Dwarf Fortress Wiki - User contributions [en]

DF2014 Talk:Advanced marksdwarf training guide

2015-05-11T12:11:20Z

NCommander:

Inconsistent use of dwarves or dwarfs? Both are used on this guide.

Guilty as charged, is there a preference on which to use? [[User:NCommander|NCommander]] ([[User talk:NCommander|talk]]) 12:11, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Advanced marksdwarf training guide

2015-05-11T04:47:48Z

NCommander: /* Avoiding 'Equipment Mismatch' Issues */

Marksdwarves are fairly buggy, and often refuse to use archery ranges, or stand in front of them, and fail to fire their crossbows. This guide goes into details explaining known bugs, and getting your Marksdwarves to train properly, as well as going into details regarding various ranged weaponry.

== Understanding Ranged Weaponry ==

In vanilla Dwarf Fortress, the raws define three types of ranged weapons, each with their own skill and ammo.

{| class="wikitable"
!colspan="4" |Ranged Weapons
|-
!Ranged Weapon
!Ranged Skill
!Melee Skill
!Ammo
|-
|Crossbow
|Marksdwarf
|Hammerdwarf
|Bolts
|-
|Bow
|Bowman
|Swordman
|Arrows
|-
|Blowgun
|Blowgunner
|Swordman
|Darts
|-
|}

Of these, dwarfs can only make crossbows and bolts, but can use bows, and blowguns if you recover them from downed enemeis or trade for them. If playing a modded game, replace crossbow in the following with one of the above weapons, and proper ammo type.

== Equipping You Marksdwarfs ==

=== The Minimum Outfit ===
At a minimum, each dwarf requires the following to successfully use the crossbow.
* One crossbow
* One quiver
* One stack of bolts for each marksdwarf to fire

Quivers are equipped on the upper body slot. Due to a bug, sometimes they fail to pickup a quiver if wearing heavy armor. A workaround for this is below if you run into it. Wood and metal bolts are generated in stacks of 25. Bone bolts are generated in stacks of 5.

=== Crossbows ===
Crossbows can be made out of wood or bone at a bowyers workshop, or out of metal at a metalsmith/magma forge. Metal crossbows can be forged out of copper, bronze, bismuth bronze, iron, steel, or adamantine. Quivers must be made of leather at a leatherworks. The material a crossbow is made out of appears to have no effect on its lethality on ranged bolts. However, if you expect your marksdwarves to end up in melee, they will use their crossbow as a hammer, thus it is recommended to make them out of a dense metal.

=== Quivers and Bolts ===
Quivers can hold 25 bolts, and dwarves will pick up multiple stacks if necessary to fill it. In other words, they will successfully pick up five separate stacks of bone bolts, or 25 seperate bolts if you're using a bolt splitting technique in your fortress. Bolts are collected in last-in-first-out order; that is, dwarves will always go for the newest bolts in your fortress, even if there is an ammo stockpile three steps away from them. Each squad with marksdwarves must be assigned ammo; as they deplete it, Dwarf Fortress will automatically add additional ammo to the squad if there are some in the fortress, again following the principle of LIFO.

=== Avoiding 'Equipment Mismatch' Issues ===
Miners, wood cutters, and hunters have a default "uniform". When these labors are enabled, a dwarf will carry the equipment appropriate to that job, making it unavailable for the military, and causing issues if that dwarf is then drafted. In general, its safe to put miners and wood cutters in ranged squads, and hunters in melee squads, as this prevents them from equipped the same type of item twice.

If you are going to draft hunters, clear their labors, and *confirm* that your hunter has put his quiver and crossbow away. If you don't, he'll generate equipment mismatches. Furthermore, if a marksdwarf grabs a quiver that was once used by a hunter, and still has bolts in it, they may cause a mismatch which the dwarf itself can not clear. This can be resolved by opening the dwarf in the "k" menu, then open his inventory, find the quiver, and forbid the bolts in it. He'll dump them, and properly reload.

If you don't use hunters, you may want to remove their bolt assignments from the ammunition screen.

== Setting your Marksdwarf's barrack ==

=== Understanding Possible Training Activates ===
The first rule of marksdwarf training is you do *not* assign them a normal barrack. If they have that, they will prefer to train as hammerdwarves with their crossbows vs. actually shooting bolts. Furthermore, as the game gives precedence to melee training, they will almost never use an archery range even if one is assigned if they have a choice.

When training, a dwarf has four possible options, which they will take in roughly this order:
- Squad Training
- Individual Combat Drill
- Spar
- Archery Training

Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarfs (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves, training their melee skills while doing so). Except for archery training, dwarves require a standard barracks to conduct any of the above activities. Notably, it is possible to actually train marksdwarves via demonstration, both Crossbow and Archery skills are trainable via demonstrations. By combined this with training orders, it is possible to make Archery Training the only valid option, and thus get them to train consistently.

=== Building Archery Ranges ===
Thus, the first step is to build a room with a bunch of archery ranges. I recommend putting them against the left most wall so the shooting direction is automatically correct, but this should work regardless of direction. The room must be large enough that the marksdwarf has a one gap space between them and the target; I just make their "barrack" 10x10, and put an ammo stockpile in it. Notably, and this is a change from previous version is that the dwarf *must* be able to walk up to the the target; placing a channel in front of it will prevent them from training.

Once you build your range, you must define it as a room. Make it so it touches the far wall, and don't worry, range rooms can overlap. You have to do this for each. Make sure the shooting direction is correct! In addition, your marksdwarf squad MUST at minimum have train set on each archery target. One dwarf can use one target at any given time.

[[File:Archery_range_setup.png|A properly setup archery target]]

Repeat this for each range; you'll have 5-10 targets overlapping each other and assigned to your marksdwarves squad (in these screenshots, they are the "Home Guard")

[b]3. The Military Management Screen[/b]

This is by far the most difficult part. Fear the 'm' menu, for it eats children. The 'm' menu is confusing on the best days, but this guide will walk you through it.

The first and default page is the positions page. Ignore it for now, you want to make the right uniform for your marksdwarves, press 'u' to bring up that screen. Do yourself a favor and just delete the default archer uniform. It's wrong and will not work properly.

Create a new uniform, and add the following:
- crossbow (do NOT used individual choice, ranged; you *will* end up with dwarves who think an axe is a ranged weapon)
- shield (optional)
- leather armor
- leather headwear
- leather legwear
- leather armor
- leather legwear

Make sure "exact match" is selected. This appears to fix most of the issues of them not picking up quivers. You might be able to get away with over clothing however.

Here's what it should like if you did it right:

[[File:Working_training_uniform.png|400px|Uniform that gets them training]]

Now press 'p' to go back to the positions menu. When you create the squad, it will ask for a uniform. Normally, this works as you'd expect it, assigning the uniform to an entire squad. However, if done with the captain of the guard position, it will *only* assign to that spot. You can look at the top of the screen to see what your dwarfs will train as (i.e. 10/10 Marksdwarfs). If needed, after selecting your recruits, then switch to the 'e' menu. Select your squad, and then a position, then press 'U' (that's capital U) to bring up the uniform selection screen.

Highlight your crossbow uniform, and press 'Shift-Enter' to assign it to all positions in the squad. If you then check the positions screen, at the top, it will say 10/10 marksdwarves, instead of 1/1 markdwarf 9/9 wrestlers, which is what will happen if you leave it on defaults.

[[File:10_marksdwarves.png|400px|10/10 Marksdwarves]]

=== Handling Ammo ===
We're almost done. Go to the ammo screen.

[[File:ammo_screen.png|400px|Ammo]]

If you're setting this by hand, here's what to know. Each squad needs the correct ammo. Bolts are assigned on a "per-item" basis, i.e., a given stack of bolts thats marked for training will only be used for training and via versus. Unfortunately, an old bug prevents this from working; if you have multiple ammo types, and some are set Training-only, and others are set combat-only, your marksdwarves *will* get stuck and fail to train, or fail to fire. The only way to get this to work is if all ammo assignments in the fortress are set to both "CT" in the UI.

==== Switching Bolts Types Reliably ====
Forbidding/Dumping is respected by the game when assigning ammo, so you can use the stocks screen to dump wooden/bone bolts when you're not training, and then have them load metal bolts for fighting. The easiest way to just use wooden/bone bolts when you're training (setting both CT flags on it in the ammo screen), and when you need them to switch, delete the ammo assignment for the training bolts, dump them from the stocks screen (DFHack's enhanced inventory is useful from this), and add the new metal bolts to the screen. Reverse the process to get them to change back.

=== Squad Training Orders ===

Now, for the magic bit that gets them doing nothing *but* training. Open the schedule screen, and look at the orders. The default is "Train, 10 minimium". '''This is WRONG!'''

[[File:default_training_order.png|400px|Default Training Order]]

Press x to delete the order. The schedule screen will change to show no scheduled orders.

[[File:No_orders.png|400px|no_orders]]

Press 'o' to pull up the give order screen. Press o until 'Train' is set, and then press + so it shows minimum 1, like this. Then press shift-done to give the order. The screen will look like this:

[[File:Train_1.png|400px|train 1]]

[[File:given_train_1_order.png|400px|after giving train 1 order]]

Now do it again, for the total members of your squad (you CAN give more than 5 orders, you just have to scroll in the orders screen to see it). When you're done it should look like this, after doing it 10 times.

[[File:multiple_train_1.png|400px|Multiple train one orders]]

Copy and paste the order to all the months. You can also set Sleep in Barrack at need to increase their training time, though this will raise the stress levels of dwarves in the squad due to tired thoughts.

You're almost done. Activate your squad, and after they finish picking up equipment, watch your bolt supplies vanish as your marksdwarves do nothing *but* archery training.

=== Why This Works ===
Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarves (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves). Training, minimum of 1 forces them to work solo. Since they don't have a normal barrack, they can't drill, which leaves Archery Training as the only possible way to train. Since reloading on marksdwarves continues to be erratic, they'll frequently report "No Orders" or similiar once they've finished archery training until the game notices that a given dwarf is out of ammo, in which case they'll go pick up more.

Archery training grants less experience than live fire (8XP per bolt vs. 30XP), but no micromanagement, no hauling, one setup, and you can ignore it until you get that glorious announcement that Urist McMarksdwarf has become an Elite Marksdwarf.

== Stopping Melee Charges ==

The short version: DON'T USE STATION!

When a dwarf has line of sight on an enemy, they'll one of two things, run away, or run up and fight them. While they're running up to the enemy, dwarves will fire bolts if they have any, but then engage the enemy using their crossbows as hammers instead of firing. The easiest way to prevent this is either use fortification pillboxes, with a patrol order that causes them to break line of sight, or defend burrows orders, which will keep them in the area defined by the burrow and prevent them from running up to the enemy.

For patrol routes, marksdwarves *will* not take a Pickup Equipment order as long as they have line of sight on their enemy. Have them go through a door or something, and as soon as they loose sight of the goblin/forgotten beast/demon, they'll immediately go find bolts and reload.

The full effectiveness at Defend Burrow orders at stopping a melee charge is unknown.

{{Military}}

Advanced marksdwarf training guide

2015-05-11T04:31:45Z

NCommander: Add a category

Marksdwarves are fairly buggy, and often refuse to use archery ranges, or stand in front of them, and fail to fire their crossbows. This guide goes into details explaining known bugs, and getting your Marksdwarves to train properly, as well as going into details regarding various ranged weaponry.

== Understanding Ranged Weaponry ==

In vanilla Dwarf Fortress, the raws define three types of ranged weapons, each with their own skill and ammo.

{| class="wikitable"
!colspan="4" |Ranged Weapons
|-
!Ranged Weapon
!Ranged Skill
!Melee Skill
!Ammo
|-
|Crossbow
|Marksdwarf
|Hammerdwarf
|Bolts
|-
|Bow
|Bowman
|Swordman
|Arrows
|-
|Blowgun
|Blowgunner
|Swordman
|Darts
|-
|}

Of these, dwarfs can only make crossbows and bolts, but can use bows, and blowguns if you recover them from downed enemeis or trade for them. If playing a modded game, replace crossbow in the following with one of the above weapons, and proper ammo type.

== Equipping You Marksdwarfs ==

=== The Minimum Outfit ===
At a minimum, each dwarf requires the following to successfully use the crossbow.
* One crossbow
* One quiver
* One stack of bolts for each marksdwarf to fire

Quivers are equipped on the upper body slot. Due to a bug, sometimes they fail to pickup a quiver if wearing heavy armor. A workaround for this is below if you run into it. Wood and metal bolts are generated in stacks of 25. Bone bolts are generated in stacks of 5.

=== Crossbows ===
Crossbows can be made out of wood or bone at a bowyers workshop, or out of metal at a metalsmith/magma forge. Metal crossbows can be forged out of copper, bronze, bismuth bronze, iron, steel, or adamantine. Quivers must be made of leather at a leatherworks. The material a crossbow is made out of appears to have no effect on its lethality on ranged bolts. However, if you expect your marksdwarves to end up in melee, they will use their crossbow as a hammer, thus it is recommended to make them out of a dense metal.

=== Quivers and Bolts ===
Quivers can hold 25 bolts, and dwarves will pick up multiple stacks if necessary to fill it. In other words, they will successfully pick up five separate stacks of bone bolts, or 25 seperate bolts if you're using a bolt splitting technique in your fortress. Bolts are collected in last-in-first-out order; that is, dwarves will always go for the newest bolts in your fortress, even if there is an ammo stockpile three steps away from them. Each squad with marksdwarves must be assigned ammo; as they deplete it, Dwarf Fortress will automatically add additional ammo to the squad if there are some in the fortress, again following the principle of LIFO.

=== Avoiding 'Equipment Mismatch' Issues ===
Miners, wood cutters, and hunters have a"default "uniform". When these labors are enabled, a dwarf will carry the equipment apprioate to that job, making it unavailable for the military, and causing issues if that dwarf is then drafted. In general, its safe to put miners and wood cutters in ranged squads, and hunters in melee squads, as this prevents them from equipped the same type of item twice.

If you are going to draft hunters, clear their labors, and [b]confirm[/b] that your hunter has put his quiver and crossbow away. If you don't, he'll generate equipment mismatches. Furthermore, if a marksdwarf grabs a quiver that was once used by a hunter, and still has bolts in it, they may cause a mismatch which the dwarf itself can not clear. This can be resolved by opening the dwarf in the "k" menu, then open his inventory, find the quiver, and forbid the bolts in it. He'll dump them, and properly reload.

If you don't use hunters, you may want to remove their bolt assignments from the ammunition screen.

== Setting your Marksdwarf's barrack ==

=== Understanding Possible Training Activates ===
The first rule of marksdwarf training is you do *not* assign them a normal barrack. If they have that, they will prefer to train as hammerdwarves with their crossbows vs. actually shooting bolts. Furthermore, as the game gives precedence to melee training, they will almost never use an archery range even if one is assigned if they have a choice.

When training, a dwarf has four possible options, which they will take in roughly this order:
- Squad Training
- Individual Combat Drill
- Spar
- Archery Training

Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarfs (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves, training their melee skills while doing so). Except for archery training, dwarves require a standard barracks to conduct any of the above activities. Notably, it is possible to actually train marksdwarves via demonstration, both Crossbow and Archery skills are trainable via demonstrations. By combined this with training orders, it is possible to make Archery Training the only valid option, and thus get them to train consistently.

=== Building Archery Ranges ===
Thus, the first step is to build a room with a bunch of archery ranges. I recommend putting them against the left most wall so the shooting direction is automatically correct, but this should work regardless of direction. The room must be large enough that the marksdwarf has a one gap space between them and the target; I just make their "barrack" 10x10, and put an ammo stockpile in it. Notably, and this is a change from previous version is that the dwarf *must* be able to walk up to the the target; placing a channel in front of it will prevent them from training.

Once you build your range, you must define it as a room. Make it so it touches the far wall, and don't worry, range rooms can overlap. You have to do this for each. Make sure the shooting direction is correct! In addition, your marksdwarf squad MUST at minimum have train set on each archery target. One dwarf can use one target at any given time.

[[File:Archery_range_setup.png|A properly setup archery target]]

Repeat this for each range; you'll have 5-10 targets overlapping each other and assigned to your marksdwarves squad (in these screenshots, they are the "Home Guard")

[b]3. The Military Management Screen[/b]

This is by far the most difficult part. Fear the 'm' menu, for it eats children. The 'm' menu is confusing on the best days, but this guide will walk you through it.

The first and default page is the positions page. Ignore it for now, you want to make the right uniform for your marksdwarves, press 'u' to bring up that screen. Do yourself a favor and just delete the default archer uniform. It's wrong and will not work properly.

Create a new uniform, and add the following:
- crossbow (do NOT used individual choice, ranged; you *will* end up with dwarves who think an axe is a ranged weapon)
- shield (optional)
- leather armor
- leather headwear
- leather legwear
- leather armor
- leather legwear

Make sure "exact match" is selected. This appears to fix most of the issues of them not picking up quivers. You might be able to get away with over clothing however.

Here's what it should like if you did it right:

[[File:Working_training_uniform.png|400px|Uniform that gets them training]]

Now press 'p' to go back to the positions menu. When you create the squad, it will ask for a uniform. Normally, this works as you'd expect it, assigning the uniform to an entire squad. However, if done with the captain of the guard position, it will *only* assign to that spot. You can look at the top of the screen to see what your dwarfs will train as (i.e. 10/10 Marksdwarfs). If needed, after selecting your recruits, then switch to the 'e' menu. Select your squad, and then a position, then press 'U' (that's capital U) to bring up the uniform selection screen.

Highlight your crossbow uniform, and press 'Shift-Enter' to assign it to all positions in the squad. If you then check the positions screen, at the top, it will say 10/10 marksdwarves, instead of 1/1 markdwarf 9/9 wrestlers, which is what will happen if you leave it on defaults.

[[File:10_marksdwarves.png|400px|10/10 Marksdwarves]]

=== Handling Ammo ===
We're almost done. Go to the ammo screen.

[[File:ammo_screen.png|400px|Ammo]]

If you're setting this by hand, here's what to know. Each squad needs the correct ammo. Bolts are assigned on a "per-item" basis, i.e., a given stack of bolts thats marked for training will only be used for training and via versus. Unfortunately, an old bug prevents this from working; if you have multiple ammo types, and some are set Training-only, and others are set combat-only, your marksdwarves *will* get stuck and fail to train, or fail to fire. The only way to get this to work is if all ammo assignments in the fortress are set to both "CT" in the UI.

