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[nitus]

There needs to be a way to tell dwarves to keep ranks or stand their ground.
 
Large battles are won on the strength of positioning and deployment. Our undisciplined bearded friends will break ranks and rush heedlessly into death rather than maintaining tactical formations, turning an easy victory into a shameful rout. A classic example is when an enemy approaching your line could have been flanked or encircled or subjected to coordinated action between squads -- and easily defeated -- but instead faces a rag-tag band of soldiers who enthusiastically plunge willy-nilly into danger. Even a ranged squad on a turret overhead, in defensive position to repel invaders, will abandon their posts and wade into a mass of enemies.
 
If squads would stand their ground, or at least only attack within N tiles of their "station marker" this would dramatically improve combat performance.

[JasonMel]

You mean there's no way to tell them to wait behind the walls and fire through fortifications? I'm in the middle of my first real battle, against a hill titan, and I'm wondering why my dwarves are all running singly headlong toward suicide rather than letting it come to them.

Massive support. (Edit: Nice subject line too.)

[CaptApollo12]

In regards to ranged combat - lock them behind fortifications. It is simple and easy to do. This way they will not abbandon their posts and try to chase after a lucky goblin that ran away and instead my marksdwarves just choose a new target

In regards to melee  - retractable bridges on either side of the entrance to your fort. Your meleedwarves  will attack the enemy from both sides when the lever is pressed and the enemy becomes visable

[Glowcat]

In regards to ranged combat - lock them behind fortifications. It is simple and easy to do. This way they will not abbandon their posts and try to chase after a lucky goblin that ran away and instead my marksdwarves just choose a new target

In regards to melee  - retractable bridges on either side of the entrance to your fort. Your meleedwarves  will attack the enemy from both sides when the lever is pressed and the enemy becomes visable

I believe the point of the suggestion forum is to request ways that don't involve these sort of workarounds.

Something as simple as ranged user defense stations or allowing the user to create strict movement formations (and switch between them or turn them off) would do a lot for the game. Not only would it reduce user frustration, but it would make battles so much cooler.

Probably could come with a 'Drill' or similar skill to represent how well these dwarves work together. Shield dwarves would be able to protect their allies to either side.

[loose nut]

You mean there's no way to tell them to wait behind the walls and fire through fortifications?

Here's how you do that.

Set up an alert, call it "Tower Defense" or something. Set up a burrow just behind those fortifications, and give it an appropriate name. Set up an ammo stockpile near the fortifications, but not in line of sight of the fortifications – use a door to divide them.

On the military schedule screen, first switch the alert from "Active/Training" to "Tower Defense". Then find your marksdwarf squad. Change all their orders for all months to "Defend Burrows" and make sure the max number of dwarves you have following that order is equal to or less than the number of the dwarves in the squad.

Now, whenever a siege happens, you can go to your alert screen, pick "Tower Defense" and select your marksdwarf squad so there's a "A" there. At this point, your squad will turn into marksdwarves, pick up bolts if they don't have any, park themselves behind the fortifications, and shoot all the goblins in their feet and arms probably. And, since you have the door there, your civilians can run up and resupply the ammo room if it looks like you're running low on bolts and you need to make some in a hurry.

When it's over, go back to the alerts, and switch your marksdwarves back to "Active/Training".

Doing it this way, I have not had any of them charge outside and die stupidly, the way they sometimes do if you give them a station order.

I support the suggestion of having dwarves keep their ranks, very much, by the way. Perhaps it should depend on the Military Tactics skill, or the lead dwarf's Leader skill, or both. With higher skill levels, the less far the dwarves run to chase their enemies, and the tighter they keep ranks. But there should definitely be that option. It's the one thing DF military really truly needs.

[nomad_delta]

I really agree with this suggestion; while there are various hacks and workarounds to try to deal with this, a simple "stand your ground/chase enemies" or "defensive/agressive" toggle setting for squads would be awesome and would make battles much more fun and tactical.

