Bay 12 Games Forum

Is any of your armor in a stockpile that has Refuse enabled at any point?

...Oh crap. I think I see where you're going. I believe I set the main stockpile to allow bones, which are in the Refuse category. That could be screwing everything up, if that activated accelerated decay in the zone.

Wealth and beds? Not sure if it'd be enough to trump the unattractiveness of the extremely hostile environment, though.

Wooden in training and metal in combat is a function that you could set in the old interface. But the default was to use both. Are you sure Archer uniform is enabling this?

As I said, my custom uniformed dwarves are currently using wooden bolts and metal bolts. (Not sure which they prioritise, I have hardly any metal bolts around right now).

Then the bug resides elsewhere. I have a ton of iron bolts and almost as many wooden bolts, but my custom uniformed marksdwarves will never use the latter for training even if I forbid the former (they just won't pick up ammo nor go to the range), and ammo customization is non-existent in the Steam version, for the time being.

My guys are plunking away at the archery range next door to their barracks now. As in previous versions, it takes them a while to work up to it.

Using a custom uniform, first squad it was made with can't pick up bolts, but disband and create a squad based on the uniform and it works OK.

I really want to be able to set uniforms in advance before setting up any squads at all really like 47.05. That's always the first thing I do since it takes a while, recorded in a macro.

Do they use wooden bolts, though? If so, then the Archer uniform has some hidden property which can't be applied to custom uniforms, and therefore if you happen to have deleted it (like I did), you've stripped yourself of that capability.

Haven't tested any further solutions/workarounds, but as far as ammo selection is concerned, a slightly clunky but not too cumbersome fix would be to use the Stocks screen to forbid bolts not intended to be used at the time.

So metal bolts would be forbidden most of the time, only to be enabled (and wooden/bone ones forbidden) when combat is imminent.

I'm also very interested in this topic. I know military in general & marksdwarves & bolts specifically have always been pretty fickle, but I've been successfully using them up through 47.04. However, so far in Premium I have not been able to get any marksdwarves to pick up bolts, either by attempting to follow my old habits, or trying some of the rumored fixes for Premium such as:

• Place extra coffers in the barracks assigned to the marksdwarves for them to put bolts in
• Place stockpiles for bolts inside the barracks assigned to your marksdwarves
• Place separate stockpiles for metal or wood/bone bolts, metal in the barracks, wood/bone within an archery zone
• Use the default "Archer" uniform for marksdwarves, not a custom one
• Use "Move" orders to move your marksdwarves near the stockpiles with the bolts
• Toggle your marksdwarves squad from Off Duty to Active/Training to get them to equip bolts
• Click "Update Equipment" in the uniform menu for their squad

I've been trying all of these, but still no luck. However, I keep seeing messages from people on reddit, etc. claiming they have gotten marksdwarves to equip ammo, and often attributing their success to one of these tips, so maybe it is possible? It might be worth trying to get anybody who HAS gotten them to equip ammo to chime in and say / post a screenshot of exactly what their uniform/squad settings are, and what their barracks/archery range/bolt stockpile settings / locations are, and hopefully we could pin down a common trait? (Also a similar thread here, maybe we could try to consolidate info?)

Of course it's also quite possible that there's just some obscure bug that is active in most saves, but randomly not affecting some saves, in which case it wouldn't matter even if we all used the same settings

Don't forget about having to delete and recreate squads, barracks and archery ranges.

Marksdwarves are seriously bugged right now. I've managed to get them to grab bolts through cumbersome fiddling, but they waste precious iron bolts in training and the logic breaks down before long.

They just dorf off to do absolutely nothing in the meeting hall after spending a quiver's worth at the range.

It has nearly single-handedly killed my desire to play at this time.

This looks awesome. Looking forward to the Steam release!

Bit of a late response, but...

There was a point in the history of game development where this 'plain logic' you describe was a foreign concept. Post-release content updates were exciting and rare, and seen as the developer going above and beyond their expected duties.

I think you underestimate the ability of larger studios to treat their games like capital. Development costs are ridiculous for AAA titles, and these days the largest developers (not sure if Paradox counts) take into account the longevity of a games profitability when they decide how much to invest. It's not a cynical attitude in and of itself; these developers don't see anything wrong with this style of development. To say this kind of development doesn't exist is untrue.

I'm not saying that strung-out development is necessarily a bad thing, though it often is. I just can't believe we've reached the point where people are defending it as normal. Times have certainly changed.

The fact many modern games have a post-launch DLC plan doesn't necessarily mean the core game's willfully underdeveloped just so that said plan can exist. Of course companies want their games to be profitable over a longer timespan. This is business, after all. But they also need the money from DLC sales to actually produce said additional content.

While such a methodology can certainly be abused, I generally defend it because it's a positive factor more often then not. Over time, it gives us more fleshed out games than we've had in the past. Does it cost gamers more cash, over time? Yeah, but some gamers want to have the cake and it it too. I'll gladly pay more money to a dev willing to keep expanding a game I enjoy.

There's no rose-tinted past in which game development was better. Earlier games were less complex and therefore less prone to a bug-ridden release. And those that had one were in many cases forever crippled due to the lack of post-launch support. As far as expanded content's concerned, a successful game may have gotten one or two expansions at best. Expansions themselves were quite uncommon.

CK2 was a totally different release than Stellaris or Imperator. Everybody was super hyped for it, there was no real concern of it being dumbed down (which is often the general thrust of the harshest criticism for sequels) and from pre-release to the leaked version through the proper release, people were enthusiastic about it.

And it can't be a matter just of time period preference, or else there wouldn't have been such a big difference in the relative players of CK1 vs EU3 and CK2 vs EU3.

Also, Sengoku and March of the Eagles were never really mainline games, they were meant to be one-off titles. Stellaris may very well have originally been too, they said something to the effect that they were caught off guard by the enthusiasm.

I'm surprised about the enthusiasm around Stellaris, but I suppose much of it comes from the fact space opera sci-fi caters to a large audience. And as it was said earlier there's not much in the way of competition. I'm miffed the DLC continuously expand the later portions of the game, and ignore the fact the mid-game is a gaping chasm.