==== Switching Bolts Types Reliably ====
Forbidding/Dumping is respected by the game when assigning ammo, so you can use the stocks screen to dump wooden/bone bolts when you're not training, and then have them load metal bolts for fighting. The easiest way to just use wooden/bone bolts when you're training (setting both CT flags on it in the ammo screen), and when you need them to switch, delete the ammo assignment for the training bolts, dump them from the stocks screen (DFHack's enhanced inventory is useful from this), and add the new metal bolts to the screen. Reverse the process to get them to change back.

=== Squad Training Orders ===

Now, for the magic bit that gets them doing nothing *but* training. Open the schedule screen, and look at the orders. The default is "Train, 10 minimium". '''This is WRONG!'''

[[File:default_training_order.png|400px|Default Training Order]]

Press x to delete the order. The schedule screen will change to show no scheduled orders.

[[File:No_orders.png|400px|no_orders]]

Press 'o' to pull up the give order screen. Press o until 'Train' is set, and then press + so it shows minimum 1, like this. Then press shift-done to give the order. The screen will look like this:

[[File:Train_1.png|400px|train 1]]

[[File:given_train_1_order.png|400px|after giving train 1 order]]

Now do it again, for the total members of your squad (you CAN give more than 5 orders, you just have to scroll in the orders screen to see it). When you're done it should look like this, after doing it 10 times.

[[File:multiple_train_1.png|400px|Multiple train one orders]]

Copy and paste the order to all the months. You can also set Sleep in Barrack at need to increase their training time, though this will raise the stress levels of dwarves in the squad due to tired thoughts.

You're almost done. Activate your squad, and after they finish picking up equipment, watch your bolt supplies vanish as your marksdwarves do nothing *but* archery training.

=== Why This Works ===
Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarves (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves). Training, minimum of 1 forces them to work solo. Since they don't have a normal barrack, they can't drill, which leaves Archery Training as the only possible way to train. Since reloading on marksdwarves continues to be erratic, they'll frequently report "No Orders" or similiar once they've finished archery training until the game notices that a given dwarf is out of ammo, in which case they'll go pick up more.

Archery training grants less experience than live fire (8XP per bolt vs. 30XP), but no micromanagement, no hauling, one setup, and you can ignore it until you get that glorious announcement that Urist McMarksdwarf has become an Elite Marksdwarf.

== Stopping Melee Charges ==

The short version: DON'T USE STATION!

When a dwarf has line of sight on an enemy, they'll one of two things, run away, or run up and fight them. While they're running up to the enemy, dwarves will fire bolts if they have any, but then engage the enemy using their crossbows as hammers instead of firing. The easiest way to prevent this is either use fortification pillboxes, with a patrol order that causes them to break line of sight, or defend burrows orders, which will keep them in the area defined by the burrow and prevent them from running up to the enemy.

For patrol routes, marksdwarves *will* not take a Pickup Equipment order as long as they have line of sight on their enemy. Have them go through a door or something, and as soon as they loose sight of the goblin/forgotten beast/demon, they'll immediately go find bolts and reload.

The full effectiveness at Defend Burrow orders at stopping a melee charge is unknown.

{{Military}}

Combat skill

2015-05-10T23:50:43Z

NCommander:

{{Quality|Exceptional|01:08, 4 February 2015 (UTC)}}
{{av}}

:''Until more is known about each individual skill, and on the suspicion that much will be parallel and/or related, and so that all information/discussion can be collected in one place (for now, at least), all "combat skills" will redirect here, at least until it becomes more clear if/how we should break them up.''

'''General Combat skills''' are a category of skills that are collectively unrelated to whether a dwarf is using weapons or armor but are useful for combat.
* [[archery|Archer]] - increases with the use of any ranged attack, including throwing. Its exact function is unknown, except that it was shown to decrease the probability of an enemy dodging a ranged attack. Aside from that, it can serve as an indicator of how much ranged weapons are used.
* Biter - increases whenever a character chooses to bite an opponent. This is probably the most effective attack for a creature whose biting causes a [[syndrome]], but some [[Immigration|immigrants]] will arrive with this skill as well, and unarmed combatants will occasionally learn a bit when they choose to bite during a combat. Goring with horns and tusks also uses the biting skill.
* Dodger - aids creatures in avoidance, causing enemies to miss more often. Scanning of combat reports suggest that dodging is very common and effective - assuming that messages referring to dodging are in essence caused by the dodger skill. Dodging can, unfortunately, cause dwarves to fall through z levels into deep pits, [[water]], or even [[magma]]; they do not attempt to avoid dodging into perilous locales. Dodging can even be done while lying on the ground, making it a particularly valuable skill.
* Fighter - increases with each melee attack (from or to a target), no matter what kind of weapon is used, and can increase rather quickly. Its use or significance is currently not known. However, when tested in arena mode with two dwarves, one unskilled and one grand master fighter, the one with fighter skill won consistently while armed with any of the default weapons. Unarmed dwarves showed no preference.
* Kicker - increased by kicking in unarmed combat. Stance strikes from kicking tend to have a blunt [[attack types|attack type]], though stings from a [[bark scorpion man]] will also rely on the kicking skill.
* Striker - increased by throwing punches and scratching with claws or nails in unarmed combat. Creatures with pincers will snatch at targets instead.
* [[Wrestling|Wrestler]] - pertains to incapacitating enemies by holding limbs. Wrestlers are generally unable to kill much, but they may make killing easier for their armed comrades. Their punches do kill fellow dwarves when tantruming. Wrestlers can strangle enemies unconscious, break joints, and even take away weapons and armor, but the AI is rather unlikely to do so (making [[adventurer mode|adventurer]] wrestlers much more effective).

== Equipment skills ==

'''Equipment skills''' are associated with the use of non-weapon equipment, and as a class increase dwarf survivability.
* Armor User - related to how well a dwarf moves in [[armor]], and increases whenever a dwarf wearing armor attacks or is attacked. Higher levels of this skill reduces the encumbrance penalties of armor, allowing dwarves wearing full steel plate to move at normal speed. Arena testing also indicates that armor users become tired less easily than non armor wearers (300 vs 100 announcements vs bronze colossus). Because even leather [[clothes]] count as armor, this skill often appears at dabbling level on civilians who briefly struggle with a [[kobold]] [[thief]] or predatory animals.
* Shield User - increases whenever a dwarf uses a [[shield]] or [[buckler]] to block an attack, which is often. Shields increase survivability of dwarves a great deal, and can block anything from a [[goblin]] axe to [[dragonfire]].

== Weapon skills ==

'''Weapon skills''' are associated with the use of a particular [[weapon]] type, even if that weapon type is "thrown [[vomit]]" in adventure mode. Arena testing indicates weapon skill is more powerful per-point than any other combat skill (assuming the appropriate weapon is equipped!), it contributes to offensive ability and parrying. The name of many of these skills is dependent on species: a dwarven spear user will be known as a 'Speardwarf'.
* Axeman - allows characters to use [[axe]]s, [[great axe]]s, and [[halberd]]s more effectively.
* Blowgunner - allows characters to use [[blowgun]]s more effectively.
* Bowman - allows characters to use [[bow]]s more effectively.
* [[Crossbowman]] - allows characters to use [[crossbow]]s more effectively. The dwarven version is called '''Marksdwarf'''.
* Hammerman - allows characters to use [[maul]]s and [[war hammer]]s more effectively, as well as [[crossbow]]s in melee.
* Knife User - allows characters to use large [[dagger]]s and knives more effectively.
* Lasher - allows characters to use [[whip]]s and [[scourge]]s more effectively.
* Maceman - allows characters to use [[flail]]s, [[mace]]s, and [[morningstar]]s more effectively.
* [[Miner]] - not strictly a weapon skill, but allows characters to use [[pick]]s more effectively as weapons. This is also the only moodable combat-usable skill.
* Misc. Object User - allows characters to use objects like tables and chairs more effectively as weapons. In fortress mode, this skill tends to increase when dwarves tantrum and break some heads with a +Granite Throne+. It also is used with shields, making it useful if a military dwarf is disarmed (either literally or not).
* Pikeman - allows characters to use [[DF2014:Pike_(weapon)|pike]]s more effectively.
* Spearman - allows characters to use [[spear]]s more effectively.
* Swordsman - allows characters to use [[long sword]]s, [[scimitar]]s, [[short sword]]s, and [[two-handed sword]]s more effectively, as well as blowguns and bows in melee.
* [[Thrower]] - allows characters to throw miscellaneous objects more effectively. Throwing is still as hilariously overpowered as in previous versions, and you can totally kill a charging elephant with thrown water.

==See also==
* [[User:Shinziril#Skills|Outstanding research]] on several combat skills by Shinziril
* [http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=150494.0 How to Make Marksdwarves Train in DF2014]
* A scientific test of how the Archer and Marksdwarf skills affect ranged combat: [http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=117284.0 Dwarven Research: A Study of the 'Archer' and 'Marksdwarf' Skills]
* A [[Advanced Marksdwarf Training Guide|Marksdwarf Training Guide]] is available to handle many issues and confusion relating to markdwarfs as well as provide methods to get them more reliably training and firing.

{{skills}}

Military

2015-05-10T23:49:04Z

NCommander:

{{Quality|Masterwork|15:06, 1 November 2014 (UTC)}}
{{av}}

<div style="float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-top:1em;">__TOC__</div>
The '''military''' is one of the most important aspects of a successful fortress. Even with many [[trap]]s, [[bridge|drawbridges]] and [[magma|other defenses]], your military will still need to fend off [[goblin]] [[siege]]s, [[megabeast]]s, [[titan]]s, and fiendish [[Giant cave spider|underground]] [[Forgotten beast|beasties]]. Using a combination of [[squad|squad orders]] and [[scheduling]], you can set up an elaborate offensive, defensive, or balanced military structure for your [[equipment|well-equipped]] [[soldier]]s to follow. Turning your dwarves from [[immigration|useless migrants]] into bloodthirsty killing machines never hurts (except the enemy, of course).

The military system is rather extensive and complex, and there is a lot of documentation. Here is a list of key documents categorized by expertise level:
* '''Beginner:'''
** [[Attack]] is a ''very'' simple "How to attack a target" guide. This is useful if you don't know anything about the military and just want to order some (untrained) dwarves to (suicide) attack something ''now''.
** [[Military quickstart]] will teach you to set up and train your very first properly-organized squad.

* '''Intermediate:'''
** [[Squad]]s helps you understand everything about squads.
** [[Military interface]] contains mostly complete documentation on the ''military screen''.
** [[Scheduling]] describes the squad scheduling system in more detail.
** [[Military F.A.Q.]] is a list of frequently asked questions.

* '''Advanced:'''
** [[Training]] will give you insights about combat training.
** [[military design|Military Design]] provides specific advice on how to get your soldiers prepared for any threat.
** [[Security design|Security Design]] will give you specific suggestions on the physical defenses that will defend your military.
** [[Defense guide|Defense Guide]] is a general overview of threats and considerations for fortress defense.
** [[Trap design|Trap Design]] contains information on complex traps that are not a minor/optional part of a larger defensive plan (but might be adapted or plugged into one).
** The [[Advanced Marksdwarf Training Guide|Marksdwarf Training Guide]] is an in-depth guide on getting marksdwarves relibaly training, while noting and providing workarounds for bugs related to marksdwarfs, reloading, and ammunition.

The rest of this guide contains an overview of military features (with links to associated sections of other documents).

==Quick Reference==
From the main menu:
*The '''[[Military interface|military]]''' screen is accessible through the {{k|m}} key.
*The '''[[squad]]''' screen is accessible through the {{k|s}} key.
*The '''[[Note|points/routes/notes]]''' screen is accessible through the {{k|N}} key.
*The '''[[burrow]]s''' screen is accessible through the {{k|w}} key.
The military screen and all its tabs are mouse-compatible, and can be navigated through mouse clicks rather than strictly keys (when in windowed mode).

==Creating a Military==
While it may be confusing to a new player, the military system makes up for its initial impenetrability with its versatility. Using the [[military interface]], squads can be assigned, reordered and restructured at will, dwarves can be set to equip a highly specified uniform along with the rest of their squad or stand out and equip something unique, and you can give incredibly detailed commands and programming to your squads to follow out based on time of year, circumstance, location, and user convenience. That being said, there's a lot to be learned.

This article is about the general aspects of what a military comprises. For more detailed information including specific key commands, see the associated article expanding on a subject. In particular you may want to check out the [[military interface]] article since the interface is one of the most confusing aspects.

===Squads===

{{main|Squad}}

'''Squads''' are the groups of soldiers that make up your military. Your military is led by the appointed '''[[militia commander]]''' (or, if the [[monarch]] is present, the [[general]]), and has many other squads led by '''militia captains''' (or [[captain]]s) under him. Creating a squad in the military screen is one of the first things you should do when starting your military.

===Equipping Soldiers===

{{main|Squad#Equipping Soldiers}}

Rather than simply pick a level of equipment and hope your dwarves pick up the right stuff, you can select what your dwarf will wear by item type or specific item, or create a new uniform template and apply it to a dwarf or entire squad all at once. Even the material and color of your soldiers' uniform is configurable. You can create identical armored units with intimidating red cloaks or just slap something together based on need and circumstance. Even artifact weapons/armor are selectable.


==Directing Soldiers==

Getting your military to actually ''do'' something is somewhat difficult. It is possible to give your squads different monthly '''schedules''', create different '''alert levels''' which will cause squads to follow out user-programmed instructions depending on circumstance, give '''direct orders''' to '''attack''' one or more specific targets or '''move''' to a specific location, or follow '''patrol routes''' and '''stations''' with greater accuracy.

There is a clear discrepancy between ''active'' orders and ''passive'' orders-- the latter is programming that a dwarf will follow to the letter and acts more as a defense method, and the former is used for taking the fight to the enemy. The ''squads'' menu is predominantly used for active commands, and the ''alert'' and ''scheduling'' menus are used for passive commands.

===Active Command===

{{main|Squad#Direct Commands}}

In the military, soldiers operate much more like part-time militiamen than full-time warriors. When soldiers are not passively doing their civilian duties or following their schedule programming, they can be actively sent to do small tasks to aggressively defend your fortress. After these orders have been carried out or cancelled, your dwarves will happily return to their passive programming as if they were never interrupted. It is possible to select multiple squads or specific dwarves to carry out these orders.

Your forces can be commanded to carry out two types of orders: '''Move''' orders and '''Attack''' (or '''kill''') orders. Move orders are much like the 'station squad' command in previous versions; your selected dwarves will run to wherever you've sent them. Similarly, attack orders will select an enemy (by location on screen, general area on screen, or list) and send your dwarves charging off that way.

Soldiers following orders will attack any hostiles they encounter on their way to their destination as well as wild animals and whatever other creatures they might encounter, whether you like it or not. As a result it is very difficult to attack members of an enemy group with any sort of precision, and if your dwarves cannot take down their target there is no real way to get them out of combat; it's do-or-die. It is unknown whether this is a bug or a feature.

Orders can be cancelled through the squads screen, but your dwarves tend to be so enthusiastic that they'll just ignore you in their bloodlust. This is likely a bug.

===Passive Command===

{{main|Scheduling}}

The '''alert level''' and '''scheduling''' system is a feature that is both incredibly versatile... and, initially, completely impenetrable. Once you learn the system, though, you will find that you barely need to manage your military at all. Effectively, a schedule is programming for a squad to follow within an alert, broken up by month, and alerts can be quickly and easily swapped in order to apply different schedules of your choosing to different squads of your choosing. Without scheduling, alert levels would do nothing; without alert levels scheduling would be horribly inefficient; the two functions co-exist and rely on each other.

It is possible to give your squads different monthly schedules, create different alert levels which will cause squads to follow out user-programmed instructions depending on circumstance, give direct orders to attack one or more specific targets or move to a specific location, or follow patrol routes and stations with greater accuracy. The entire system (including alert names) is completely configurable, and in time you will find yourself using complicated scheduling to rotate squads between training and defending/patrolling specified areas over the course of a year without any user input, or to start defending the fort entrance or trader route with a few easy key presses.

Civilian alert levels are also possible - civilians can be restricted by '''[[burrow]]''' to where they can roam should the need to tuck them away into a panic room arise. If a dwarf restricted to a burrow is not there, he will do his best to make the journey.

The scheduling screen is broken up into a list of squads, months, alert types and '''order criteria'''. Each order (applied to one month; multiple orders can be stacked on one month as well) can be given criteria to define how many dwarves within a squad will follow its programming at once, allowing you to make a few dwarves out of the squad active at a time while the rest go about their business or to make the entire squad always active for a matter of the utmost importance, foregoing food, sleep, and booze. You can also choose which positions in a squad the order will prefer to utilize when forcing a squad to follow it.

Four types of orders can be given (as well as the 'inactive' command), defining different types of patrolling or stationary defending. Squads can spar and be given combat demonstrations in the '''[[barracks]]''', defend a '''[[burrow]]''', patrol a '''route''', or defend a single '''station'''. The monthly schedules can be named so as to better suit your needs, and a copy/paste system is available to eliminate some of the tedium in creating fancy scheduling for many months. The display can also be flipped around.

Barracks can serve the needs of multiple specific squads at once. A barracks can be defined as a place to train, sleep, store squad equipment, store individual equipment, or any combination of the above, in any weird overlapping combination of barracks you like. Barracks are necessary for training.

When dwarves are being ordered to train, squad leaders will set up training classes for particular skills, or they will have dwarves spar. Any dwarves in the squad that don't qualify for these will default to individual training. In the current release, training classes are bugged where if a squad leader sets up a training class, he will wait forever (Or until you change his orders) for students, even if nobody shows up. Likewise, if students decide to request a class and the squad leader is doing individual training, they will wait for him to finish, even if they start starving. Thus, at the moment it's best to alternate your forced training schedules with downtime so the longest a dwarf will be stuck waiting is a game month (which isn't long enough to die), or just leave them off duty all the time and have them do individual training only, at least until this issue is fixed.

