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[Nil Athelion]

I tend to use crossbow squads as attrition fighters.  They perch on top of my walls, behind fortifications, taking pot-shots at anything that comes in range.  Lethally effective?  No.  But over time they will break a siege, drive off an ambush, whatever.  Or at least weaken them enough that my fortress can bum-rush the remainder.  (I generally have everyone in a squad, with elites based off of whenever steel becomes available.  A bum-rush of 40-80 dwarves is grimly effective against goblins.)

[Werdna]

they don't need to become legendary to stop getting bad thoughts, i think 5 in any weapon skill is enough?

I think that prevents the conscription bad thought when going on duty, what he may be referring to is the bug with the escalating bad thought from 'long patrol duty' that you can't get rid of until a dwarf reaches master skill and stops caring about patrol duty.  In older versions, you merely had to schedule in a month or two of breaks from training (typically spent pump operating) to get rid of it, but in newer versions its doesn't reset the bad thought.

[thegoatgod_pan]

A. Crossbows are supposed to pierce armor, that isn't op, it is realism--crossbows were meant to counter heavily armored troops.

B.  Crossbows kick ass against the undead since even wooden bolts will bring down a zombie--it is the only dependable way I know for clearing an undead horde--axe dwarves get overwhelmed with sheer numbers.

[crazysheep]

Having used and depended on plenty of marksdwarves for fort defence, I can say that crossbows aren't used for killing armoured goblins as much as traps or melee dwarves. I use marksdwarves as a form of artillery support - weaken enemies as much as possible for the melee guys to catch up and maul them to death. And score the lucky kill if possible.

[Urist Da Vinci]

A squad of marksdwarves are effective at slowing an enemy charge, since they shoot at the closest enemy, and typical wounds cause enemies to fall over from a leg hit or pass out from pain from a bone hit. Testing in the arena suggests that if a bunch of goblins charge a marksdwarf from maximum crossbow range (20 tiles), a noob marksdwarf will be able to shoot 2 times, while a grand master/legendary marksdwarf could shoot 4-5 times.

Marksdwarves tend to suck when flanking the enemy movement, as they will waste a lot of shots trying to hit an enemy who is lying on the ground unconscious.

[Konrad von Richtmark]

A. Crossbows are supposed to pierce armor, that isn't op, it is realism--crossbows were meant to counter heavily armored troops.

Pierce armour, sure. Completely ignore it as if it wasn't there to begin with even when a crappy wooden bolt hits top-grade plate armour, no way. The effect might be (or, it seems, was during early 0.31) qualitatively correct, but quantitatively way out of line.

On the late medieval battlefield, plate armour was simply king. There was nothing against which it did not offer significant protection. The difference was simply that against some kinds of attacks (e.g. bolts and blunt weapons) it "only" significantly reduced the damage you'd take, while against others (e.g. light sword edges) it'd make you almost invulnerable except for hits to weak spots.

[MarcAFK]

Except for weapons designed to penetrate plate armour, axes, hammers, pikes, spears, daggers...
Actually i recall seeing various tests against plate armour (directly to the chest, possible the best case scenario) and one of the things it defended against best was crossbow bolts, they tended to be made out of rather mild steel or even iron which made them terrible at penetrating plate armour more than a cm or 2 at best, with adequate linen padding it would generally be a minor wound (not counting infections).
However, against weaker parts of the armour, joints, eye holes, gauntlets, hits close to bones, any areas which would be lightly padded, the effects would be far more wide ranging anywhere from incapacitating wounds (even a broken finger could end up being fatal in thr front line), broken bones, torn ligaments, torn arterys, and of course a bolt to the eye was pretty much always fatal.
I'll have to admit crossbows in df are overpowered against armour, but it's nothing that a good material rebalance shouldn't fix, as long as we still get good impacts against other body parts i expect things should start being more realistic but still damn fatal (as long as those damn legendary shield users stop swatting bolts from the air like flies).
Feel free to disagree with me, i'm just offering my opinion

[Jake]

Actually i recall seeing various tests against plate armour (directly to the chest, possible the best case scenario) and one of the things it defended against best was crossbow bolts, they tended to be made out of rather mild steel or even iron which made them terrible at penetrating plate armour more than a cm or 2 at best, with adequate linen padding it would generally be a minor wound (not counting infections).

