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[goblolo]

A miner with a crossbow / mining pick wouldn't shoot because of a lack of quiver and bolts in his uniform.

ok then. we have free crossbow barrel (which prolongs after the crossbow itself and work as a "leg" of crutch). Let's attach quiver there! Now our crossbow-pickaxe-crutch will be a crossbow-pickaxe-crutch-quiver! I'd add 1 mechanism into crafting recipie so that it will have auto-reload and thus increase shooting speed.

[Hyndis]

A bayonet is just a menacing spike, and as we all know, dwarves love menacing spikes.

If you decorate a crossbow enough I'm sure it will menace with spikes made out of a dozen different types of materials. Having one big menacing spike on the end to stab things with isn't much of a stretch.

[CaptainLambcake]

i stopped reading after the first sentence

[crekit]

So wait wait wait what you're telling me is if I assign weapons properly I can have a militia that uses both crossbows and melee weapons?

Does sound like a lot of micro managing tho. I really don't like micro. Plus it'll mean I can't just assign uniforms mindlessly. Meh.

[Hyndis]

So wait wait wait what you're telling me is if I assign weapons properly I can have a militia that uses both crossbows and melee weapons?

Does sound like a lot of micro managing tho. I really don't like micro. Plus it'll mean I can't just assign uniforms mindlessly. Meh.

I've found that if you have a blob of marksdwarves you really don't need anything else.

60 marksdwarves all in a single small barracks area together, on active/training all the time, are a nearly invincible defense, and a passive one too. They will train during their off time, and if anything hostile appears they will blast it with a hail of crossbow bolts. Any survivors will be too injured to fight back and so they can be clubbed to death at your leisure.

Give them as much armor as you can, preferably head and chest armor. Skill doesn't matter much. A good helmet and good breastplate can keep a dwarf alive, and injuries can be patched up later. By using strength in numbers the low skill of each individual dwarf doesn't matter much, and the still active dwarves will act like a literal meatshield for any injured dwarves. An arrow to the leg or arm isn't lethal.

I do suggest having a squad of dwarves with edged weapons, like axes, swords, or picks, in order to handle creatures that do not bleed. A creature that does not bleed cannot be killed by marksdwarves. I've seen a creature with several thousand stuck-in bolts in it, and it still doesn't die. You need edged weapons to chop it up into pieces. Because of this, keep a squad of dwarves with edged weapons in reserve. Let them be on active/training so they'll spar and practice when you don't need them. But if you do need them then you have a well trained fast response force.

[crekit]

So wait wait wait what you're telling me is if I assign weapons properly I can have a militia that uses both crossbows and melee weapons?

Does sound like a lot of micro managing tho. I really don't like micro. Plus it'll mean I can't just assign uniforms mindlessly. Meh.

I've found that if you have a blob of marksdwarves you really don't need anything else.

60 marksdwarves all in a single small barracks area together, on active/training all the time, are a nearly invincible defense, and a passive one too. They will train during their off time, and if anything hostile appears they will blast it with a hail of crossbow bolts. Any survivors will be too injured to fight back and so they can be clubbed to death at your leisure.

Give them as much armor as you can, preferably head and chest armor. Skill doesn't matter much. A good helmet and good breastplate can keep a dwarf alive, and injuries can be patched up later. By using strength in numbers the low skill of each individual dwarf doesn't matter much, and the still active dwarves will act like a literal meatshield for any injured dwarves. An arrow to the leg or arm isn't lethal.

I do suggest having a squad of dwarves with edged weapons, like axes, swords, or picks, in order to handle creatures that do not bleed. A creature that does not bleed cannot be killed by marksdwarves. I've seen a creature with several thousand stuck-in bolts in it, and it still doesn't die. You need edged weapons to chop it up into pieces. Because of this, keep a squad of dwarves with edged weapons in reserve. Let them be on active/training so they'll spar and practice when you don't need them. But if you do need them then you have a well trained fast response force.

If I had 60 free dwarves in my current fort I'd be pretty damn happy. I'm more in the range of 6 total tho. And I don't have much wood. (read : any)

[goblolo]

So wait wait wait what you're telling me is if I assign weapons properly I can have a militia that uses both crossbows and melee weapons?

moreover, you can displace melee weapon with another crossbow resulting in a dwarf with 2 crossbows. Using this technique you can create a squad of shotgundwarves.

[Telgin]

So wait wait wait what you're telling me is if I assign weapons properly I can have a militia that uses both crossbows and melee weapons?

Sort of.  As Maklak points out, they're going to have an extremely strong preference for one of the two, depending on which appears in their inventory first.  If you give them a crossbow as the top weapon, they'll shoot it at ranged enemies before trying to bash them with it.  They will occasionally strike with a melee weapon if that's given to them.