==Frequently Asked Questions==

{{main|Military F.A.Q.}}

==Bugs==
* When selecting new dwarves to place in a squad the cursor always returns to the first available dwarf instead of remaining where it is.
* There are still various problems with dwarves not equipping what they should; most notably, dwarves will try to equip two left gauntlets or two right gauntlets rather than one of each. This happens if there are an odd number of gauntlets of any quality level; the dwarves try to equip two gauntlets of the highest quality level, regardless of whether they are left or right. A solution is to make sure every quality level accounts for one right gauntlet for each left gauntlet.
*Dwarves who become lords automatically disable all their civilian jobs. When they come off duty and back on duty they lose experience as well. (Note: First part is already fixed Toady said, but i don't understand the latter. Someone who can check it edit this).
*Military dwarves in squads that are assigned to a schedule may get increasingly angry about long patrol duties, even if they were not on duty the past 12 months. The [[utility:DFHack|dfhack]] command "tweak patrol-duty" is a workaround for this bug.
*Military dwarves going on duty carry any currently-hauled items with them to training, pickup equipment, and even into battle.

{{Military}}
{{Category|Military| }}

DF2014:Advanced Marksdwarf Training

2015-05-10T23:46:54Z

NCommander: NCommander moved page DF2014:Advanced Marksdwarf Training to DF2014:Advanced Marksdwarf Training Guide

#REDIRECT [[DF2014:Advanced Marksdwarf Training Guide]]

Advanced marksdwarf training guide

2015-05-10T23:46:54Z

NCommander: NCommander moved page DF2014:Advanced Marksdwarf Training to DF2014:Advanced Marksdwarf Training Guide

Marksdwarves are fairly buggy, and often refuse to use archery ranges, or stand in front of them, and fail to fire their crossbows. This guide goes into details explaining known bugs, and getting your Marksdwarves to train properly, as well as going into details regarding various ranged weaponry.

== Understanding Ranged Weaponry ==

In vanilla Dwarf Fortress, the raws define three types of ranged weapons, each with their own skill and ammo.

{| class="wikitable"
!colspan="4" |Ranged Weapons
|-
!Ranged Weapon
!Ranged Skill
!Melee Skill
!Ammo
|-
|Crossbow
|Marksdwarf
|Hammerdwarf
|Bolts
|-
|Bow
|Bowman
|Swordman
|Arrows
|-
|Blowgun
|Blowgunner
|Swordman
|Darts
|-
|}

Of these, dwarfs can only make crossbows and bolts, but can use bows, and blowguns if you recover them from downed enemeis or trade for them. If playing a modded game, replace crossbow in the following with one of the above weapons, and proper ammo type.

== Equipping You Marksdwarfs ==

=== The Minimum Outfit ===
At a minimum, each dwarf requires the following to successfully use the crossbow.
* One crossbow
* One quiver
* One stack of bolts for each markdwarf to fire

Quivers are equipped on the upper body slot. Due to a bug, sometimes they fail to pickup a quiver if wearing heavy armor. A workaround for this is below if you run into it. Wood and metal bolts are generated in sticks of 25. Bone bolts are generated in stacks of 5.

=== Crossbows ===
Crossbows can be made out of wood or bone at a bowyers workshop, or out of metal at a metalsmith/magma forge. Metal crossbows can be forged out of copper, bronze, bismuth bronze, iron, steel, or adamantine. Quivers must be made of leather at a leatherworks. The material a crossbow is made out of appears to have no effect on its lethality on ranged bolts. However, if you expect your marksdwarves to end up in melee, they will use their crossbow as a hammer, thus it is recommended to make them out of a dense metal.

=== Quivers and Bolts ===
Quivers can hold 25 bolts, and dwarves will pick up multiple stacks if necessary to fill it. In other words, they will successfully pick up five seperate stacks of bone bolts, or 25 seperate bolts if you're using a bolt splitting technique in your fortress. Bolts are collected in last-in-first-out order; that is, dwarves will always go for the newest bolts in your fortress, even if there is an ammo stockpile three steps away from them. Each squad with markdwarves must be assigned ammo; as they deplete it, Dwarf Fortress will automatically add addition ammo to the squad if there are some in the fortress, again following the principle of LIFO.

=== Avoiding 'Equipment Mismatch' Issues ===
Miners, wood cutters, and hunters have a"default "uniform". When these labors are enabled, a dwarf will carry the equipment apprioate to that job, making it unavailable for the military, and causing issues if that dwarf is then drafted. In general, its safe to put miners and wood cutters in ranged squads, and hunters in melee squads, as this prevents them from equipped the same type of item twice.

If you are going to draft hunters, clear their labors, and [b]confirm[/b] that your hunter has put his quiver and crossbow away. If you don't, he'll generate equipment mismatches. Furthermore, if a marksdwarf grabs a quiver that was once used by a hunter, and still has bolts in it, they may cause a mismatch which the dwarf itself can not clear. This can be resolved by opening the dwarf in the "k" menu, then open his inventory, find the quiver, and forbid the bolts in it. He'll dump them, and properly reload.

If you don't use hunters, you may want to remove their bolt assignments from the ammunition screen.

== Setting your Marksdwarf's barrack ==

=== Understanding Possible Training Activates ===
The first rule of marksdwarf training is you do *not* assign them a normal barrack. If they have that, they will prefer to train as hammerdwarves with their crossbows vs. actually shooting bolts. Furthermore, as the game gives precedence to melee training, they will almost never use an archery range even if one is assigned if they have a choice.

When training, a dwarf has four possible options, which they will take in roughly this order:
- Squad Training
- Individual Combat Drill
- Spar
- Archery Training

Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarfs (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves, training their melee skills while doing so). Except for archery training, dwarves require a standard barracks to conduct any of the above activities. Notably, it is possible to actually train marksdwarves via demonstration, both Crossbow and Archery skills are trainable via demonstrations. By combined this with training orders, it is possible to make Archery Training the only valid option, and thus get them to train consistently.

=== Building Archery Ranges ===
Thus, the first step is to build a room with a bunch of archery ranges. I recommend putting them against the left most wall so the shooting direction is automatically correct, but this should work regardless of direction. The room must be large enough that the marksdwarf has a one gap space between them and the target; I just make their "barrack" 10x10, and put an ammo stockpile in it. Notably, and this is a change from previous version is that the dwarf *must* be able to walk up to the the target; placing a channel in front of it will prevent them from training.

Once you build your range, you must define it as a room. Make it so it touches the far wall, and don't worry, range rooms can overlap. You have to do this for each. Make sure the shooting direction is correct! In addition, your marksdwarf squad MUST at minimum have train set on each archery target. One dwarf can use one target at any given time.

[[File:Archery_range_setup.png|A properly setup archery target]]

Repeat this for each range; you'll have 5-10 targets overlapping each other and assigned to your marksdwarves squad (in these screenshots, they are the "Home Guard")

[b]3. The Military Management Screen[/b]

This is by far the most difficult part. Fear the 'm' menu, for it eats children. The 'm' menu is confusing on the best days, but this guide will walk you through it.

The first and default page is the positions page. Ignore it for now, you want to make the right uniform for your marksdwarves, press 'u' to bring up that screen. Do yourself a favor and just delete the default archer uniform. It's wrong and will not work properly.

Create a new uniform, and add the following:
- crossbow (do NOT used individual choice, ranged; you *will* end up with dwarves who think an axe is a ranged weapon)
- shield (optional)
- leather armor
- leather headwear
- leather legwear
- leather armor
- leather legwear

Make sure "exact match" is selected. This appears to fix most of the issues of them not picking up quivers. You might be able to get away with over clothing however.

Here's what it should like if you did it right:

[[File:Working_training_uniform.png|400px|Uniform that gets them training]]

Now press 'p' to go back to the positions menu. When you create the squad, it will ask for a uniform. Normally, this works as you'd expect it, assigning the uniform to an entire squad. However, if done with the captain of the guard position, it will *only* assign to that spot. You can look at the top of the screen to see what your dwarfs will train as (i.e. 10/10 Marksdwarfs). If needed, after selecting your recruits, then switch to the 'e' menu. Select your squad, and then a position, then press 'U' (that's capital U) to bring up the uniform selection screen.

Highlight your crossbow uniform, and press 'Shift-Enter' to assign it to all positions in the squad. If you then check the positions screen, at the top, it will say 10/10 marksdwarves, instead of 1/1 markdwarf 9/9 wrestlers, which is what will happen if you leave it on defaults.

[[File:10_marksdwarves.png|400px|10/10 Marksdwarves]]

=== Handling Ammo ===
We're almost done. Go to the ammo screen.

[[File:ammo_screen.png|400px|Ammo]]

If you're setting this by hand, here's what to know. Each squad needs the correct ammo. Bolts are assigned on a "per-item" basis, i.e., a given stack of bolts thats marked for training will only be used for training and via versus. Unfortunately, an old bug prevents this from working; if you have multiple ammo types, and some are set Training-only, and others are set combat-only, your marksdwarves *will* get stuck and fail to train, or fail to fire. The only way to get this to work is if all ammo assignments in the fortress are set to both "CT" in the UI.

==== Switching Bolts Types Reliably ====
Forbidding/Dumping is respected by the game when assigning ammo, so you can use the stocks screen to dump wooden/bone bolts when you're not training, and then have them load metal bolts for fighting. The easiest way to just use wooden/bone bolts when you're training (setting both CT flags on it in the ammo screen), and when you need them to switch, delete the ammo assignment for the training bolts, dump them from the stocks screen (DFHack's enhanced inventory is useful from this), and add the new metal bolts to the screen. Reverse the process to get them to change back.

=== Squad Training Orders ===

Now, for the magic bit that gets them doing nothing *but* training. Open the schedule screen, and look at the orders. The default is "Train, 10 minimium". '''This is WRONG!'''

[[File:default_training_order.png|400px|Default Training Order]]

Press x to delete the order. The schedule screen will change to show no scheduled orders.

[[File:No_orders.png|400px|no_orders]]

Press 'o' to pull up the give order screen. Press o until 'Train' is set, and then press + so it shows minimum 1, like this. Then press shift-done to give the order. The screen will look like this:

[[File:Train_1.png|400px|train 1]]

[[File:given_train_1_order.png|400px|after giving train 1 order]]

Now do it again, for the total members of your squad (you CAN give more than 5 orders, you just have to scroll in the orders screen to see it). When you're done it should look like this, after doing it 10 times.

[[File:multiple_train_1.png|400px|Multiple train one orders]]

Copy and paste the order to all the months. You can also set Sleep in Barrack at need to increase their training time, though this will raise the stress levels of dwarves in the squad due to tired thoughts.

You're almost done. Activate your squad, and after they finish picking up equipment, watch your bolt supplies vanish as your marksdwarves do nothing *but* archery training.

=== Why This Works ===
Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarves (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves). Training, minimum of 1 forces them to work solo. Since they don't have a normal barrack, they can't drill, which leaves Archery Training as the only possible way to train. Since reloading on marksdwarves continues to be erratic, they'll frequently report "No Orders" or similiar once they've finished archery training until the game notices that a given dwarf is out of ammo, in which case they'll go pick up more.

Archery training grants less experience than live fire (8XP per bolt vs. 30XP), but no micromanagement, no hauling, one setup, and you can ignore it until you get that glorious announcement that Urist McMarksdwarf has become an Elite Marksdwarf.

== Stopping Melee Charges ==

The short version: DON'T USE STATION!

When a dwarf has line of sight on an enemy, they'll one of two things, run away, or run up and fight them. While they're running up to the enemy, dwarves will fire bolts if they have any, but then engage the enemy using their crossbows as hammers instead of firing. The easiest way to prevent this is either use fortification pillboxes, with a patrol order that causes them to break line of sight, or defend burrows orders, which will keep them in the area defined by the burrow and prevent them from running up to the enemy.

For patrol routes, marksdwarves *will* not take a Pickup Equipment order as long as they have line of sight on their enemy. Have them go through a door or something, and as soon as they loose sight of the goblin/forgotten beast/demon, they'll immediately go find bolts and reload.

The full effectiveness at Defend Burrow orders at stopping a melee charge is unknown.

User:NCommander/Marksdwarf Training

2015-05-10T23:45:55Z

NCommander: NCommander moved page User:NCommander/Marksdwarf Training to DF2014:Advanced Marksdwarf Training: Page Ready To Go Live

#REDIRECT [[DF2014:Advanced Marksdwarf Training]]

Advanced marksdwarf training guide

2015-05-10T23:45:55Z

NCommander: NCommander moved page User:NCommander/Marksdwarf Training to DF2014:Advanced Marksdwarf Training: Page Ready To Go Live

Marksdwarves are fairly buggy, and often refuse to use archery ranges, or stand in front of them, and fail to fire their crossbows. This guide goes into details explaining known bugs, and getting your Marksdwarves to train properly, as well as going into details regarding various ranged weaponry.

== Understanding Ranged Weaponry ==

In vanilla Dwarf Fortress, the raws define three types of ranged weapons, each with their own skill and ammo.

{| class="wikitable"
!colspan="4" |Ranged Weapons
|-
!Ranged Weapon
!Ranged Skill
!Melee Skill
!Ammo
|-
|Crossbow
|Marksdwarf
|Hammerdwarf
|Bolts
|-
|Bow
|Bowman
|Swordman
|Arrows
|-
|Blowgun
|Blowgunner
|Swordman
|Darts
|-
|}

Of these, dwarfs can only make crossbows and bolts, but can use bows, and blowguns if you recover them from downed enemeis or trade for them. If playing a modded game, replace crossbow in the following with one of the above weapons, and proper ammo type.

== Equipping You Marksdwarfs ==

=== The Minimum Outfit ===
At a minimum, each dwarf requires the following to successfully use the crossbow.
* One crossbow
* One quiver
* One stack of bolts for each markdwarf to fire

Quivers are equipped on the upper body slot. Due to a bug, sometimes they fail to pickup a quiver if wearing heavy armor. A workaround for this is below if you run into it. Wood and metal bolts are generated in sticks of 25. Bone bolts are generated in stacks of 5.

=== Crossbows ===
Crossbows can be made out of wood or bone at a bowyers workshop, or out of metal at a metalsmith/magma forge. Metal crossbows can be forged out of copper, bronze, bismuth bronze, iron, steel, or adamantine. Quivers must be made of leather at a leatherworks. The material a crossbow is made out of appears to have no effect on its lethality on ranged bolts. However, if you expect your marksdwarves to end up in melee, they will use their crossbow as a hammer, thus it is recommended to make them out of a dense metal.

=== Quivers and Bolts ===
Quivers can hold 25 bolts, and dwarves will pick up multiple stacks if necessary to fill it. In other words, they will successfully pick up five seperate stacks of bone bolts, or 25 seperate bolts if you're using a bolt splitting technique in your fortress. Bolts are collected in last-in-first-out order; that is, dwarves will always go for the newest bolts in your fortress, even if there is an ammo stockpile three steps away from them. Each squad with markdwarves must be assigned ammo; as they deplete it, Dwarf Fortress will automatically add addition ammo to the squad if there are some in the fortress, again following the principle of LIFO.

=== Avoiding 'Equipment Mismatch' Issues ===
Miners, wood cutters, and hunters have a"default "uniform". When these labors are enabled, a dwarf will carry the equipment apprioate to that job, making it unavailable for the military, and causing issues if that dwarf is then drafted. In general, its safe to put miners and wood cutters in ranged squads, and hunters in melee squads, as this prevents them from equipped the same type of item twice.

If you are going to draft hunters, clear their labors, and [b]confirm[/b] that your hunter has put his quiver and crossbow away. If you don't, he'll generate equipment mismatches. Furthermore, if a marksdwarf grabs a quiver that was once used by a hunter, and still has bolts in it, they may cause a mismatch which the dwarf itself can not clear. This can be resolved by opening the dwarf in the "k" menu, then open his inventory, find the quiver, and forbid the bolts in it. He'll dump them, and properly reload.

If you don't use hunters, you may want to remove their bolt assignments from the ammunition screen.

== Setting your Marksdwarf's barrack ==

=== Understanding Possible Training Activates ===
The first rule of marksdwarf training is you do *not* assign them a normal barrack. If they have that, they will prefer to train as hammerdwarves with their crossbows vs. actually shooting bolts. Furthermore, as the game gives precedence to melee training, they will almost never use an archery range even if one is assigned if they have a choice.

When training, a dwarf has four possible options, which they will take in roughly this order:
- Squad Training
- Individual Combat Drill
- Spar
- Archery Training

Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarfs (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves, training their melee skills while doing so). Except for archery training, dwarves require a standard barracks to conduct any of the above activities. Notably, it is possible to actually train marksdwarves via demonstration, both Crossbow and Archery skills are trainable via demonstrations. By combined this with training orders, it is possible to make Archery Training the only valid option, and thus get them to train consistently.

=== Building Archery Ranges ===
Thus, the first step is to build a room with a bunch of archery ranges. I recommend putting them against the left most wall so the shooting direction is automatically correct, but this should work regardless of direction. The room must be large enough that the marksdwarf has a one gap space between them and the target; I just make their "barrack" 10x10, and put an ammo stockpile in it. Notably, and this is a change from previous version is that the dwarf *must* be able to walk up to the the target; placing a channel in front of it will prevent them from training.

Once you build your range, you must define it as a room. Make it so it touches the far wall, and don't worry, range rooms can overlap. You have to do this for each. Make sure the shooting direction is correct! In addition, your marksdwarf squad MUST at minimum have train set on each archery target. One dwarf can use one target at any given time.

[[File:Archery_range_setup.png|A properly setup archery target]]

Repeat this for each range; you'll have 5-10 targets overlapping each other and assigned to your marksdwarves squad (in these screenshots, they are the "Home Guard")

[b]3. The Military Management Screen[/b]

This is by far the most difficult part. Fear the 'm' menu, for it eats children. The 'm' menu is confusing on the best days, but this guide will walk you through it.

The first and default page is the positions page. Ignore it for now, you want to make the right uniform for your marksdwarves, press 'u' to bring up that screen. Do yourself a favor and just delete the default archer uniform. It's wrong and will not work properly.

Create a new uniform, and add the following:
- crossbow (do NOT used individual choice, ranged; you *will* end up with dwarves who think an axe is a ranged weapon)
- shield (optional)
- leather armor
- leather headwear
- leather legwear
- leather armor
- leather legwear

Make sure "exact match" is selected. This appears to fix most of the issues of them not picking up quivers. You might be able to get away with over clothing however.