Am I right in guessing that said tests were carried out using modern replicas made especially for the test, probably to a fairly high standard? Something to bear in mind when assessing the usefulness of such weapons is that not everyone could afford the very best of the best; in fact, the ones who could afford the best of the best tended not to show up in battle much.

[Konrad von Richtmark]

The problem with such tests is that it's practically impossible to reliably replicate the exact metallurgical and other manufacturing conditions under which plate armour was manufactured. And that's even assuming that such conditions would be a constant, which they most certainly would not have been.

You'd be amazed at how much back-and-forth arguing, and citing of different often contradictory tests, I've seen on the topic of exactly how well English longbows firing bodkin-headed arrows could penetrate plate armour.

But what I think we seem to be in agreement on is that plate armour should give significant protection against pretty much every kind of attack out there, but that the actual extent of that protection should obviously depend on weapon physics.

[MarcAFK]

Actually i would assume longbows to be an entirey different matter, those things could fire fkn huge arrows. D=
edit: with the barest minimum of googling i found a short comparison between bows and crossbows, basically early crossbows/light crossbows would have similar speed but maybe a quarter the energy of a longbow arrow (due to lesser weight) whilst later period/heavier crossbows could outclass a longbow due to higher speeds.
So yeah, variables and everything.

http://www.thebeckoning.com/medieval/crossbow/cross_l_v_c.html
W.F. Paterson (1990) published data from Stephen V. Grancsay about an experiment comparing a longbow and a crossbow that was spanned with a cranequin.
Longbow 68 lbs. 2.5 oz 133.7 fps
Crossbow 740 lbs 1.25 oz. 138.7 fps
.... NOTE: through the use of modern engineering and advanced materials, modern crossbows are now much more efficient. The Excalibur Exomag has a draw weight of 185 pounds, and is able to send a bolt at 290 fps. The 165 pound draw weight Excalibur Exocet looses bolts at 270 fps, and the 150 pound draw weight Excalibur Vixen looses bolts at 250 fps.

[Sutremaine]

I've never bothered with giving any actively-training soldiers time off. Good bedrooms keep them happy, but good food and lots of sparring are enough to keep them not unhappy.

Tantrum spirals with everybody armed with crossbows would be fun. Should look like an underground wild west saloon shoot out.

I'm moderately sure that they'd use the crossbows themselves as weapons.

[Oaktree]

Given the reload times on crossbows my preference with them is to make that initial salvo by my marksdwarves count.  Which means trying to get the squads trained to a meaningful level, and then letting them get off a close range volley from a protected position.  This means usually being screened by a drawbridge which will be lowered, and being under little threat from a melee attack by either being behind a ditch/fortification, or being screened by a positioned dwarf melee squad.

Goal at that point is crippling the target for the melee troops to mop up.  Though I've also seen a marksdwarf squad in an archery bunker single-handedly obliterate a large squad of goblins as well. 

[MiniMacker]

A. Crossbows are supposed to pierce armor, that isn't op, it is realism--crossbows were meant to counter heavily armored troops.

I don't think wooden bolts are supposed to penetrate candy.

[Corai]

A. Crossbows are supposed to pierce armor, that isn't op, it is realism--crossbows were meant to counter heavily armored troops.

I don't think wooden bolts are supposed to penetrate candy.

Candy has no blunt defense from what I know, so when bolts used [BLUNT] still a wooden one would go right through candy.


-Edit-

And a hammer/mace/flail/whip will shred you through candy too.

[Splint]

So clearly the solution is to gear soliders with steel mail and candy plating. And a leather tunic/shirt/robe underneath.