If you instead give them a melee weapon first and crossbow second, they won't shoot it and will instead start attacking with their melee weapon.  Worse, they'll occasionally start bashing with the crossbow in melee.

So the benefit is that if you do give marksdwarves melee weapons, they will have a small edge over regular marksdwarves because they will sometimes use them in close combat, but only rarely.  Truth be told, you're probably best off just giving them crossbows made of a heavy metal so the bashing will be effective.  That way you don't have to worry about weighing them down with another weapon, and don't have to worry about them needing two melee weapon skills (hammerdwarf for crossbows I think, plus the other melee weapon's sill).


As an aside, I'd like to point out that there might be something more interesting going on with the number of graspers and weapons / shields being equipped.  As Maklak says in his first post, unicorns have a horn that gives them an extra grasper, but Nidokoenig's mod gives ponies left and right mouth graspers, so they can actually carry two things in their mouths.  This allows you to give them all weapons and shields, despite only having a mouth.  I'm not sure if that has any effect on carrying a crossbow, shield and melee weapon, but probably not since two armed dwarves can use a crossbow and shield just fine.

An arrow to the leg or arm isn't lethal.

Nope, but can be crippling all the same.  In my current fort I watched an elite bowman fire two iron bolts at one of my soldiers.  The first bolt hit him in the left arm, tearing a ligament and tendon through a steel gauntlet.  The second bolt hit him in the right arm, tearing a ligament and tendon through a steel gauntlet.  He never held a weapon again in his life, and he was one of my best shots.   

[Hyndis]

If I had 60 free dwarves in my current fort I'd be pretty damn happy. I'm more in the range of 6 total tho. And I don't have much wood. (read : any)

You can produce unlimited wood by creating an underground tree farm.

If you keep your dwarves safe and secure, it doesn't take long before you get a booming population. With a decently sized population I can get 2-3 new peasants coming online each year.

[crekit]

If I had 60 free dwarves in my current fort I'd be pretty damn happy. I'm more in the range of 6 total tho. And I don't have much wood. (read : any)

You can produce unlimited wood by creating an underground tree farm.

If you keep your dwarves safe and secure, it doesn't take long before you get a booming population. With a decently sized population I can get 2-3 new peasants coming online each year.

Zombie embark. 2-3 a year isn't really going to cut it. I'm thinking more like, say, 30 a month?

[Hyndis]

If you're having a dead dwarf dead every day of the year then something is wrong. Those losses cannot be sustained. Those losses may even be higher than a typical goblin war effort.

A properly trained and equipped dwarf can take on a vast number of zombies, but not all at the same time. Even the toughest dwarf can get overrun through sheer numbers. So you need some bulk to your army, but if you're just throwing peasants at the zombie hordes you're doing exactly what China did in World War Z, which is immensely counterproductive. All you're doing is feeding the zombie horde.

[crekit]

If you're having a dead dwarf dead every day of the year then something is wrong. Those losses cannot be sustained. Those losses may even be higher than a typical goblin war effort.

A properly trained and equipped dwarf can take on a vast number of zombies, but not all at the same time. Even the toughest dwarf can get overrun through sheer numbers. So you need some bulk to your army, but if you're just throwing peasants at the zombie hordes you're doing exactly what China did in World War Z, which is immensely counterproductive. All you're doing is feeding the zombie horde.

Trained and equipped? o.O

Direct combat is pointless anyway, they just get back up again. Re-animation. I just needed more guys to build cage traps and stuff.

[Di]

What about removing close combat attacks from crossbow completely? Would that force them to bash with secondary weapon only?
edit: No dice, they still use it as a blunt weapon even if there's no skill related to it.

[Sutremaine]

In 31.25 I had a one-armed one-legged dwarf who managed to hold a crutch, shield, dagger, and crossbow in her remaining hand.

A miner with a crossbow / mining pick wouldn't shoot because of a lack of quiver and bolts in his uniform. Drafting him might work, but I think he would use one weapon for mining and another for a weapon.

Depends how you define 'miner'. If it's 'dwarf whose highest civilian skill is Mining', then yes you can have them wielding a pick and shooting with a crossbow. You just need to disable the Mining labour first. If you define 'miner' as 'dwarf who is currently capable of responding to a mining designation', then no. You're not just lacking the quiver and bolts in the uniform (that is, the pseudo-uniform for miners that overwrites any military one), but the crossbow as well.

tldr: if you can make a dwarf pick up both a crossbow and a pick, they can be made to pick up the quiver and bolts as well. They won't do any mining while they're thusly armed though.