Here's what it should like if you did it right:

[[File:Working_training_uniform.png|400px|Uniform that gets them training]]

Now press 'p' to go back to the positions menu. When you create the squad, it will ask for a uniform. Normally, this works as you'd expect it, assigning the uniform to an entire squad. However, if done with the captain of the guard position, it will *only* assign to that spot. You can look at the top of the screen to see what your dwarfs will train as (i.e. 10/10 Marksdwarfs). If needed, after selecting your recruits, then switch to the 'e' menu. Select your squad, and then a position, then press 'U' (that's capital U) to bring up the uniform selection screen.

Highlight your crossbow uniform, and press 'Shift-Enter' to assign it to all positions in the squad. If you then check the positions screen, at the top, it will say 10/10 marksdwarves, instead of 1/1 markdwarf 9/9 wrestlers, which is what will happen if you leave it on defaults.

[[File:10_marksdwarves.png|400px|10/10 Marksdwarves]]

=== Handling Ammo ===
We're almost done. Go to the ammo screen.

[[File:ammo_screen.png|400px|Ammo]]

If you're setting this by hand, here's what to know. Each squad needs the correct ammo. Bolts are assigned on a "per-item" basis, i.e., a given stack of bolts thats marked for training will only be used for training and via versus. Unfortunately, an old bug prevents this from working; if you have multiple ammo types, and some are set Training-only, and others are set combat-only, your marksdwarves *will* get stuck and fail to train, or fail to fire. The only way to get this to work is if all ammo assignments in the fortress are set to both "CT" in the UI.

==== Switching Bolts Types Reliably ====
Forbidding/Dumping is respected by the game when assigning ammo, so you can use the stocks screen to dump wooden/bone bolts when you're not training, and then have them load metal bolts for fighting. The easiest way to just use wooden/bone bolts when you're training (setting both CT flags on it in the ammo screen), and when you need them to switch, delete the ammo assignment for the training bolts, dump them from the stocks screen (DFHack's enhanced inventory is useful from this), and add the new metal bolts to the screen. Reverse the process to get them to change back.

=== Squad Training Orders ===

Now, for the magic bit that gets them doing nothing *but* training. Open the schedule screen, and look at the orders. The default is "Train, 10 minimium". '''This is WRONG!'''

[[File:default_training_order.png|400px|Default Training Order]]

Press x to delete the order. The schedule screen will change to show no scheduled orders.

[[File:No_orders.png|400px|no_orders]]

Press 'o' to pull up the give order screen. Press o until 'Train' is set, and then press + so it shows minimum 1, like this. Then press shift-done to give the order. The screen will look like this:

[[File:Train_1.png|400px|train 1]]

[[File:given_train_1_order.png|400px|after giving train 1 order]]

Now do it again, for the total members of your squad (you CAN give more than 5 orders, you just have to scroll in the orders screen to see it). When you're done it should look like this, after doing it 10 times.

[[File:multiple_train_1.png|400px|Multiple train one orders]]

Copy and paste the order to all the months. You can also set Sleep in Barrack at need to increase their training time, though this will raise the stress levels of dwarves in the squad due to tired thoughts.

You're almost done. Activate your squad, and after they finish picking up equipment, watch your bolt supplies vanish as your marksdwarves do nothing *but* archery training.

=== Why This Works ===
Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarves (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves). Training, minimum of 1 forces them to work solo. Since they don't have a normal barrack, they can't drill, which leaves Archery Training as the only possible way to train. Since reloading on marksdwarves continues to be erratic, they'll frequently report "No Orders" or similiar once they've finished archery training until the game notices that a given dwarf is out of ammo, in which case they'll go pick up more.

Archery training grants less experience than live fire (8XP per bolt vs. 30XP), but no micromanagement, no hauling, one setup, and you can ignore it until you get that glorious announcement that Urist McMarksdwarf has become an Elite Marksdwarf.

== Stopping Melee Charges ==

The short version: DON'T USE STATION!

When a dwarf has line of sight on an enemy, they'll one of two things, run away, or run up and fight them. While they're running up to the enemy, dwarves will fire bolts if they have any, but then engage the enemy using their crossbows as hammers instead of firing. The easiest way to prevent this is either use fortification pillboxes, with a patrol order that causes them to break line of sight, or defend burrows orders, which will keep them in the area defined by the burrow and prevent them from running up to the enemy.

For patrol routes, marksdwarves *will* not take a Pickup Equipment order as long as they have line of sight on their enemy. Have them go through a door or something, and as soon as they loose sight of the goblin/forgotten beast/demon, they'll immediately go find bolts and reload.

The full effectiveness at Defend Burrow orders at stopping a melee charge is unknown.

Advanced marksdwarf training guide

2015-05-10T23:44:56Z

NCommander: /* Squad Training Orders */

Marksdwarves are fairly buggy, and often refuse to use archery ranges, or stand in front of them, and fail to fire their crossbows. This guide goes into details explaining known bugs, and getting your Marksdwarves to train properly, as well as going into details regarding various ranged weaponry.

== Understanding Ranged Weaponry ==

In vanilla Dwarf Fortress, the raws define three types of ranged weapons, each with their own skill and ammo.

{| class="wikitable"
!colspan="4" |Ranged Weapons
|-
!Ranged Weapon
!Ranged Skill
!Melee Skill
!Ammo
|-
|Crossbow
|Marksdwarf
|Hammerdwarf
|Bolts
|-
|Bow
|Bowman
|Swordman
|Arrows
|-
|Blowgun
|Blowgunner
|Swordman
|Darts
|-
|}

Of these, dwarfs can only make crossbows and bolts, but can use bows, and blowguns if you recover them from downed enemeis or trade for them. If playing a modded game, replace crossbow in the following with one of the above weapons, and proper ammo type.

== Equipping You Marksdwarfs ==

=== The Minimum Outfit ===
At a minimum, each dwarf requires the following to successfully use the crossbow.
* One crossbow
* One quiver
* One stack of bolts for each markdwarf to fire

Quivers are equipped on the upper body slot. Due to a bug, sometimes they fail to pickup a quiver if wearing heavy armor. A workaround for this is below if you run into it. Wood and metal bolts are generated in sticks of 25. Bone bolts are generated in stacks of 5.

=== Crossbows ===
Crossbows can be made out of wood or bone at a bowyers workshop, or out of metal at a metalsmith/magma forge. Metal crossbows can be forged out of copper, bronze, bismuth bronze, iron, steel, or adamantine. Quivers must be made of leather at a leatherworks. The material a crossbow is made out of appears to have no effect on its lethality on ranged bolts. However, if you expect your marksdwarves to end up in melee, they will use their crossbow as a hammer, thus it is recommended to make them out of a dense metal.

=== Quivers and Bolts ===
Quivers can hold 25 bolts, and dwarves will pick up multiple stacks if necessary to fill it. In other words, they will successfully pick up five seperate stacks of bone bolts, or 25 seperate bolts if you're using a bolt splitting technique in your fortress. Bolts are collected in last-in-first-out order; that is, dwarves will always go for the newest bolts in your fortress, even if there is an ammo stockpile three steps away from them. Each squad with markdwarves must be assigned ammo; as they deplete it, Dwarf Fortress will automatically add addition ammo to the squad if there are some in the fortress, again following the principle of LIFO.

=== Avoiding 'Equipment Mismatch' Issues ===
Miners, wood cutters, and hunters have a"default "uniform". When these labors are enabled, a dwarf will carry the equipment apprioate to that job, making it unavailable for the military, and causing issues if that dwarf is then drafted. In general, its safe to put miners and wood cutters in ranged squads, and hunters in melee squads, as this prevents them from equipped the same type of item twice.

If you are going to draft hunters, clear their labors, and [b]confirm[/b] that your hunter has put his quiver and crossbow away. If you don't, he'll generate equipment mismatches. Furthermore, if a marksdwarf grabs a quiver that was once used by a hunter, and still has bolts in it, they may cause a mismatch which the dwarf itself can not clear. This can be resolved by opening the dwarf in the "k" menu, then open his inventory, find the quiver, and forbid the bolts in it. He'll dump them, and properly reload.

If you don't use hunters, you may want to remove their bolt assignments from the ammunition screen.

== Setting your Marksdwarf's barrack ==

=== Understanding Possible Training Activates ===
The first rule of marksdwarf training is you do *not* assign them a normal barrack. If they have that, they will prefer to train as hammerdwarves with their crossbows vs. actually shooting bolts. Furthermore, as the game gives precedence to melee training, they will almost never use an archery range even if one is assigned if they have a choice.

When training, a dwarf has four possible options, which they will take in roughly this order:
- Squad Training
- Individual Combat Drill
- Spar
- Archery Training

Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarfs (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves, training their melee skills while doing so). Except for archery training, dwarves require a standard barracks to conduct any of the above activities. Notably, it is possible to actually train marksdwarves via demonstration, both Crossbow and Archery skills are trainable via demonstrations. By combined this with training orders, it is possible to make Archery Training the only valid option, and thus get them to train consistently.

=== Building Archery Ranges ===
Thus, the first step is to build a room with a bunch of archery ranges. I recommend putting them against the left most wall so the shooting direction is automatically correct, but this should work regardless of direction. The room must be large enough that the marksdwarf has a one gap space between them and the target; I just make their "barrack" 10x10, and put an ammo stockpile in it. Notably, and this is a change from previous version is that the dwarf *must* be able to walk up to the the target; placing a channel in front of it will prevent them from training.

Once you build your range, you must define it as a room. Make it so it touches the far wall, and don't worry, range rooms can overlap. You have to do this for each. Make sure the shooting direction is correct! In addition, your marksdwarf squad MUST at minimum have train set on each archery target. One dwarf can use one target at any given time.

[[File:Archery_range_setup.png|A properly setup archery target]]

Repeat this for each range; you'll have 5-10 targets overlapping each other and assigned to your marksdwarves squad (in these screenshots, they are the "Home Guard")

[b]3. The Military Management Screen[/b]

This is by far the most difficult part. Fear the 'm' menu, for it eats children. The 'm' menu is confusing on the best days, but this guide will walk you through it.

The first and default page is the positions page. Ignore it for now, you want to make the right uniform for your marksdwarves, press 'u' to bring up that screen. Do yourself a favor and just delete the default archer uniform. It's wrong and will not work properly.

Create a new uniform, and add the following:
- crossbow (do NOT used individual choice, ranged; you *will* end up with dwarves who think an axe is a ranged weapon)
- shield (optional)
- leather armor
- leather headwear
- leather legwear
- leather armor
- leather legwear

Make sure "exact match" is selected. This appears to fix most of the issues of them not picking up quivers. You might be able to get away with over clothing however.

Here's what it should like if you did it right:

[[File:Working_training_uniform.png|400px|Uniform that gets them training]]

Now press 'p' to go back to the positions menu. When you create the squad, it will ask for a uniform. Normally, this works as you'd expect it, assigning the uniform to an entire squad. However, if done with the captain of the guard position, it will *only* assign to that spot. You can look at the top of the screen to see what your dwarfs will train as (i.e. 10/10 Marksdwarfs). If needed, after selecting your recruits, then switch to the 'e' menu. Select your squad, and then a position, then press 'U' (that's capital U) to bring up the uniform selection screen.

Highlight your crossbow uniform, and press 'Shift-Enter' to assign it to all positions in the squad. If you then check the positions screen, at the top, it will say 10/10 marksdwarves, instead of 1/1 markdwarf 9/9 wrestlers, which is what will happen if you leave it on defaults.

[[File:10_marksdwarves.png|400px|10/10 Marksdwarves]]

=== Handling Ammo ===
We're almost done. Go to the ammo screen.

[[File:ammo_screen.png|400px|Ammo]]

If you're setting this by hand, here's what to know. Each squad needs the correct ammo. Bolts are assigned on a "per-item" basis, i.e., a given stack of bolts thats marked for training will only be used for training and via versus. Unfortunately, an old bug prevents this from working; if you have multiple ammo types, and some are set Training-only, and others are set combat-only, your marksdwarves *will* get stuck and fail to train, or fail to fire. The only way to get this to work is if all ammo assignments in the fortress are set to both "CT" in the UI.

==== Switching Bolts Types Reliably ====
Forbidding/Dumping is respected by the game when assigning ammo, so you can use the stocks screen to dump wooden/bone bolts when you're not training, and then have them load metal bolts for fighting. The easiest way to just use wooden/bone bolts when you're training (setting both CT flags on it in the ammo screen), and when you need them to switch, delete the ammo assignment for the training bolts, dump them from the stocks screen (DFHack's enhanced inventory is useful from this), and add the new metal bolts to the screen. Reverse the process to get them to change back.

=== Squad Training Orders ===

Now, for the magic bit that gets them doing nothing *but* training. Open the schedule screen, and look at the orders. The default is "Train, 10 minimium". '''This is WRONG!'''

[[File:default_training_order.png|400px|Default Training Order]]

Press x to delete the order. The schedule screen will change to show no scheduled orders.

[[File:No_orders.png|400px|no_orders]]

Press 'o' to pull up the give order screen. Press o until 'Train' is set, and then press + so it shows minimum 1, like this. Then press shift-done to give the order. The screen will look like this:

[[File:Train_1.png|400px|train 1]]

[[File:given_train_1_order.png|400px|after giving train 1 order]]

Now do it again, for the total members of your squad (you CAN give more than 5 orders, you just have to scroll in the orders screen to see it). When you're done it should look like this, after doing it 10 times.

[[File:multiple_train_1.png|400px|Multiple train one orders]]

Copy and paste the order to all the months. You can also set Sleep in Barrack at need to increase their training time, though this will raise the stress levels of dwarves in the squad due to tired thoughts.

You're almost done. Activate your squad, and after they finish picking up equipment, watch your bolt supplies vanish as your marksdwarves do nothing *but* archery training.

=== Why This Works ===
Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarves (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves). Training, minimum of 1 forces them to work solo. Since they don't have a normal barrack, they can't drill, which leaves Archery Training as the only possible way to train. Since reloading on marksdwarves continues to be erratic, they'll frequently report "No Orders" or similiar once they've finished archery training until the game notices that a given dwarf is out of ammo, in which case they'll go pick up more.

Archery training grants less experience than live fire (8XP per bolt vs. 30XP), but no micromanagement, no hauling, one setup, and you can ignore it until you get that glorious announcement that Urist McMarksdwarf has become an Elite Marksdwarf.

== Stopping Melee Charges ==

The short version: DON'T USE STATION!

When a dwarf has line of sight on an enemy, they'll one of two things, run away, or run up and fight them. While they're running up to the enemy, dwarves will fire bolts if they have any, but then engage the enemy using their crossbows as hammers instead of firing. The easiest way to prevent this is either use fortification pillboxes, with a patrol order that causes them to break line of sight, or defend burrows orders, which will keep them in the area defined by the burrow and prevent them from running up to the enemy.

For patrol routes, marksdwarves *will* not take a Pickup Equipment order as long as they have line of sight on their enemy. Have them go through a door or something, and as soon as they loose sight of the goblin/forgotten beast/demon, they'll immediately go find bolts and reload.

The full effectiveness at Defend Burrow orders at stopping a melee charge is unknown.

Advanced marksdwarf training guide

2015-05-10T23:44:40Z

NCommander: /* Squad Training Orders */

Marksdwarves are fairly buggy, and often refuse to use archery ranges, or stand in front of them, and fail to fire their crossbows. This guide goes into details explaining known bugs, and getting your Marksdwarves to train properly, as well as going into details regarding various ranged weaponry.

== Understanding Ranged Weaponry ==

In vanilla Dwarf Fortress, the raws define three types of ranged weapons, each with their own skill and ammo.

{| class="wikitable"
!colspan="4" |Ranged Weapons
|-
!Ranged Weapon
!Ranged Skill
!Melee Skill
!Ammo
|-
|Crossbow
|Marksdwarf
|Hammerdwarf
|Bolts
|-
|Bow
|Bowman
|Swordman
|Arrows
|-
|Blowgun
|Blowgunner
|Swordman
|Darts
|-
|}

Of these, dwarfs can only make crossbows and bolts, but can use bows, and blowguns if you recover them from downed enemeis or trade for them. If playing a modded game, replace crossbow in the following with one of the above weapons, and proper ammo type.

== Equipping You Marksdwarfs ==

=== The Minimum Outfit ===
At a minimum, each dwarf requires the following to successfully use the crossbow.
* One crossbow
* One quiver
* One stack of bolts for each markdwarf to fire

Quivers are equipped on the upper body slot. Due to a bug, sometimes they fail to pickup a quiver if wearing heavy armor. A workaround for this is below if you run into it. Wood and metal bolts are generated in sticks of 25. Bone bolts are generated in stacks of 5.

=== Crossbows ===
Crossbows can be made out of wood or bone at a bowyers workshop, or out of metal at a metalsmith/magma forge. Metal crossbows can be forged out of copper, bronze, bismuth bronze, iron, steel, or adamantine. Quivers must be made of leather at a leatherworks. The material a crossbow is made out of appears to have no effect on its lethality on ranged bolts. However, if you expect your marksdwarves to end up in melee, they will use their crossbow as a hammer, thus it is recommended to make them out of a dense metal.

=== Quivers and Bolts ===
Quivers can hold 25 bolts, and dwarves will pick up multiple stacks if necessary to fill it. In other words, they will successfully pick up five seperate stacks of bone bolts, or 25 seperate bolts if you're using a bolt splitting technique in your fortress. Bolts are collected in last-in-first-out order; that is, dwarves will always go for the newest bolts in your fortress, even if there is an ammo stockpile three steps away from them. Each squad with markdwarves must be assigned ammo; as they deplete it, Dwarf Fortress will automatically add addition ammo to the squad if there are some in the fortress, again following the principle of LIFO.

=== Avoiding 'Equipment Mismatch' Issues ===
Miners, wood cutters, and hunters have a"default "uniform". When these labors are enabled, a dwarf will carry the equipment apprioate to that job, making it unavailable for the military, and causing issues if that dwarf is then drafted. In general, its safe to put miners and wood cutters in ranged squads, and hunters in melee squads, as this prevents them from equipped the same type of item twice.

If you are going to draft hunters, clear their labors, and [b]confirm[/b] that your hunter has put his quiver and crossbow away. If you don't, he'll generate equipment mismatches. Furthermore, if a marksdwarf grabs a quiver that was once used by a hunter, and still has bolts in it, they may cause a mismatch which the dwarf itself can not clear. This can be resolved by opening the dwarf in the "k" menu, then open his inventory, find the quiver, and forbid the bolts in it. He'll dump them, and properly reload.

