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[WJLIII3]

They never get any better, and half of them never even use arrows! I've never seen them in the archery range at all, the only training they get is form my arena, and then it seems that half of them are just hammering. Yes I have quivers, they're set to use bolts on the ammo screen, and I have bolts. What am I missing?

[Lectorog]

Training is semi-complex and fully problematic. I've tried training up marksdwarves, but it wasn't worth it to me. I couldn't figure it out.

There may be a page on the wiki that explains training and other aspects of bow-wielding dwarves. If not, I'll let someone else help with this. My suggestion (feel free to ignore it) is to use better fighters, like hammer- and axe-dwarves.

[Girlinhat]

It's because they're marksdwarves.  *rimshot*

They have a lot of assorted bugs, mainly involving ammo, a few others involving the desire to beat things to death.  It's normal for them to be horrible.

[Borre]

Same here. I have a squad of 10 archers with everything they need. They are set to 8 out of 10 dwarfs, but i only see 2-3 of the dwarfs train at a time.

[Sir Leonard III]

There's a problem with reloading. Girlinahat has a link in her signature for auto-reloading marksdwarves, though. You should check it out

[Matazat]

Marksdwarves seem to attend demonstrations of things like wrestling or striking in addition to their target practice. Useless, but it explains why they're not always at the range.

Personally, I load my marksdwarves up with wooden bolts and have them practice on wild animals. It takes a while for inexperienced marksdwarves to kill something like a giant moose with wooden bolts, so they get plenty of shooting practice from that.

[Eric Blank]

I generally have them train on wildlife as hunters or by ordering them to attack. Supplying bolts IS a problem for me at times as I tend to neglect to produce enough.

[Acperience]

Ranged weapon users try to first expend all their ammo, then charge to melee.
If the enemy comes within a certain range, they will engage in melee.
If you use the squad kill command, they will engage in melee sooner than if you had stationed them near the enemy, and let the enemy come to you.

[WJLIII3]

I do have an axe unit, but I need marksdwarves for my guard towers, or else the whole "tower" thing was really a waste of time.

[EveryZig]

Archery ranges are wastes of bolts. They way you train archers is 1) caged enemy released via lever in a pit 2) ledge overlooking pit

[Fredd]

WJ, I guess you read the article on the WIKI about how to get squads to train. Its basically poo.
 1. Create enough quivers, and crossbows to equip your squad.
 2. Create archery targets for the squad, assign them to the squad once created. Make sure that you set firing direction correctly.
 3. Create/buy bolts, create a stockpile, then assign them to a squad.
 This part is correct on the WIKI. Assigning them to the ACTIVE schedule is the poo part. All months that year have orders for that squad to train. Logically, this would be the thing. But this is DF, so go figure.
ACTIVE training schedule means that if a month on the yearly schedule has train order, they will give demonstrations, spar,watch demonstrations. If they are all rookies, this will mess you up. If  on the otherhand, have no scheduled order that month, if they have no job to do, will go to target practice, if archers, or practice on melee weapons, if in melee squad. Active schedule means will not wait as long for a job to show up, as they will under Inactive schedule.
 There is nothing wrong with a training order occasionally on the Active training schedule, get to learn new skills, increase teaching, organizing skills, whatnot. Training orders can also be ordered on the Inactive schedule, if you need your militia to work more, but still learn new skills. The main thing is no scheduled orders a month, under either schedule, a dwarf in its free time will weapon train. And once you use this technique, the will use up bolts at a large rate. If you forget to produce any bolts, they will practice invid combat(weapon train) on no scheduled order months. I have never seen crossbow squads improve hammer dwarf skill doing this, but if you get happy, assign them warhammers also, to train hammer skills for emergency uses.

[Agent_86]

Eh, this thread gave me an idea...

Next embark, I'm not going to rely on marksdwarves at all, only melee dwarves and complex [strike]trap[/strike] magma systems.

[o_O[WTFace]]

They aren't real enthusiastic about archery range training, even assuming you can get them to work properly.  You may want to just use an arena style setup.  Stick a creature on an island and station marksdwarfs where they will shoot at it.  When their ammo is depleted, cancel their orders and wait a while, then repeat.  Large creatures will survive multiple training sessions.   

You can probly automate it with the squad menu too. 

[Agent_86]

What I've found to work is to make a bunch of archery ranges and a separate barracks, and set them to sleep only in their barracks and train only on the archery ranges.  that way they won't do demonstrations, etc, but only do archery practice.

[Noir]

What I've found to work is to make a bunch of archery ranges and a separate barracks, and set them to sleep only in their barracks and train only on the archery ranges.  that way they won't do demonstrations, etc, but only do archery practice.

Could you elaborate on this? Does it means that you have assigned them a barracks for sleeping, but removed the Training flag?

For everyone else in this thread, I succesfully employ marksdwarves in my fortress - should you have any question about how they need to be configured, feel free to ask.