I also agree with the suggestion to make the effectiveness of such a setting somewhat dependent upon some sort of "military tactics" skill that perhaps the squad leader would have, or that would be gained by drills, etc.

Perhaps individual dwarves could be more or less prone to follow the orders exactly based on their personality traits?  Maybe a dwarf prone to rage/berserk and "put off by authority" would be more likely to ignore the order to hold a position defensively?  Or conversely, a dwarf without a "sense of duty" or easily scared might be less likely to charge into battle when ordered, or perhaps even to run away when facing overwhelming odds.

While all that would be nice, I'd be super super happy with just that simple agressive/defense toggle and nothing else for now.

--nomad_delta

[loose nut]

Well, the Military Tactics skill is present in the game (every now and then immigrants show up with the skill) but not connected to anything, which is why I suggested it. And yeah, personality traits should play into it as well.

[JasonMel]

Oh, so Defend Burrows works better than Station? Good, I haven't tried that yet. And if that doesn't work, hopefully locking them inside the fortifications will. Maybe I can limit casualties to just the one loose cannon. Udib the Bowyer, we hardly knew ye. If your analytical abilities were any match for your empathy and will, maybe you'd still be alive today.

[nitus]

Workarounds like barricading dwarves indoors, or keeping them in burrows, do not solve this problem -- the idea is to be able to use your militia effectively to repel assaults, not to hide indefinitely behind fortifications.
 
Nomad_delta's suggestion of a simple "stand ground" toggle is exactly what I was thinking of. This way you could deploy your squads to tactical effect, and defeat a siege, not simply cower from one.

[irmo]

Well, the Military Tactics skill is present in the game (every now and then immigrants show up with the skill) but not connected to anything, which is why I suggested it. And yeah, personality traits should play into it as well.

Once again, it would be nice to have the behavior working reliably before we start talking about extra layers of "realism" that come from making it unreliable. It doesn't work to have an "Ignoring AI Bugs" skill.

[Glowcat]

Creating new formations wouldn't be too hard. Just use the current note system to establish a temporary "Formation Creator Mode" starting with the first dwarf's position. Then you'd place Xs representing the next dwarf's position in the formation. The formation could turn in any direction, based around the initial point. Dwarves could cycle through these user-created modes or turn the entire thing off to let your dwarves break formation to rush in. Turning formation back on returns them to the last formation mode they were on.

The only difficulty is pathfinding when the non-primary positions would place the dwarf either in a wall or on the other side of a wall. The best possible way to fix that would probably be keeping them always on the same map level height as the main dwarf and never letting them travel more than a certain number of tiles away from the main dwarf's position (i.e. travel distance, not real distance). When a dwarf's normal position is unavailable they'd pick the next tile closest to the main dwarf spot.

Formations should be savable and stored on a file that players can import for ease of use. One probably doesn't even need to create formations in-game since under this system they're just X, Y coordinates in relation to a primary point (the main dwarf).

[JasonMel]

(I would just like to report that, thanks to the help I got in this thread, I killed the hill titan Oke Rosevalleys, my first monster, without any further injuries, other than a few demolished outdoor constructions and some very tired livestock who were chased back and forth all over the map. Udib, the lone casualty, was carried to his final resting place by Rith Reignedhalls, the accomplished hunter who finally brought down the monster from the safety of his defended "burrow" behind the fortified outer wall.)

[Stormcloudy]

Posting my support. I hate it when my dwarves run halfway across the map, when the courtyard is plenty large for a battle, and desperately in need of a blood coating.

[Kattaroten]

I am quite sure this is planned to be implemented during the army arc. That said, I must still say that this is a very, very, important thing to add!

[nitus]

I am quite sure this is planned to be implemented during the army arc.

I certainly hope so. You can't hide in burrows when you're assaulting the enemy. You're really going to need squads to follow movement orders or you might as well send your armies over the rim of a volcano.