If you don't use hunters, you may want to remove their bolt assignments from the ammunition screen.

== Setting your Marksdwarf's barrack ==

=== Understanding Possible Training Activates ===
The first rule of marksdwarf training is you do *not* assign them a normal barrack. If they have that, they will prefer to train as hammerdwarves with their crossbows vs. actually shooting bolts. Furthermore, as the game gives precedence to melee training, they will almost never use an archery range even if one is assigned if they have a choice.

When training, a dwarf has four possible options, which they will take in roughly this order:
- Squad Training
- Individual Combat Drill
- Spar
- Archery Training

Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarfs (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves, training their melee skills while doing so). Except for archery training, dwarves require a standard barracks to conduct any of the above activities. Notably, it is possible to actually train marksdwarves via demonstration, both Crossbow and Archery skills are trainable via demonstrations. By combined this with training orders, it is possible to make Archery Training the only valid option, and thus get them to train consistently.

=== Building Archery Ranges ===
Thus, the first step is to build a room with a bunch of archery ranges. I recommend putting them against the left most wall so the shooting direction is automatically correct, but this should work regardless of direction. The room must be large enough that the marksdwarf has a one gap space between them and the target; I just make their "barrack" 10x10, and put an ammo stockpile in it. Notably, and this is a change from previous version is that the dwarf *must* be able to walk up to the the target; placing a channel in front of it will prevent them from training.

Once you build your range, you must define it as a room. Make it so it touches the far wall, and don't worry, range rooms can overlap. You have to do this for each. Make sure the shooting direction is correct! In addition, your marksdwarf squad MUST at minimum have train set on each archery target. One dwarf can use one target at any given time.

[[File:Archery_range_setup.png|A properly setup archery target]]

Repeat this for each range; you'll have 5-10 targets overlapping each other and assigned to your marksdwarves squad (in these screenshots, they are the "Home Guard")

[b]3. The Military Management Screen[/b]

This is by far the most difficult part. Fear the 'm' menu, for it eats children. The 'm' menu is confusing on the best days, but this guide will walk you through it.

The first and default page is the positions page. Ignore it for now, you want to make the right uniform for your marksdwarves, press 'u' to bring up that screen. Do yourself a favor and just delete the default archer uniform. It's wrong and will not work properly.

Create a new uniform, and add the following:
- crossbow (do NOT used individual choice, ranged; you *will* end up with dwarves who think an axe is a ranged weapon)
- shield (optional)
- leather armor
- leather headwear
- leather legwear
- leather armor
- leather legwear

Make sure "exact match" is selected. This appears to fix most of the issues of them not picking up quivers. You might be able to get away with over clothing however.

Here's what it should like if you did it right:

[[File:Working_training_uniform.png|400px|Uniform that gets them training]]

Now press 'p' to go back to the positions menu. When you create the squad, it will ask for a uniform. Normally, this works as you'd expect it, assigning the uniform to an entire squad. However, if done with the captain of the guard position, it will *only* assign to that spot. You can look at the top of the screen to see what your dwarfs will train as (i.e. 10/10 Marksdwarfs). If needed, after selecting your recruits, then switch to the 'e' menu. Select your squad, and then a position, then press 'U' (that's capital U) to bring up the uniform selection screen.

Highlight your crossbow uniform, and press 'Shift-Enter' to assign it to all positions in the squad. If you then check the positions screen, at the top, it will say 10/10 marksdwarves, instead of 1/1 markdwarf 9/9 wrestlers, which is what will happen if you leave it on defaults.

[[File:10_marksdwarves.png|400px|10/10 Marksdwarves]]

=== Handling Ammo ===
We're almost done. Go to the ammo screen.

[[File:ammo_screen.png|400px|Ammo]]

If you're setting this by hand, here's what to know. Each squad needs the correct ammo. Bolts are assigned on a "per-item" basis, i.e., a given stack of bolts thats marked for training will only be used for training and via versus. Unfortunately, an old bug prevents this from working; if you have multiple ammo types, and some are set Training-only, and others are set combat-only, your marksdwarves *will* get stuck and fail to train, or fail to fire. The only way to get this to work is if all ammo assignments in the fortress are set to both "CT" in the UI.

==== Switching Bolts Types Reliably ====
Forbidding/Dumping is respected by the game when assigning ammo, so you can use the stocks screen to dump wooden/bone bolts when you're not training, and then have them load metal bolts for fighting. The easiest way to just use wooden/bone bolts when you're training (setting both CT flags on it in the ammo screen), and when you need them to switch, delete the ammo assignment for the training bolts, dump them from the stocks screen (DFHack's enhanced inventory is useful from this), and add the new metal bolts to the screen. Reverse the process to get them to change back.

=== Squad Training Orders ===

Now, for the magic bit that gets them doing nothing *but* training. Open the schedule screen, and look at the orders. The default is "Train, 10 minimium". '''This is WRONG!'''

[[File:default_training_order.png|400px|Default Training Order]]

Press x to delete the order. The schedule screen will change to show no scheduled orders.

[[File:No_orders.png|400px|no_orders]]

Press 'o' to pull up the give order screen. Press o until 'Train' is set, and then press + so it shows minimum 1, like this. Then press shift-done to give the order. The screen will look like this:

[[File:Train_1.png|400px|train 1]]

[[File:given_train_1_order.png|400px|after giving train 1 order]]

Now do it again, for the total members of your squad (you CAN give more than 5 orders, you just have to scroll in the orders screen to see it). When you're done it should look like this, after doing it 10 times.
[[File:multiple_train_1.png|400px|Multiple train one orders]]

Copy and paste the order to all the months. You can also set Sleep in Barrack at need to increase their training time, though this will raise the stress levels of dwarves in the squad due to tired thoughts.

You're almost done. Activate your squad, and after they finish picking up equipment, watch your bolt supplies vanish as your marksdwarves do nothing *but* archery training.

=== Why This Works ===
Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarves (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves). Training, minimum of 1 forces them to work solo. Since they don't have a normal barrack, they can't drill, which leaves Archery Training as the only possible way to train. Since reloading on marksdwarves continues to be erratic, they'll frequently report "No Orders" or similiar once they've finished archery training until the game notices that a given dwarf is out of ammo, in which case they'll go pick up more.

Archery training grants less experience than live fire (8XP per bolt vs. 30XP), but no micromanagement, no hauling, one setup, and you can ignore it until you get that glorious announcement that Urist McMarksdwarf has become an Elite Marksdwarf.

== Stopping Melee Charges ==

The short version: DON'T USE STATION!

When a dwarf has line of sight on an enemy, they'll one of two things, run away, or run up and fight them. While they're running up to the enemy, dwarves will fire bolts if they have any, but then engage the enemy using their crossbows as hammers instead of firing. The easiest way to prevent this is either use fortification pillboxes, with a patrol order that causes them to break line of sight, or defend burrows orders, which will keep them in the area defined by the burrow and prevent them from running up to the enemy.

For patrol routes, marksdwarves *will* not take a Pickup Equipment order as long as they have line of sight on their enemy. Have them go through a door or something, and as soon as they loose sight of the goblin/forgotten beast/demon, they'll immediately go find bolts and reload.

The full effectiveness at Defend Burrow orders at stopping a melee charge is unknown.

File:Multiple train 1.png

2015-05-10T23:44:22Z

NCommander:

== Licensing ==
{{self|cc-zero}}

File:Given train 1 order.png

2015-05-10T23:43:58Z

NCommander:

== Licensing ==
{{self|cc-zero}}

File:Train 1.png

2015-05-10T23:43:33Z

NCommander:

== Licensing ==
{{self|cc-zero}}

File:No orders.png

2015-05-10T23:43:11Z

NCommander:

== Licensing ==
{{self|cc-zero}}

File:Default training order.png

2015-05-10T23:42:52Z

NCommander:

== Licensing ==
{{self|cc-zero}}

Advanced marksdwarf training guide

2015-05-10T23:42:33Z

NCommander:

Marksdwarves are fairly buggy, and often refuse to use archery ranges, or stand in front of them, and fail to fire their crossbows. This guide goes into details explaining known bugs, and getting your Marksdwarves to train properly, as well as going into details regarding various ranged weaponry.

== Understanding Ranged Weaponry ==

In vanilla Dwarf Fortress, the raws define three types of ranged weapons, each with their own skill and ammo.

{| class="wikitable"
!colspan="4" |Ranged Weapons
|-
!Ranged Weapon
!Ranged Skill
!Melee Skill
!Ammo
|-
|Crossbow
|Marksdwarf
|Hammerdwarf
|Bolts
|-
|Bow
|Bowman
|Swordman
|Arrows
|-
|Blowgun
|Blowgunner
|Swordman
|Darts
|-
|}

Of these, dwarfs can only make crossbows and bolts, but can use bows, and blowguns if you recover them from downed enemeis or trade for them. If playing a modded game, replace crossbow in the following with one of the above weapons, and proper ammo type.

== Equipping You Marksdwarfs ==

=== The Minimum Outfit ===
At a minimum, each dwarf requires the following to successfully use the crossbow.
* One crossbow
* One quiver
* One stack of bolts for each markdwarf to fire

Quivers are equipped on the upper body slot. Due to a bug, sometimes they fail to pickup a quiver if wearing heavy armor. A workaround for this is below if you run into it. Wood and metal bolts are generated in sticks of 25. Bone bolts are generated in stacks of 5.

=== Crossbows ===
Crossbows can be made out of wood or bone at a bowyers workshop, or out of metal at a metalsmith/magma forge. Metal crossbows can be forged out of copper, bronze, bismuth bronze, iron, steel, or adamantine. Quivers must be made of leather at a leatherworks. The material a crossbow is made out of appears to have no effect on its lethality on ranged bolts. However, if you expect your marksdwarves to end up in melee, they will use their crossbow as a hammer, thus it is recommended to make them out of a dense metal.

=== Quivers and Bolts ===
Quivers can hold 25 bolts, and dwarves will pick up multiple stacks if necessary to fill it. In other words, they will successfully pick up five seperate stacks of bone bolts, or 25 seperate bolts if you're using a bolt splitting technique in your fortress. Bolts are collected in last-in-first-out order; that is, dwarves will always go for the newest bolts in your fortress, even if there is an ammo stockpile three steps away from them. Each squad with markdwarves must be assigned ammo; as they deplete it, Dwarf Fortress will automatically add addition ammo to the squad if there are some in the fortress, again following the principle of LIFO.

=== Avoiding 'Equipment Mismatch' Issues ===
Miners, wood cutters, and hunters have a"default "uniform". When these labors are enabled, a dwarf will carry the equipment apprioate to that job, making it unavailable for the military, and causing issues if that dwarf is then drafted. In general, its safe to put miners and wood cutters in ranged squads, and hunters in melee squads, as this prevents them from equipped the same type of item twice.

If you are going to draft hunters, clear their labors, and [b]confirm[/b] that your hunter has put his quiver and crossbow away. If you don't, he'll generate equipment mismatches. Furthermore, if a marksdwarf grabs a quiver that was once used by a hunter, and still has bolts in it, they may cause a mismatch which the dwarf itself can not clear. This can be resolved by opening the dwarf in the "k" menu, then open his inventory, find the quiver, and forbid the bolts in it. He'll dump them, and properly reload.

If you don't use hunters, you may want to remove their bolt assignments from the ammunition screen.

== Setting your Marksdwarf's barrack ==

=== Understanding Possible Training Activates ===
The first rule of marksdwarf training is you do *not* assign them a normal barrack. If they have that, they will prefer to train as hammerdwarves with their crossbows vs. actually shooting bolts. Furthermore, as the game gives precedence to melee training, they will almost never use an archery range even if one is assigned if they have a choice.

When training, a dwarf has four possible options, which they will take in roughly this order:
- Squad Training
- Individual Combat Drill
- Spar
- Archery Training

Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarfs (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves, training their melee skills while doing so). Except for archery training, dwarves require a standard barracks to conduct any of the above activities. Notably, it is possible to actually train marksdwarves via demonstration, both Crossbow and Archery skills are trainable via demonstrations. By combined this with training orders, it is possible to make Archery Training the only valid option, and thus get them to train consistently.

=== Building Archery Ranges ===
Thus, the first step is to build a room with a bunch of archery ranges. I recommend putting them against the left most wall so the shooting direction is automatically correct, but this should work regardless of direction. The room must be large enough that the marksdwarf has a one gap space between them and the target; I just make their "barrack" 10x10, and put an ammo stockpile in it. Notably, and this is a change from previous version is that the dwarf *must* be able to walk up to the the target; placing a channel in front of it will prevent them from training.

Once you build your range, you must define it as a room. Make it so it touches the far wall, and don't worry, range rooms can overlap. You have to do this for each. Make sure the shooting direction is correct! In addition, your marksdwarf squad MUST at minimum have train set on each archery target. One dwarf can use one target at any given time.

[[File:Archery_range_setup.png|A properly setup archery target]]

Repeat this for each range; you'll have 5-10 targets overlapping each other and assigned to your marksdwarves squad (in these screenshots, they are the "Home Guard")

[b]3. The Military Management Screen[/b]

This is by far the most difficult part. Fear the 'm' menu, for it eats children. The 'm' menu is confusing on the best days, but this guide will walk you through it.

The first and default page is the positions page. Ignore it for now, you want to make the right uniform for your marksdwarves, press 'u' to bring up that screen. Do yourself a favor and just delete the default archer uniform. It's wrong and will not work properly.

Create a new uniform, and add the following:
- crossbow (do NOT used individual choice, ranged; you *will* end up with dwarves who think an axe is a ranged weapon)
- shield (optional)
- leather armor
- leather headwear
- leather legwear
- leather armor
- leather legwear

Make sure "exact match" is selected. This appears to fix most of the issues of them not picking up quivers. You might be able to get away with over clothing however.

Here's what it should like if you did it right:

[[File:Working_training_uniform.png|400px|Uniform that gets them training]]

Now press 'p' to go back to the positions menu. When you create the squad, it will ask for a uniform. Normally, this works as you'd expect it, assigning the uniform to an entire squad. However, if done with the captain of the guard position, it will *only* assign to that spot. You can look at the top of the screen to see what your dwarfs will train as (i.e. 10/10 Marksdwarfs). If needed, after selecting your recruits, then switch to the 'e' menu. Select your squad, and then a position, then press 'U' (that's capital U) to bring up the uniform selection screen.

Highlight your crossbow uniform, and press 'Shift-Enter' to assign it to all positions in the squad. If you then check the positions screen, at the top, it will say 10/10 marksdwarves, instead of 1/1 markdwarf 9/9 wrestlers, which is what will happen if you leave it on defaults.

[[File:10_marksdwarves.png|400px|10/10 Marksdwarves]]

=== Handling Ammo ===
We're almost done. Go to the ammo screen.

[[File:ammo_screen.png|400px|Ammo]]

If you're setting this by hand, here's what to know. Each squad needs the correct ammo. Bolts are assigned on a "per-item" basis, i.e., a given stack of bolts thats marked for training will only be used for training and via versus. Unfortunately, an old bug prevents this from working; if you have multiple ammo types, and some are set Training-only, and others are set combat-only, your marksdwarves *will* get stuck and fail to train, or fail to fire. The only way to get this to work is if all ammo assignments in the fortress are set to both "CT" in the UI.

==== Switching Bolts Types Reliably ====
Forbidding/Dumping is respected by the game when assigning ammo, so you can use the stocks screen to dump wooden/bone bolts when you're not training, and then have them load metal bolts for fighting. The easiest way to just use wooden/bone bolts when you're training (setting both CT flags on it in the ammo screen), and when you need them to switch, delete the ammo assignment for the training bolts, dump them from the stocks screen (DFHack's enhanced inventory is useful from this), and add the new metal bolts to the screen. Reverse the process to get them to change back.

=== Squad Training Orders ===

Now, for the magic bit that gets them doing nothing *but* training. Open the schedule screen, and look at the orders. The default is "Train, 10 minimium". '''This is WRONG!'''

[[File:default_training_order.png|400px|Default Training Order]]

Press x to delete the order. The schedule screen will change to show no scheduled orders.

[[File:No_orders.png|400px|no_orders]]

Press 'o' to pull up the give order screen. Press o until 'Train' is set, and then press + so it shows minimum 1, like this. Then press shift-done to give the order. The screen will look like this:

[[File:Train_1.png|400px|train 1]]
[[File:given_train_1_order.png|400px|after giving train 1 order]]

Now do it again, for the total members of your squad (you CAN give more than 5 orders, you just have to scroll in the orders screen to see it). When you're done it should look like this, after doing it 10 times.
[[File:multiple_train_1.png|400x|Multiple train one orders]]

Copy and paste the order to all the months. You can also set Sleep in Barrack at need to increase their training time, though this will raise the stress levels of dwarves in the squad due to tired thoughts.

You're almost done. Activate your squad, and after they finish picking up equipment, watch your bolt supplies vanish as your marksdwarves do nothing *but* archery training.

=== Why This Works ===
Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarves (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves). Training, minimum of 1 forces them to work solo. Since they don't have a normal barrack, they can't drill, which leaves Archery Training as the only possible way to train. Since reloading on marksdwarves continues to be erratic, they'll frequently report "No Orders" or similiar once they've finished archery training until the game notices that a given dwarf is out of ammo, in which case they'll go pick up more.

Archery training grants less experience than live fire (8XP per bolt vs. 30XP), but no micromanagement, no hauling, one setup, and you can ignore it until you get that glorious announcement that Urist McMarksdwarf has become an Elite Marksdwarf.

== Stopping Melee Charges ==

The short version: DON'T USE STATION!

When a dwarf has line of sight on an enemy, they'll one of two things, run away, or run up and fight them. While they're running up to the enemy, dwarves will fire bolts if they have any, but then engage the enemy using their crossbows as hammers instead of firing. The easiest way to prevent this is either use fortification pillboxes, with a patrol order that causes them to break line of sight, or defend burrows orders, which will keep them in the area defined by the burrow and prevent them from running up to the enemy.

For patrol routes, marksdwarves *will* not take a Pickup Equipment order as long as they have line of sight on their enemy. Have them go through a door or something, and as soon as they loose sight of the goblin/forgotten beast/demon, they'll immediately go find bolts and reload.

The full effectiveness at Defend Burrow orders at stopping a melee charge is unknown.

