easy to get and actually useful even against somewhat armored targets.

The quivers not being emptied out could be that your haulers haven't had time to empty it out before being reclaimed by militia, or that bin bug for haulers since the ones I saw being pulled out wasn't binned. Let them grind the wooden ones out and see if they claim the bone ones. Make sure the uniform replaces clothings and are set to be uniformed even when inactive for them dropping armor bits.

[Darkmere]

You have saved many dwarven lives this day! And ended the lives of that scourge of hippies my marksdwarves won't stop glaring at to reload. Two victories for you this day sir!

*shakes fist* Damn hippies! Get off my lawn!

The ammo dumping may have been a stockpile problem, they were getting pretty full, but the armor assignment was exactly the same both times I drafted the squad. In .25 I haven't had the old ammo stockpile "refuse to take from a bin" problem anymore, they'll gladly take any material but bone from any material bin. I'll clear the wooden bolt order from dwarf foreman and see if that makes the newbies pick bone, hopefully they won't start shooting my masterwork silver bolts through the ceilings/windows.

[Fredd]

 The extra set of bolts is related to the phantom squad member bug. Best cure is to just individually assign a uniform to a squad member, instead of using shift enter to assign a uniform to the whole squad at once.
 To cure the unused bolt problem, separate the ammo stockpiles into metal/other materials.
And remove the allotment designated to the marksmen squad in equipment(f), then dump the bolts in their quivers, and bolts in unused quivers.
 Finally go forbid all your ammo bins. When you unforbid them, this clears them for new assignments/allocations, since their contents are also forbidden.. Then assign a new bolt allotment for archers.

[noob]

Dont have long patrol routes because they like to go and reload once they finish patrolling.