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[Lormax]

Ok, got a Marksdwarf, assigned to his own squad.  No uniform assigned.  The only assigned equipment is a crossbow.  No food, carry any drink.  Assigned some bone bolts, set for both combat and training (the default).  Schedule was changed to train with minimum of 1 dwarf on all months.

Archery target has been built.  Set to shoot from bottom to top.  Highlight the Marksdwarf squad, hit (t) to assign it to his squad. 

Plenty of ammo in the stockpiles.  There's multiple crossbows for the dwarf to choose from.  Quivers and waterskins are available.  He won't go train at the archery target...any thoughts as to whynot?

[BigFatStupidHead]

I hear marksdwarves also want a barracks for training useful things like crossbow bashing. They'll give a 'Cannot follow orders' message if they can't do the drills they have in mind.

[Lormax]

Ok, did that.  He just stands in that barracks and doesn't do a thing.  I'm looking to raise their Marksdwarf skill, nothing else. 

[BigFatStupidHead]

Well, it's basically up to the little idiots to decide what they want to do. You can only make suggestions. What exactly IS he doing in the barracks? Still 'Cannot follow order'ing?

[Person]

Make sure the target is far enough away, they don't like shooting targets 3 tiles away for obvious reasons.

[Lormax]

Ok, so I expanded the archery target areas to 7 tiles long.  I still get the issue.  Each of the archery targets is assigned to a seperate, 1 man squad.  I currently have 5 squads setup, each with 1 dwarf each.  All of them are set to train with 1 dwarf minimum.  You can see that 3 of the targets get used SOMETIMES.  Currently all 5 of the Marksdwarfs have the "soldier (cannot follow orders)" job. 

Here's a picture of the area...



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[MonkeyHead]

As already mentioned, the most common cause of this is for them not to have a standard barracks assigned to them when they want to go practice dodging, crossbow drills or shield use...

[Sutremaine]

Make your marksdwarves inactive. Archery practice for marksdwarves is like combat drills for melee fighters -- they'll do it in their spare time if they have somewhere to do it.

I arm civilians with crossbows, and if there's an archery target available I can't tear them away from it. Turning targets to face the wall deactivates them without losing the squad info, which is handy.

[rosareven]

Could the dwarf's trait also affect his preference in choice of weapon? May be he doesn't like archery?

Thanks for this thread everyone, I just started dabbling with military in my game and the whole training thing is good to know.

[Lormax]

Ok, so I tried what a couple suggested and built 5 regular barracks and assigned 1 to each Marksdwarf squad.  Cool, got rid of the 'soldier (cannot follow orders)' problem.

Now only 1 of them will ever go do Archery Practice.  The others just sit in the barracks and do their 'Individual Combat Drills'.  I've checked and double-checked, each squad is setup and made exactly the same as the others.  I'll be happy to upload the save somewhere if someone can take a look?

[BigFatStupidHead]

That all sounds like it's working according to plan. The dwarves will get around to archery practice whenever they get around to archery practice. Sutremaine may be onto something, as I also find archers do a lot of archery practice when they're off duty. You could make them all hunters and pit them against the dangers of the wild; just don't be too shocked if an ambush snuffs them. Finally, capturing a live training target like a wild animal or goblin liberator to shoot at under controlled conditions makes for some good training too. Just use wood ammo so the target lasts for a long while.

[kardwill]

Did you check their equipment to see if they have ammo in their quivers? The Ammunition setting is for the whole squad, so if you assigned 25 bolts, only one of them will have a full quiver.

Most of the time I had problems with my marksdwarves, it was because of ammo problems (no quiver, not enough assigned bolts, no ammo left...)