File:Ammo screen.png

2015-05-10T23:37:37Z

NCommander:

== Licensing ==
{{self|cc-zero}}

File:10 marksdwarves.png

2015-05-10T23:36:24Z

NCommander:

== Licensing ==
{{self|cc-zero}}

File:Working training uniform.png

2015-05-10T23:34:05Z

NCommander:

== Licensing ==
{{self|cc-zero}}

Advanced marksdwarf training guide

2015-05-10T23:32:16Z

NCommander:

Marksdwarves are fairly buggy, and often refuse to use archery ranges, or stand in front of them, and fail to fire their crossbows. This guide goes into details explaining known bugs, and getting your Marksdwarves to train properly, as well as going into details regarding various ranged weaponry.

== Understanding Ranged Weaponry ==

In vanilla Dwarf Fortress, the raws define three types of ranged weapons, each with their own skill and ammo.

{| class="wikitable"
!colspan="4" |Ranged Weapons
|-
!Ranged Weapon
!Ranged Skill
!Melee Skill
!Ammo
|-
|Crossbow
|Marksdwarf
|Hammerdwarf
|Bolts
|-
|Bow
|Bowman
|Swordman
|Arrows
|-
|Blowgun
|Blowgunner
|Swordman
|Darts
|-
|}

Of these, dwarfs can only make crossbows and bolts, but can use bows, and blowguns if you recover them from downed enemeis or trade for them. If playing a modded game, replace crossbow in the following with one of the above weapons, and proper ammo type.

== Equipping You Marksdwarfs ==

=== The Minimum Outfit ===
At a minimum, each dwarf requires the following to successfully use the crossbow.
* One crossbow
* One quiver
* One stack of bolts for each markdwarf to fire

Quivers are equipped on the upper body slot. Due to a bug, sometimes they fail to pickup a quiver if wearing heavy armor. A workaround for this is below if you run into it. Wood and metal bolts are generated in sticks of 25. Bone bolts are generated in stacks of 5.

=== Crossbows ===
Crossbows can be made out of wood or bone at a bowyers workshop, or out of metal at a metalsmith/magma forge. Metal crossbows can be forged out of copper, bronze, bismuth bronze, iron, steel, or adamantine. Quivers must be made of leather at a leatherworks. The material a crossbow is made out of appears to have no effect on its lethality on ranged bolts. However, if you expect your marksdwarves to end up in melee, they will use their crossbow as a hammer, thus it is recommended to make them out of a dense metal.

=== Quivers and Bolts ===
Quivers can hold 25 bolts, and dwarves will pick up multiple stacks if necessary to fill it. In other words, they will successfully pick up five seperate stacks of bone bolts, or 25 seperate bolts if you're using a bolt splitting technique in your fortress. Bolts are collected in last-in-first-out order; that is, dwarves will always go for the newest bolts in your fortress, even if there is an ammo stockpile three steps away from them. Each squad with markdwarves must be assigned ammo; as they deplete it, Dwarf Fortress will automatically add addition ammo to the squad if there are some in the fortress, again following the principle of LIFO.

=== Avoiding 'Equipment Mismatch' Issues ===
Miners, wood cutters, and hunters have a"default "uniform". When these labors are enabled, a dwarf will carry the equipment apprioate to that job, making it unavailable for the military, and causing issues if that dwarf is then drafted. In general, its safe to put miners and wood cutters in ranged squads, and hunters in melee squads, as this prevents them from equipped the same type of item twice.

If you are going to draft hunters, clear their labors, and [b]confirm[/b] that your hunter has put his quiver and crossbow away. If you don't, he'll generate equipment mismatches. Furthermore, if a marksdwarf grabs a quiver that was once used by a hunter, and still has bolts in it, they may cause a mismatch which the dwarf itself can not clear. This can be resolved by opening the dwarf in the "k" menu, then open his inventory, find the quiver, and forbid the bolts in it. He'll dump them, and properly reload.

If you don't use hunters, you may want to remove their bolt assignments from the ammunition screen.

== Setting your Marksdwarf's barrack ==

=== Understanding Possible Training Activates ===
The first rule of marksdwarf training is you do *not* assign them a normal barrack. If they have that, they will prefer to train as hammerdwarves with their crossbows vs. actually shooting bolts. Furthermore, as the game gives precedence to melee training, they will almost never use an archery range even if one is assigned if they have a choice.

When training, a dwarf has four possible options, which they will take in roughly this order:
- Squad Training
- Individual Combat Drill
- Spar
- Archery Training

Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarfs (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves, training their melee skills while doing so). Except for archery training, dwarves require a standard barracks to conduct any of the above activities. Notably, it is possible to actually train marksdwarves via demonstration, both Crossbow and Archery skills are trainable via demonstrations. By combined this with training orders, it is possible to make Archery Training the only valid option, and thus get them to train consistently.

=== Building Archery Ranges ===
Thus, the first step is to build a room with a bunch of archery ranges. I recommend putting them against the left most wall so the shooting direction is automatically correct, but this should work regardless of direction. The room must be large enough that the marksdwarf has a one gap space between them and the target; I just make their "barrack" 10x10, and put an ammo stockpile in it. Notably, and this is a change from previous version is that the dwarf *must* be able to walk up to the the target; placing a channel in front of it will prevent them from training.

Once you build your range, you must define it as a room. Make it so it touches the far wall, and don't worry, range rooms can overlap. You have to do this for each. Make sure the shooting direction is correct! In addition, your marksdwarf squad MUST at minimum have train set on each archery target. One dwarf can use one target at any given time.

[[File:Archery_range_setup.png|A properly setup archery target]]

Repeat this for each range; you'll have 5-10 targets overlapping each other and assigned to your marksdwarves squad (in these screenshots, they are the "Home Guard")

[b]3. The Military Management Screen[/b]

This is by far the most difficult part. Fear the 'm' menu, for it eats children. The 'm' menu is confusing on the best days, but this guide will walk you through it.

The first and default page is the positions page. Ignore it for now, you want to make the right uniform for your marksdwarves, press 'u' to bring up that screen. Do yourself a favor and just delete the default archer uniform. It's wrong and will not work properly.

Create a new uniform, and add the following:
- crossbow (do NOT used individual choice, ranged; you *will* end up with dwarves who think an axe is a ranged weapon)
- shield (optional)
- leather armor
- leather headwear
- leather legwear
- leather armor
- leather legwear

Make sure "exact match" is selected. This appears to fix most of the issues of them not picking up quivers. You might be able to get away with over clothing however.

Here's what it should like if you did it right:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/gdBlhru.png[/img]

Now press 'p' to go back to the positions menu. When you create the squad, it will ask for a uniform. Normally, this works as you'd expect it, assigning the uniform to an entire squad. However, if done with the captain of the guard position, it will *only* assign to that spot. You can look at the top of the screen to see what your dwarfs will train as (i.e. 10/10 Marksdwarfs). Select your recruits, like so, then switch to the 'e' menu. Select your squad, then press 'U' (that's captain U) to bring up the uniform selection screen.

Highlight your crossbow uniform, and press 'Shift-Enter' to assign it to all positions in the squad. If you then check the positions screen, at the top, it will say 10/10 marksdwarves, instead of 1/1 markdwarf 9/9 wrestlers, which is what will happen if you leave it on defaults.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/U4Iz9ua.png[/img]

=== Handling Ammo ===
We're almost done. Go to the ammo screen.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/Fkrp6hG.png[/img]

If you're setting this by hand, here's what to know. Each squad needs the correct ammo. Bolts are assigned on a "per-item" basis, i.e., a given stack of bolts thats marked for training will only be used for training and via versus. Unfortunately, an old bug prevents this from working; if you have multiple ammo types, and some are set Training-only, and others are set combat-only, your marksdwarves *will* get stuck and fail to train, or fail to fire. The only way to get this to work is if all ammo assignments in the fortress are set to both "CT" in the UI.

==== Switching Bolts Types Reliably ====
Forbidding/Dumping is respected by the game when assigning ammo, so you can use the stocks screen to dump wooden/bone bolts when you're not training, and then have them load metal bolts for fighting. The easiest way to just use wooden/bone bolts when you're training (setting both CT flags on it in the ammo screen), and when you need them to switch, delete the ammo assignment for the training bolts, dump them from the stocks screen (DFHack's enhanced inventory is useful from this), and add the new metal bolts to the screen. Reverse the process to get them to change back.

=== Squad Training Orders ===

Now, for the magic bit that gets them doing nothing *but* training. Open the schedule screen, and look at the orders. The default is "Train, 10 minimium". [b]This is WRONG[/b]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/MjsLA2U.png[/img]

Press x to delete the order. The schedule screen will change to show no scheduled orders.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/IjBQQzv.png[/img]

Press 'o' to pull up the give order screen. Press o until 'Train' is set, and then press + so it shows minimum 1, like this. Then press shift-done to give the order. The screen will look like this:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/rlGRoJ9.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/rVahErV.png[/img]

Now do it again, for the total members of your squad (you CAN give more than 5 orders, you just have to scroll in the orders screen to see it). When you're done it should look like this, after doing it 10 times.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/aOyxjsZ.png[/img]

Copy and paste the order to all the months. You can also set Sleep in Barrack at need to increase their training time, though this will raise the stress levels of dwarves in the squad due to tired thoughts.

You're almost done. Activate your squad, and after they finish picking up equipment, watch your bolt supplies vanish as your marksdwarves do nothing *but* archery training.

=== Why This Works ===
Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarves (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves). Training, minimum of 1 forces them to work solo. Since they don't have a normal barrack, they can't drill, which leaves Archery Training as the only possible way to train. Since reloading on marksdwarves continues to be erratic, they'll frequently report "No Orders" or similiar once they've finished archery training until the game notices that a given dwarf is out of ammo, in which case they'll go pick up more.

Archery training grants less experience than live fire (8XP per bolt vs. 30XP), but no micromanagement, no hauling, one setup, and you can ignore it until you get that glorious announcement that Urist McMarksdwarf has become an Elite Marksdwarf.

== Stopping Melee Charges ==

The short version: DON'T USE STATION!

When a dwarf has line of sight on an enemy, they'll one of two things, run away, or run up and fight them. While they're running up to the enemy, dwarves will fire bolts if they have any, but then engage the enemy using their crossbows as hammers instead of firing. The easiest way to prevent this is either use fortification pillboxes, with a patrol order that causes them to break line of sight, or defend burrows orders, which will keep them in the area defined by the burrow and prevent them from running up to the enemy.

For patrol routes, marksdwarves *will* not take a Pickup Equipment order as long as they have line of sight on their enemy. Have them go through a door or something, and as soon as they loose sight of the goblin/forgotten beast/demon, they'll immediately go find bolts and reload.

The full effectiveness at Defend Burrow orders at stopping a melee charge is unknown.

File:Archery range setup.png

2015-05-08T22:49:56Z

NCommander: NCommander uploaded a new version of "File:Archery range setup.png": Reverted to version as of 22:49, 8 May 2015

== Licensing ==
{{self|cc-zero}}

File:Archery range setup.png

2015-05-08T22:49:46Z

NCommander: NCommander uploaded a new version of "File:Archery range setup.png"

== Licensing ==
{{self|cc-zero}}

File:Archery range setup.png

2015-05-08T22:49:20Z

NCommander: NCommander uploaded a new version of "File:Archery range setup.png"

== Licensing ==
{{self|cc-zero}}

File:Archery range setup.png

2015-05-08T22:46:21Z

NCommander:

== Licensing ==
{{self|cc-zero}}

Advanced marksdwarf training guide

2015-05-08T22:46:04Z

NCommander: /* Building Archery Ranges */

Marksdwarves are fairly buggy, and often refuse to use archery ranges, or stand in front of them, and fail to fire their crossbows. This guide goes into details explaining known bugs, and getting your Marksdwarves to train properly, as well as going into details regarding various ranged weaponry.

== Understanding Ranged Weaponry ==

In vanilla Dwarf Fortress, the raws define three types of ranged weapons, each with their own skill and ammo.

{| class="wikitable"
!colspan="4" |Ranged Weapons
|-
!Ranged Weapon
!Ranged Skill
!Melee Skill
!Ammo
|-
|Crossbow
|Marksdwarf
|Hammerdwarf
|Bolts
|-
|Bow
|Bowman
|Swordman
|Arrows
|-
|Blowgun
|Blowgunner
|Swordman
|Darts
|-
|}

Of these, dwarfs can only make crossbows and bolts, but can use bows, and blowguns if you recover them from downed enemeis or trade for them. If playing a modded game, replace crossbow in the following with one of the above weapons, and proper ammo type.

== Equipping You Marksdwarfs ==

=== The Minimum Outfit ===
At a minimum, each dwarf requires the following to successfully use the crossbow.
* One crossbow
* One quiver
* One stack of bolts for each markdwarf to fire

Quivers are equipped on the upper body slot. Due to a bug, sometimes they fail to pickup a quiver if wearing heavy armor. A workaround for this is below if you run into it. Wood and metal bolts are generated in sticks of 25. Bone bolts are generated in stacks of 5.

=== Crossbows ===
Crossbows can be made out of wood or bone at a bowyers workshop, or out of metal at a metalsmith/magma forge. Metal crossbows can be forged out of copper, bronze, bismuth bronze, iron, steel, or adamantine. Quivers must be made of leather at a leatherworks. The material a crossbow is made out of appears to have no effect on its lethality on ranged bolts. However, if you expect your marksdwarves to end up in melee, they will use their crossbow as a hammer, thus it is recommended to make them out of a dense metal.

=== Quivers and Bolts ===
Quivers can hold 25 bolts, and dwarves will pick up multiple stacks if necessary to fill it. In other words, they will successfully pick up five seperate stacks of bone bolts, or 25 seperate bolts if you're using a bolt splitting technique in your fortress. Bolts are collected in last-in-first-out order; that is, dwarves will always go for the newest bolts in your fortress, even if there is an ammo stockpile three steps away from them. Each squad with markdwarves must be assigned ammo; as they deplete it, Dwarf Fortress will automatically add addition ammo to the squad if there are some in the fortress, again following the principle of LIFO.

=== Avoiding 'Equipment Mismatch' Issues ===
Miners, wood cutters, and hunters have a"default "uniform". When these labors are enabled, a dwarf will carry the equipment apprioate to that job, making it unavailable for the military, and causing issues if that dwarf is then drafted. In general, its safe to put miners and wood cutters in ranged squads, and hunters in melee squads, as this prevents them from equipped the same type of item twice.

If you are going to draft hunters, clear their labors, and [b]confirm[/b] that your hunter has put his quiver and crossbow away. If you don't, he'll generate equipment mismatches. Furthermore, if a marksdwarf grabs a quiver that was once used by a hunter, and still has bolts in it, they may cause a mismatch which the dwarf itself can not clear. This can be resolved by opening the dwarf in the "k" menu, then open his inventory, find the quiver, and forbid the bolts in it. He'll dump them, and properly reload.

If you don't use hunters, you may want to remove their bolt assignments from the ammunition screen.

== Setting your Marksdwarf's barrack ==

=== Understanding Possible Training Activates ===
The first rule of marksdwarf training is you do *not* assign them a normal barrack. If they have that, they will prefer to train as hammerdwarves with their crossbows vs. actually shooting bolts. Furthermore, as the game gives precedence to melee training, they will almost never use an archery range even if one is assigned if they have a choice.

When training, a dwarf has four possible options, which they will take in roughly this order:
- Squad Training
- Individual Combat Drill
- Spar
- Archery Training

Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarfs (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves, training their melee skills while doing so). Except for archery training, dwarves require a standard barracks to conduct any of the above activities. Notably, it is possible to actually train marksdwarves via demonstration, both Crossbow and Archery skills are trainable via demonstrations. By combined this with training orders, it is possible to make Archery Training the only valid option, and thus get them to train consistently.

=== Building Archery Ranges ===
Thus, the first step is to build a room with a bunch of archery ranges. I recommend putting them against the left most wall so the shooting direction is automatically correct, but this should work regardless of direction. The room must be large enough that the marksdwarf has a one gap space between them and the target; I just make their "barrack" 10x10, and put an ammo stockpile in it. Notably, and this is a change from previous version is that the dwarf *must* be able to walk up to the the target; placing a channel in front of it will prevent them from training.

Once you build your range, you must define it as a room. Make it so it touches the far wall, and don't worry, range rooms can overlap. You have to do this for each. Make sure the shooting direction is correct! In addition, your marksdwarf squad MUST at minimum have train set on each archery target. One dwarf can use one target at any given time.

[[File:Archery_range_setup.png|right|A properly setup archery target]]

Repeat this for each range; you'll have 5-10 targets overlapping each other and assigned to your marksdwarves squad (in these screenshots, they are the "Home Guard")

[b]3. The Military Management Screen[/b]

This is by far the most difficult part. Fear the 'm' menu, for it eats children. The 'm' menu is confusing on the best days, but this guide will walk you through it.

The first and default page is the positions page. Ignore it for now, you want to make the right uniform for your marksdwarves, press 'u' to bring up that screen. Do yourself a favor and just delete the default archer uniform. It's wrong and will not work properly.

Create a new uniform, and add the following:
- crossbow (do NOT used individual choice, ranged; you *will* end up with dwarves who think an axe is a ranged weapon)
- shield (optional)
- leather armor
- leather headwear
- leather legwear
- leather armor
- leather legwear

Make sure "exact match" is selected. This appears to fix most of the issues of them not picking up quivers. You might be able to get away with over clothing however.

Here's what it should like if you did it right:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/gdBlhru.png[/img]

Now press 'p' to go back to the positions menu. When you create the squad, it will ask for a uniform. This is misleading; the game *only* applies the uniform to the first dwarf selected. We'll fix that in a moment. Select your recruits, like so, then switch to the 'e' menu. Select your squad, then press 'U' (that's captain U) to bring up the uniform selection screen.

Here's what it looks like.

Highlight your crossbow uniform, and press 'Shift-Enter' to assign it to all positions in the squad. If you then check the positions screen, at the top, it will say 10/10 marksdwarves, instead of 1/1 markdwarf 9/9 wrestlers, which is what will happen if you leave it on defaults.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/U4Iz9ua.png[/img]

We're almost done. Go to the ammo screen.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/Fkrp6hG.png[/img]

If you haven't done anything with marksdwarves before, then the defaults are correct, go to the schedule screen.

If you're setting this by hand, here's what to know.

- Each squad needs the correct ammo
- Crossbowman/Markdwarves use bolts
- Bowman use arrows
- Blowgunners use darts

- Set a material preference if you want*, and set it so bolts are used for both training and combat. I generally have enough ore that it isn't hard to mass produce copper bolts. They will gum up if bolts for training and combat are different, here's the bug report: www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=post;board=11.0

* - might gum up if they pick a quiver with the wrong ammo. I strongly recommend just leaving it as "bolts"

Generally, for me, once they get elite or legendary, I just put them on patrol duty and have them stop training, in which I change their ammo assignment.

Now, for the magic bit that gets them doing nothing *but* training. Open the schedule screen, and look at the orders. The default is "Train, 10 minimium". [b]This is WRONG[/b]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/MjsLA2U.png[/img]

Press x to delete the order. The schedule screen will change to show no scheduled orders.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/IjBQQzv.png[/img]

Press 'o' to pull up the give order screen. Press o until 'Train' is set, and then press + so it shows minimum 1, like this. Then press shift-done to give the order. The screen will look like this:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/rlGRoJ9.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/rVahErV.png[/img]

Now do it again, for the total members of your squad (you CAN give more than 5 orders, you just have to scroll in the orders screen to see it). When you're done it should look like this, after doing it 10 times.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/aOyxjsZ.png[/img]

Copy and paste the order to all the months. You can also set Sleep in Barrack at need to increase their training time, though this will raise the stress levels of dwarves in the squad due to tired thoughts.

You're almost done. Activate your squad, and after they finish picking up equipment, watch your bolt supplies vanish as your marksdwarves do nothing *but* archery training.

[b]4. Wait, what?[/b]

Yup. Here's how it works. Military dwarves have a preference list roughly as follows to training

- Squad training
- Individual Combat Drill
- Spar
- Archery Training (if equipped with a bow).

Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarves (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're noivce hammerdwarves*). Training, minimium of 1 forces them to work solo. Since they don't have a normal barrack, they can't drill, which leaves Archery Training as the only possible way to train. Except for food and drink, they will *constantly* offload bolts, switching to "Cannot follow orders" when the fortress's supply is depleted. As soon as bolts exist, they'll reload, and make them disappear too.

* - Replace hammer with sword for bowdwarves and blowgunners.

Archery training grants less experience than live fire (8XP per bolt vs. 30XP), but no micromanagement, no hauling, one setup, and you can ignore it until you get that glorious announcement that Urist has become an Elite Marksdwarf.

[b]5. Stopping them from charging into melee/Reloading issues[/b]

The short version: DON'T USE STATION!

There's two ways to stop them charging into melee. Patrol Routes, and Defend Burrors order. I'll expand this guide once the science is done.

For patrol routes, marksdwarves *will* not take a Pickup Equipment order as long as they have line of sight on their enemy. Have them go through a door or something, and as soon as they loose sight of the goblin/forgotten beast/demon, they'll immediately go find bolts and reload.

I'm still sciencing the Defend Burrows order to see how effective it is at preventing melee charges.

Advanced marksdwarf training guide

2015-05-08T22:42:33Z

NCommander:

Marksdwarves are fairly buggy, and often refuse to use archery ranges, or stand in front of them, and fail to fire their crossbows. This guide goes into details explaining known bugs, and getting your Marksdwarves to train properly, as well as going into details regarding various ranged weaponry.

== Understanding Ranged Weaponry ==

In vanilla Dwarf Fortress, the raws define three types of ranged weapons, each with their own skill and ammo.

{| class="wikitable"
!colspan="4" |Ranged Weapons
|-
!Ranged Weapon
!Ranged Skill
!Melee Skill
!Ammo
|-
|Crossbow
|Marksdwarf
|Hammerdwarf
|Bolts
|-
|Bow
|Bowman
|Swordman
|Arrows
|-
|Blowgun
|Blowgunner
|Swordman
|Darts
|-
|}

Of these, dwarfs can only make crossbows and bolts, but can use bows, and blowguns if you recover them from downed enemeis or trade for them. If playing a modded game, replace crossbow in the following with one of the above weapons, and proper ammo type.

== Equipping You Marksdwarfs ==

=== The Minimum Outfit ===
At a minimum, each dwarf requires the following to successfully use the crossbow.
* One crossbow
* One quiver
* One stack of bolts for each markdwarf to fire

Quivers are equipped on the upper body slot. Due to a bug, sometimes they fail to pickup a quiver if wearing heavy armor. A workaround for this is below if you run into it. Wood and metal bolts are generated in sticks of 25. Bone bolts are generated in stacks of 5.

=== Crossbows ===
Crossbows can be made out of wood or bone at a bowyers workshop, or out of metal at a metalsmith/magma forge. Metal crossbows can be forged out of copper, bronze, bismuth bronze, iron, steel, or adamantine. Quivers must be made of leather at a leatherworks. The material a crossbow is made out of appears to have no effect on its lethality on ranged bolts. However, if you expect your marksdwarves to end up in melee, they will use their crossbow as a hammer, thus it is recommended to make them out of a dense metal.

=== Quivers and Bolts ===
Quivers can hold 25 bolts, and dwarves will pick up multiple stacks if necessary to fill it. In other words, they will successfully pick up five seperate stacks of bone bolts, or 25 seperate bolts if you're using a bolt splitting technique in your fortress. Bolts are collected in last-in-first-out order; that is, dwarves will always go for the newest bolts in your fortress, even if there is an ammo stockpile three steps away from them. Each squad with markdwarves must be assigned ammo; as they deplete it, Dwarf Fortress will automatically add addition ammo to the squad if there are some in the fortress, again following the principle of LIFO.

=== Avoiding 'Equipment Mismatch' Issues ===
Miners, wood cutters, and hunters have a"default "uniform". When these labors are enabled, a dwarf will carry the equipment apprioate to that job, making it unavailable for the military, and causing issues if that dwarf is then drafted. In general, its safe to put miners and wood cutters in ranged squads, and hunters in melee squads, as this prevents them from equipped the same type of item twice.

If you are going to draft hunters, clear their labors, and [b]confirm[/b] that your hunter has put his quiver and crossbow away. If you don't, he'll generate equipment mismatches. Furthermore, if a marksdwarf grabs a quiver that was once used by a hunter, and still has bolts in it, they may cause a mismatch which the dwarf itself can not clear. This can be resolved by opening the dwarf in the "k" menu, then open his inventory, find the quiver, and forbid the bolts in it. He'll dump them, and properly reload.

If you don't use hunters, you may want to remove their bolt assignments from the ammunition screen.

== Setting your Marksdwarf's barrack ==

=== Understanding Possible Training Activates ===
The first rule of marksdwarf training is you do *not* assign them a normal barrack. If they have that, they will prefer to train as hammerdwarves with their crossbows vs. actually shooting bolts. Furthermore, as the game gives precedence to melee training, they will almost never use an archery range even if one is assigned if they have a choice.

When training, a dwarf has four possible options, which they will take in roughly this order:
- Squad Training
- Individual Combat Drill
- Spar
- Archery Training

Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarfs (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves, training their melee skills while doing so). Except for archery training, dwarves require a standard barracks to conduct any of the above activities. Notably, it is possible to actually train marksdwarves via demonstration, both Crossbow and Archery skills are trainable via demonstrations. By combined this with training orders, it is possible to make Archery Training the only valid option, and thus get them to train consistently.

=== Building Archery Ranges ===
Thus, the first step is to build a room with a bunch of archery ranges. I recommend putting them against the left most wall so the shooting direction is automatically correct, but this should work regardless of direction. The room must be large enough that the marksdwarf has a one gap space between them and the target; I just make their "barrack" 10x10, and put an ammo stockpile in it. Notably, and this is a change from previous version is that the dwarf *must* be able to walk up to the the target; placing a channel in front of it will prevent them from training.

Once you build your range, you must define it as a room. Make it so it touches the far wall, and don't worry, range rooms can overlap. You have to do this for each. Make sure the shooting direction is correct! In addition, your marksdwarf squad MUST at minimum have train set on each archery target. One dwarf can use one target at any given time.

[File:Archery_range_setup.png|right|A properly setup archery target]

Repeat this for each range; you'll have 5-10 targets overlapping each other and assigned to your marksdwarves squad (in these screenshots, they are the "Home Guard")

[b]3. The Military Management Screen[/b]

This is by far the most difficult part. Fear the 'm' menu, for it eats children. The 'm' menu is confusing on the best days, but this guide will walk you through it.

The first and default page is the positions page. Ignore it for now, you want to make the right uniform for your marksdwarves, press 'u' to bring up that screen. Do yourself a favor and just delete the default archer uniform. It's wrong and will not work properly.

Create a new uniform, and add the following:
- crossbow (do NOT used individual choice, ranged; you *will* end up with dwarves who think an axe is a ranged weapon)
- shield (optional)
- leather armor
- leather headwear
- leather legwear
- leather armor
- leather legwear

Make sure "exact match" is selected. This appears to fix most of the issues of them not picking up quivers. You might be able to get away with over clothing however.

Here's what it should like if you did it right:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/gdBlhru.png[/img]

Now press 'p' to go back to the positions menu. When you create the squad, it will ask for a uniform. This is misleading; the game *only* applies the uniform to the first dwarf selected. We'll fix that in a moment. Select your recruits, like so, then switch to the 'e' menu. Select your squad, then press 'U' (that's captain U) to bring up the uniform selection screen.

Here's what it looks like.

Highlight your crossbow uniform, and press 'Shift-Enter' to assign it to all positions in the squad. If you then check the positions screen, at the top, it will say 10/10 marksdwarves, instead of 1/1 markdwarf 9/9 wrestlers, which is what will happen if you leave it on defaults.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/U4Iz9ua.png[/img]

We're almost done. Go to the ammo screen.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/Fkrp6hG.png[/img]

If you haven't done anything with marksdwarves before, then the defaults are correct, go to the schedule screen.

If you're setting this by hand, here's what to know.

- Each squad needs the correct ammo
- Crossbowman/Markdwarves use bolts
- Bowman use arrows
- Blowgunners use darts

- Set a material preference if you want*, and set it so bolts are used for both training and combat. I generally have enough ore that it isn't hard to mass produce copper bolts. They will gum up if bolts for training and combat are different, here's the bug report: www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=post;board=11.0

* - might gum up if they pick a quiver with the wrong ammo. I strongly recommend just leaving it as "bolts"

Generally, for me, once they get elite or legendary, I just put them on patrol duty and have them stop training, in which I change their ammo assignment.

Now, for the magic bit that gets them doing nothing *but* training. Open the schedule screen, and look at the orders. The default is "Train, 10 minimium". [b]This is WRONG[/b]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/MjsLA2U.png[/img]

Press x to delete the order. The schedule screen will change to show no scheduled orders.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/IjBQQzv.png[/img]

Press 'o' to pull up the give order screen. Press o until 'Train' is set, and then press + so it shows minimum 1, like this. Then press shift-done to give the order. The screen will look like this:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/rlGRoJ9.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/rVahErV.png[/img]

Now do it again, for the total members of your squad (you CAN give more than 5 orders, you just have to scroll in the orders screen to see it). When you're done it should look like this, after doing it 10 times.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/aOyxjsZ.png[/img]

Copy and paste the order to all the months. You can also set Sleep in Barrack at need to increase their training time, though this will raise the stress levels of dwarves in the squad due to tired thoughts.

You're almost done. Activate your squad, and after they finish picking up equipment, watch your bolt supplies vanish as your marksdwarves do nothing *but* archery training.

[b]4. Wait, what?[/b]

Yup. Here's how it works. Military dwarves have a preference list roughly as follows to training

- Squad training
- Individual Combat Drill
- Spar
- Archery Training (if equipped with a bow).

Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarves (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're noivce hammerdwarves*). Training, minimium of 1 forces them to work solo. Since they don't have a normal barrack, they can't drill, which leaves Archery Training as the only possible way to train. Except for food and drink, they will *constantly* offload bolts, switching to "Cannot follow orders" when the fortress's supply is depleted. As soon as bolts exist, they'll reload, and make them disappear too.

* - Replace hammer with sword for bowdwarves and blowgunners.

Archery training grants less experience than live fire (8XP per bolt vs. 30XP), but no micromanagement, no hauling, one setup, and you can ignore it until you get that glorious announcement that Urist has become an Elite Marksdwarf.

[b]5. Stopping them from charging into melee/Reloading issues[/b]

The short version: DON'T USE STATION!

There's two ways to stop them charging into melee. Patrol Routes, and Defend Burrors order. I'll expand this guide once the science is done.

For patrol routes, marksdwarves *will* not take a Pickup Equipment order as long as they have line of sight on their enemy. Have them go through a door or something, and as soon as they loose sight of the goblin/forgotten beast/demon, they'll immediately go find bolts and reload.

I'm still sciencing the Defend Burrows order to see how effective it is at preventing melee charges.

Advanced marksdwarf training guide

2015-05-08T22:36:05Z

NCommander: Created page with "Marksdwarves are fairly buggy, and often refuse to use archery ranges, or stand in front of them, and fail to fire their crossbows. This guide goes into details explaining kno..."

Marksdwarves are fairly buggy, and often refuse to use archery ranges, or stand in front of them, and fail to fire their crossbows. This guide goes into details explaining known bugs, and getting your Marksdwarves to train properly, as well as going into details regarding various ranged weaponry.

== Understanding Ranged Weaponry ==

In vanilla Dwarf Fortress, the raws define three types of ranged weapons, each with their own skill and ammo.

{| class="wikitable"
!colspan="4" |Ranged Weapons
|-
!Ranged Weapon
!Ranged Skill
!Melee Skill
!Ammo
|-
|Crossbow
|Marksdwarf
|Hammerdwarf
|Bolts
|-
|Bow
|Bowman
|Swordman
|Arrows
|-
|Blowgun
|Blowgunner
|Swordman
|Darts
|-
|}

Of these, dwarfs can only make crossbows and bolts, but can use bows, and blowguns if you recover them from downed enemeis or trade for them. If playing a modded game, replace crossbow in the following with one of the above weapons, and proper ammo type.

== Equipping You Marksdwarfs ==

=== The Minimum Outfit ===
At a minimum, each dwarf requires the following to successfully use the crossbow.
* One crossbow
* One quiver
* One stack of bolts for each markdwarf to fire

Quivers are equipped on the upper body slot. Due to a bug, sometimes they fail to pickup a quiver if wearing heavy armor. A workaround for this is below if you run into it. Wood and metal bolts are generated in sticks of 25. Bone bolts are generated in stacks of 5.

=== Crossbows ===
Crossbows can be made out of wood or bone at a bowyers workshop, or out of metal at a metalsmith/magma forge. Metal crossbows can be forged out of copper, bronze, bismuth bronze, iron, steel, or adamantine. Quivers must be made of leather at a leatherworks. The material a crossbow is made out of appears to have no effect on its lethality on ranged bolts. However, if you expect your marksdwarves to end up in melee, they will use their crossbow as a hammer, thus it is recommended to make them out of a dense metal.

=== Quivers and Bolts ===
Quivers can hold 25 bolts, and dwarves will pick up multiple stacks if necessary to fill it. In other words, they will successfully pick up five seperate stacks of bone bolts, or 25 seperate bolts if you're using a bolt splitting technique in your fortress. Bolts are collected in last-in-first-out order; that is, dwarves will always go for the newest bolts in your fortress, even if there is an ammo stockpile three steps away from them. Each squad with markdwarves must be assigned ammo; as they deplete it, Dwarf Fortress will automatically add addition ammo to the squad if there are some in the fortress, again following the principle of LIFO.

=== Avoiding 'Equipment Mismatch' Issues ===
Miners, wood cutters, and hunters have a"default "uniform". When these labors are enabled, a dwarf will carry the equipment apprioate to that job, making it unavailable for the military, and causing issues if that dwarf is then drafted. In general, its safe to put miners and wood cutters in ranged squads, and hunters in melee squads, as this prevents them from equipped the same type of item twice.

If you are going to draft hunters, clear their labors, and [b]confirm[/b] that your hunter has put his quiver and crossbow away. If you don't, he'll generate equipment mismatches. Furthermore, if a marksdwarf grabs a quiver that was once used by a hunter, and still has bolts in it, they may cause a mismatch which the dwarf itself can not clear. This can be resolved by opening the dwarf in the "k" menu, then open his inventory, find the quiver, and forbid the bolts in it. He'll dump them, and properly reload.

If you don't use hunters, you may want to remove their bolt assignments from the ammunition screen.

== Setting your Marksdwarf's barrack ==

The first rule of marksdwarf training is you do *not* assign them a normal barrack. If they have that, they will prefer to train as hammerdwarves with their crossbows vs. actually shooting bolts. Furthermore, as the game gives precedence to melee training, they will almost never use an archery range even if one is assigned if they have a choice.

When training, a dwarf has four possible options, which they will take in roughly this order:
- Squad Training
- Individual Combat Drill
- Spar
- Archery Training

Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarfs (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're novice hammerdwarves, training their melee skills while doing so). Except for archery training, dwarves require a standard barracks to conduct any of the above activities. Notably, it is possible to actually train marksdwarves via demonstration, both Crossbow and Archery skills are trainable via demonstrations.

Training, minimium of 1 forces them to work solo. Since they don't have a normal barrack, they can't drill, which leaves Archery Training as the only possible way to train. Except for food and drink, they will *constantly* offload bolts, switching to "Cannot follow orders" when the fortress's supply is depleted. As soon as bolts exist, they'll reload, and make them disappear too.

Instead, build a room with a bunch of archery ranges. I recommend putting them against the left most wall so the shooting direction is automatically correct, but this should work regardless.

The room must be large enough that the marksdwarf has a one gap space between them and the target; I just make their "barrack" 10x10, and put an ammo stockpile in it.

Here's a screenshot.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/1uBGRIz.png[/img]

Once you build your range, you must define it as a room. Make it so it touches the far wall, and don't worry, range rooms can overlap. You have to do this for each. Make sure the shooting direction is correct! In addition, your marksdwarf squad MUST at minimum have train, and squad equipment set.

Repeat this for each range; you'll have 5-10 targets overlapping each other and assigned to your marksdwarves squad (in my screenshots, they are the "Home Guard")

[b]3. The Military Management Screen[/b]

This is by far the most difficult part. Fear the 'm' menu, for it eats children. The 'm' menu is confusing on the best days, but this guide will walk you through it.

The first and default page is the positions page. Ignore it for now, you want to make the right uniform for your marksdwarves, press 'u' to bring up that screen. Do yourself a favor and just delete the default archer uniform. It's wrong and will not work properly.

Create a new uniform, and add the following:
- crossbow (do NOT used individual choice, ranged; you *will* end up with dwarves who think an axe is a ranged weapon)
- shield (optional)
- leather armor
- leather headwear
- leather legwear
- leather armor
- leather legwear

Make sure "exact match" is selected. This appears to fix most of the issues of them not picking up quivers. You might be able to get away with over clothing however.

Here's what it should like if you did it right:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/gdBlhru.png[/img]

Now press 'p' to go back to the positions menu. When you create the squad, it will ask for a uniform. This is misleading; the game *only* applies the uniform to the first dwarf selected. We'll fix that in a moment. Select your recruits, like so, then switch to the 'e' menu. Select your squad, then press 'U' (that's captain U) to bring up the uniform selection screen.

Here's what it looks like.

Highlight your crossbow uniform, and press 'Shift-Enter' to assign it to all positions in the squad. If you then check the positions screen, at the top, it will say 10/10 marksdwarves, instead of 1/1 markdwarf 9/9 wrestlers, which is what will happen if you leave it on defaults.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/U4Iz9ua.png[/img]

We're almost done. Go to the ammo screen.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/Fkrp6hG.png[/img]

If you haven't done anything with marksdwarves before, then the defaults are correct, go to the schedule screen.

If you're setting this by hand, here's what to know.

- Each squad needs the correct ammo
- Crossbowman/Markdwarves use bolts
- Bowman use arrows
- Blowgunners use darts

- Set a material preference if you want*, and set it so bolts are used for both training and combat. I generally have enough ore that it isn't hard to mass produce copper bolts. They will gum up if bolts for training and combat are different, here's the bug report: www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=post;board=11.0

* - might gum up if they pick a quiver with the wrong ammo. I strongly recommend just leaving it as "bolts"

Generally, for me, once they get elite or legendary, I just put them on patrol duty and have them stop training, in which I change their ammo assignment.

Now, for the magic bit that gets them doing nothing *but* training. Open the schedule screen, and look at the orders. The default is "Train, 10 minimium". [b]This is WRONG[/b]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/MjsLA2U.png[/img]

Press x to delete the order. The schedule screen will change to show no scheduled orders.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/IjBQQzv.png[/img]

Press 'o' to pull up the give order screen. Press o until 'Train' is set, and then press + so it shows minimum 1, like this. Then press shift-done to give the order. The screen will look like this:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/rlGRoJ9.png[/img]
[img]http://i.imgur.com/rVahErV.png[/img]

Now do it again, for the total members of your squad (you CAN give more than 5 orders, you just have to scroll in the orders screen to see it). When you're done it should look like this, after doing it 10 times.
[img]http://i.imgur.com/aOyxjsZ.png[/img]

Copy and paste the order to all the months. You can also set Sleep in Barrack at need to increase their training time, though this will raise the stress levels of dwarves in the squad due to tired thoughts.

You're almost done. Activate your squad, and after they finish picking up equipment, watch your bolt supplies vanish as your marksdwarves do nothing *but* archery training.

[b]4. Wait, what?[/b]

Yup. Here's how it works. Military dwarves have a preference list roughly as follows to training

- Squad training
- Individual Combat Drill
- Spar
- Archery Training (if equipped with a bow).

Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarves (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're noivce hammerdwarves*). Training, minimium of 1 forces them to work solo. Since they don't have a normal barrack, they can't drill, which leaves Archery Training as the only possible way to train. Except for food and drink, they will *constantly* offload bolts, switching to "Cannot follow orders" when the fortress's supply is depleted. As soon as bolts exist, they'll reload, and make them disappear too.

* - Replace hammer with sword for bowdwarves and blowgunners.

Archery training grants less experience than live fire (8XP per bolt vs. 30XP), but no micromanagement, no hauling, one setup, and you can ignore it until you get that glorious announcement that Urist has become an Elite Marksdwarf.

[b]5. Stopping them from charging into melee/Reloading issues[/b]

The short version: DON'T USE STATION!

There's two ways to stop them charging into melee. Patrol Routes, and Defend Burrors order. I'll expand this guide once the science is done.

For patrol routes, marksdwarves *will* not take a Pickup Equipment order as long as they have line of sight on their enemy. Have them go through a door or something, and as soon as they loose sight of the goblin/forgotten beast/demon, they'll immediately go find bolts and reload.

I'm still sciencing the Defend Burrows order to see how effective it is at preventing melee charges.

Scheduling

2015-05-06T20:44:03Z

NCommander:

{{Quality|Fine}}{{av}}

No matter how much you micromanage your '''[[military]]''', your '''[[squads]]''' won't be able to get stronger or protect you from ambushes without proper scheduling practices. With practice, you'll be able to set your '''[[soldier]]s''' to follow a complicated annual training regimen, patrol major trade routes, defend important areas, or any combination of these... all with the flick of a few keys.

For quick reference: from the main menu the '''military''' screen is accessible through the {{k|m}} key, the '''points/routes/notes''' screen is accessible through the {{k|N}} key, the '''burrows''' screen is accessible through the {{k|w}} key, and the '''squads''' screen is accessible through the {{k|s}} key. The military screen and all its tabs are mouse-compatible, and can be navigated through mouse clicks rather than strictly keys (when in windowed mode).

==Passive Defense==

The '''alert level''' and '''scheduling''' system is a feature that is both incredibly versatile... and, initially, completely impenetrable. Once you learn the system, though, you will find that you barely need to manage your military at all. Effectively, a schedule is programming for a squad to follow within an alert, broken up by month, and alerts can be quickly and easily swapped in order to apply different schedules of your choosing to different squads of your choosing.

It is possible to give your squads different monthly schedules, create different alert levels which will cause squads to follow out new user-programmed instructions depending on circumstance, give direct orders to attack one or more specific targets or move to a specific location, or follow patrol routes and stations with greater accuracy. The entire system (including alert names) is completely configurable, and in time you will find yourself using complicated scheduling to rotate squads between training and defending/patrolling specified areas over the course of a year without any user input, or to start defending the fort entrance or trader route with a few easy key presses.

There is a clear discrepancy between ''active'' orders and ''passive'' orders — the former is used for taking the fight to the enemy, the latter is programming that a dwarf will follow to the letter and acts more as a defense method. The ''squads'' menu is predominantly used for active commands, and the ''alert'' and ''scheduling'' menus are used for passive commands. This article will focus on the '''passive''' commands you can leave your squads to follow.

For more information on '''active''' commands, see '''[[Squads]]'''.

===Alert Levels===

The '''alert level''' is a fundamental concept of passive military management. In each alert level, you can program instructions for your military and/or civilian dwarves to follow. The game contains two alert levels by default — 'Inactive' and 'Active/Train'. In 'Inactive', all squads are assigned no orders. In 'Active/Train', all squads are supposed to be assigned to train the entire year. By default, your squads will all be set to 'Inactive' — in this state, they will tend to spend most of their idle time in the barracks doing individual combat drills, or in the case of some dwarves only perform civilian work. You will need to make more alerts if you want them to do anything more complicated than this.

Your entire fortress is always set to exactly one ''[[civilian alert]] level''. This restricts where civilians, any non-military dwarf in the entire fort, may go. To define the restriction area, you must first create a [[burrow]] encompassing the area you want to restrict your civilians to. Then, go to the alert screen ({{k|a}} in the {{k|m}}ilitary screen), {{k|c}}reate a new alert level (you can {{k|N}}ame it something like 'Danger'), highlight it in the left pane, then press enter on the correct burrow in the rightmost pane. Multiple burrows may be selected. Note that the civilian alert burrow restriction replaces the 'Dwarves may/may not go outside' order in the older versions. By default, the civilian alert level is set to 'Inactive' and no burrow restrictions apply. If you intend on having your Dwarves stay inside at any time, for any reason, you will need to create a civilian alert burrow; see [[Civilian alert]] for a step by step walk-through.

Individual squads can be set to a certain alert by highlighting the appropriate alert level, then selecting the correct squad in the central pane and pressing {{k|enter}}. You can also select a squad's alert level by pressing {{k|s}} to open the squads menu, {{k|a}}/{{k|b}}/{{k|c}}/etc to select a squad, and {{k|t}} to scroll through alerts. You can change the currently active civilian alert level by pressing {{k|enter}} while the correct alert level is highlighted. Squads and civilians can only be set to one alert level at a time, so selecting one alert level for a group removes them from the former alert.

To deactivate an alert without selecting a new one, simply press {{k|enter}} on the alert for the relevant group again.

The main reason you want to use civilian alerts is to enforce [[burrow]] restrictions, i.e. making sure that your civilian dwarves do not wander outside in the middle of a siege. It can also be used to switch the areas where dwarves live and work around at will, if you are so inclined.

Note that triggering an alert with burrow restrictions seems to override the burrows normally assigned to dwarves, so if you used burrows to contain dwarves with different [[vampire|dietary requirements]], you might have some casualties.

===Schedules===

[[File:Quickstart-military-schedule.png|thumb|right|300px|The '''Squad Schedules''' screen.]]
Each squad can be given multiple '''schedules''' to follow for an entire year, broken up by month. Each squad has a separate schedule for each alert level; it can be swapped between these schedules with the procedure outlined in the previous section. Without scheduling, alert levels would do nothing; without alert levels scheduling would be horribly inefficient; the two functions co-exist and rely on each other. The scheduling screen can be accessed by pressing {{k|s}} in the {{k|m}}ilitary screen.

On the main scheduling page you will see a list of months on the left side and a list of all of the squads in your fortress along the top edge. Scheduling is done separately for each alert level; to switch between alert levels use the secondary page up/down keys (by default {{k|/}} and {{k|*}}). You can use the secondary up/down keys (by default {{k|+}} and {{k|-}}) to scroll through the squads at the top if you have more than will fit on one screen. Use the up/down arrow keys to navigate the month list, and the left/right arrow keys to navigate between squads. The orders in the currently selected cell are displayed in blue towards the bottom of the screen.

When you've highlighted a cell, press {{k|tab}} to switch focus to this '''order list'''. From here, you can press {{k|e}} to edit the standing orders or {{k|o}} to give a new one. Both will open to the Give Orders screen. Pressing {{k|o}} will scroll through and change the order type. This cycles between 'Train', 'Defend Burrow', 'Patrol Route', and 'Station'. To use any of the orders other than Train, you will first need to set up the appropriate [[burrow]], route, or station. When you cycle to the order you want, highlight the burrow, route, or station you want the order to go to (in the left pane) and press {{k|enter}}. It should now be highlighted in green.

Orders have a soldier-based '''order criteria''' that lists how many soldiers in the squad will follow the order at once. Using the secondary up/down keys you can choose how many soldiers must be in a squad the order applies; by default this number is ten. You can also select specific positions within the squad in the right pane to set those positions as 'preferred' - the order will try pick these dwarves to follow the orders if there are multiple off-duty dwarves to choose from. When you are done, press {{k|shift}}+{{k|enter}} to save the order and return to the schedule screen. If desired, multiple order criteria can be set for each month.

Note that the text displayed on each cell (like 'Train') is a completely customized text; it does NOT reflect the actual orders in the cell! When you have a cell highlighted, you can press 'n' to edit the label. Don't be confused by the fact that when you edit the orders in a cell, the label does not change to reflect your changes. You need to update the cell text yourself to be consistent with the orders.

To eliminate some of the tedium in scheduling many months, you can copy-paste orders from one cell to another with the {{k|c}} and {{k|p}} keys. Press {{k|c}} in the cell you want to copy from, then go to the cells you want to paste to and press {{k|p}} in each one.

By pressing {{k|shift}}+{{k|tab}} in the scheduling screen, you can flip the display of the rows and columns in the main grid. This allows you to see more squads, but fewer months. This can be useful if you want to see all your squads at the cost of not seeing the entire year's schedule. This change is cosmetic only; the tools still work the same way.

'''Warning:''' Dwarves who are permanently on-duty with no downtime have been observed to begin to starve themselves keeping to the rigorous schedule, and thus grow unhappy. Do you really want to find out how much damage that practice spear can do? To allow some of your dwarves to go sleeping when they need, and also eat and drink (even from carried rations!), you '''''need''''' to lower the minimum number of dwarves of the squad that need to follow the current order at any time in the order criteria as listed above. You want the criteria to be at least one or two dwarves less than the current number of dwarves in your squad. This will change the limit for the current month only, so use the copy/paste feature to update every month. It should be emphasized that dwarves who are stationed or on patrol will not eat or drink from their backpacks and flasks. Backpacks and flasks are more to shorten break times than to eat in the field. If there are no opportunities for breaks, carried rations will not be utilized.

This does not apply to training orders -- dwarves will attend to their needs as necessary between sparring sessions or demonstrations.

'''More Warning:''' When using a rotation schedule as described in the warning above, military dwarves that have no civilian skills, and possibly also civilian dwarves who do not have any military skills can generate bad thoughts with disturbing frequency caused by them frequently going on and off duty from monthly rotations. To avoid this problem it may be a good idea to cross train all your militia with at least one level in a civilian skill.

===Orders===

:''If you were redirected here while looking for information on moving your squads to a certain point on command, you may be looking for the [[Squads#Selecting_Squads.2FSoldiers|squad movement]] section on the [[squads]] page. Multiple orders can be given to a squad by pressing the 'o' key again; this can be useful if you want part of a squad on patrol duty and another part training, or part of a squad training, and the other half stood down.

The five types of scheduling orders are listed below:

====Inactive / no order====

When dwarves have an empty spot in their schedule, dwarves with good self-discipline will visit the barracks and train themselves in their spare time - if you see a dwarf doing "Individual training" when they're free, that's what's happening. Technically this is not an order applicable in the 'Give Orders' screen - it is a ''lack'' of an order.

====Training====

For your dwarves to train, a '''[[barracks]]''' must be designated. This can be done through using {{k|q}} to examine an appropriate building and assigning it as a barracks. Many storage objects are eligible to be designated as a barracks, along with [[bed]]s, [[armor stand]]s, and [[weapon rack]]s. There is a 'Position' option that allows you to assign specific beds/storage to specific dwarves. If dwarves aren't assigned anything in particular they'll just use whatever they feel like, as per normal.

When being viewed, barracks can be {{k|n}}amed, used for {{k|s}}leeping, {{k|t}}raining, or {{k|i}}ndiv eq. and {{k|s}}quad eq. You can choose if a squad trains in one place and sleeps in another, or in multiple, and so on. Multiple squads can overlap with one barracks. It is assumed that indiv. eq and squad eq refer to individual and squad equipment respectively, meaning that the dwarves will store their equipment in this barracks if given the option. The indiv. eq option will make dwarves store their personal belongings in the selected barracks, while the squad eq option will store equipment designated for that squad when it's not in use.

To get marksdwarves to train in any way other than bashing each other with their crossbows, they must have quivers and an archery range. Archers will not fire bolts without a quiver to store them in (i.e. they will not hold a single stack in their hand). The archery range is set up for the squad via building an archery target and listing it as a {{k|t}}raining area for that squad. Marksdwarves will want to train more than archery, so make sure they also have a barracks to train at (otherwise they may sit around unable to follow orders). If you are having trouble getting marksdwarves to train, see the appropriate section of the [[Military F.A.Q.]] for more information.

When dwarves are being ordered to train, squad members will set up training demonstrations for particular skills, or they will have dwarves spar. Any dwarves in the squad that don't qualify for these will default to individual training.

====Defend Burrows====

After a [[burrow]] has been created in the {{k|w}} menu, you can order your dwarves to defend it. If an enemy enters the burrow (and is not hiding) the assigned squads will be alerted and attack it. It is unknown if a soldier defending a burrow is limited to his line-of-sight or is simply aware that an enemy is present.

====Stations====

Stations are set in the {{k|N}}otes menu. Simply {{k|p}}lace a point where you want a squad to stand, give it a {{k|n}}ame if you want to be able to find it quickly, then open the scheduling menu and set your chosen squad to be Stationed and select the station you want.

====Routes====

Routes are made by combining stations. Once you have stations set along your desired route (at least two stations are necessary), hit {{k|r}}outes while in the {{k|N}}otes menu. {{k|a}}dd a route, {{k|n}}ame it something appropriate, then {{k|e}}dit its waypoints. You need to {{k|a}}dd the points in the same order you want the dwarves to follow. They'll loop back to the initial point when they reach the last one. Waypoints can no longer be made on the fly; only stations can be selected as waypoints.

===Instructors and Demonstrations===

Members of a squad with relatively high experience in a [[combat skill]] will lead the group during a [[sparring|training]] session. This can be in the form of a demonstration. Instructors gain [[teacher|teaching]] experience, while students gain [[student]] and [[concentration]] experience. Higher levels of these skills make demonstrations more effective<sup>[http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=85279.0 source]</sup>. Observing demonstrations (with typically non-existent teacher/student/concentration skills) is not as effective as practicing and sparring; to maximize sparring organize your dwarves into squads of three, with two required for any training activity.

===Individual Combat Drill===

Otherwise unoccupied soldiers may go to the barracks for individual combat drills regardless of the alert level of their squad, if the squad to which the dwarf is assigned has any Training barracks available. Dwarves assigned to an inactive squad will remain civilians. This can be useful to train up new recruits without drafting them and hurting their happiness.

==Frequently Asked Questions==

''See [[Military F.A.Q.]]''

{{Military}}

Dwarf Fortress Wiki:Sandbox

2015-05-06T20:37:52Z

NCommander:

{{sandbox}}
Nothing to see here, move along.
It was inevitable
<diagram>
test
[%94][%95][%96]
test
</diagram>
test

test edit 2

woo

Sausages

going straight for autoconfirm

Adding a link
[[http:www.suse.com | Suse Linux ]]

WikiEditor test

`code` te`st`

``code`` te``s`t``
autoconfirm
test

Do you even dorf?

testing one two three

dorfs for the dorf god

blood for the blood god

testing link
[[http:www.google.com | google]]

Autoconfirm One

Autoconfirm Two

Autoconfirm Three
Confirming Autoconfirm

Dwarf Fortress Wiki:Sandbox

2015-05-06T20:37:39Z

NCommander:

Dwarf Fortress Wiki:Sandbox

2015-05-06T20:37:18Z

NCommander:

Dwarf Fortress Wiki:Sandbox

2015-05-06T20:37:00Z

NCommander: