Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Author Topic: I'm starting to hate the military system  (Read 1052 times)

Micro102

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
I'm starting to hate the military system
« on: November 25, 2015, 06:16:53 am »

So after spending multiple hours fiddling with marksdwarves and only getting one to train at a time, I start training a force up. I tried equipping them with some leather gear such as cloaks and mittens but my civ dwarves take them. This proved extra annoying when putting dwarves into a new squad makes then unequip EVERYTHING. Is there a way to assign certain items to military use only? Then after forbidding and unforbidding dozens of items to get them onto the proper dwarves, I trick some zombies into crossing a moat to separate them from the horde. I plan on killing them in small groups at a time. This is where things get bad. My marksdwarves, despite having tons of marksdwarf skill and only dabbling hammerdwarf skill run up to the enemy to melee them. Then, despite having no path to the other zombies due to the draw bridge being up and despite my orders for them to move back into the fort, they just stand there staring at the zombies while they get shot at. Is there no way to tell them to retreat? And if that wasn't bad enough the zombies began LEAPING OVER THE MOAT. I watch as 3 zombies just jump 5 tiles over the moat and proceed to maul my units.

I'd also like to mention that it's annoying that I cannot tell my dwarves to temporarily guard a burrows. I have to go into the orders, replace them, then change them back when I'm done. The station order is useless as the dwarves will interpret the other side of a wall effectively 50 tiles away as where I want them stationed.

It's so cumbersome I'm starting to feel like abandoning forts with sieges all together.
Logged

Daris

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: I'm starting to hate the military system
« Reply #1 on: November 25, 2015, 06:57:30 am »

Your marksdwarves probably had no ammo.  They chew through ammo pretty quickly at the range, and inexperienced marksdwarves don't always refill their quivers immediately.  You can check if they have ammo by going to their inventory and looking inside their quivers.  Whenever my marksdwarves try to melee something, it's always because they ran out of ammo and haven't reloaded yet.

eta: There is no way to prevent civilian dwarves from taking non-armor clothing.  You can assign categories (e.g. "cloaks") as part of your military uniform, or you can stick specific items onto specific military dwarves, but the only reliable way to make sure your soldiers get cloaks is to make enough cloaks for the entire fortress.  Insofar as mittens ... why don't you make gauntlets instead?  Civilian dwarves won't claim them and they're better protection.  Bone gauntlets are even better, if you have bone available.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2015, 07:09:03 am by Daris »
Logged

Micro102

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: I'm starting to hate the military system
« Reply #2 on: November 25, 2015, 02:33:04 pm »

Your marksdwarves probably had no ammo.  They chew through ammo pretty quickly at the range, and inexperienced marksdwarves don't always refill their quivers immediately.  You can check if they have ammo by going to their inventory and looking inside their quivers.  Whenever my marksdwarves try to melee something, it's always because they ran out of ammo and haven't reloaded yet.

eta: There is no way to prevent civilian dwarves from taking non-armor clothing.  You can assign categories (e.g. "cloaks") as part of your military uniform, or you can stick specific items onto specific military dwarves, but the only reliable way to make sure your soldiers get cloaks is to make enough cloaks for the entire fortress.  Insofar as mittens ... why don't you make gauntlets instead?  Civilian dwarves won't claim them and they're better protection.  Bone gauntlets are even better, if you have bone available.
Nope they had bolts. Trust me I went through every option available with a fine comb.

I didn't make gauntlets because every guide I could find says to make mittens not gauntlets. No idea why.
Logged

Shonai_Dweller

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: I'm starting to hate the military system
« Reply #3 on: November 25, 2015, 04:37:00 pm »

That's very odd. In every fortress I've run, new marksdwarves sprint to the leatherworkers as soon as their cloak becomes available. I also assign them leather gloves (Just because it seems a bit more realistic than metal gauntlets) and again military always seem to get the new stuff before civ dwarves get round to nabbing them.

Are you sure you have the cloaks, gloves, mittens and whatever assigned as their uniforms properly? Set on 'replace clothes' and make sure they don't have hunter/woodcutter labours set. And make sure their training alert is on of course.
Logged

FortunaDraken

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: I'm starting to hate the military system
« Reply #4 on: November 25, 2015, 05:54:30 pm »

You could also go in and tell them to equip specific clothing, which I believe stops anyone else from grabbing it, but is tedious as hell. But yeah, best thing to do is generally go with clothing that has an armour rating of some sort so civis don't grab them.
Logged
I just had a "lord consort" visit and decide to stay. Preparing for Trojan war reenactment.
Protip: statues cannot be made out of wood unless they're artifacts. If you see what appears to be a wooden statue outside your fort and it's not an artifact, destroy it immediately.

Daris

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: I'm starting to hate the military system
« Reply #5 on: November 25, 2015, 05:55:27 pm »

I have no idea why any guide would tell you to give your military mittens.  I only think mittens are useful in cold climates, or if you don't have gloves available for some reason.  Gauntlets are better protection (marginally anyway - leather armor isn't great protection) and they wear out far more slowly.

The best protection of all is, of course, the dodging skill, which your dwarves (including marksdwarves) will teach themselves at a barracks, so the armor you give them is really secondary anyway.

Also: it is possible to assign your military dwarves to guard a particular burrow only during a particular alert.  You can also have an effectively unlimited number of possible alerts.  It's done through scheduling.

Let's say you want your markdwarves to guard Burrow X during a civilian alert.  Go into the scheduler (m -> s) and then hit * until you reach your civilian alert.  The name of the alert is at the top of the screen in black-on-white text and it's easy to overlook that you can change alerts this way.   Choose your marksdwarf squad (a combination of +/- and arrow keys to select a squad) and then o to give an order.  Scroll through the options with o, and order them to Defend burrows, then select Burrow X to defend.  Shift-Enter to save and exit, then use c and p to copy the orders and paste them down for every month.

Now when you put your fort on a civilian alert, the civilians will run to the alert burrow, but your marksdwarves will run to Burrow X automatically.

This is a flexible system.  You can create a dozen different non-civilian alerts that send your various military dwarves to do this or that in whatever combination you prefer.  Make a backup save before you start screwing around with it, though.

When your marksdwarves ran into melee, were they burrowed at the time?

eta: Sorry, I neglected a step: after you adjust the orders for a particular squad for a particular alert, you need to attach the squad to the alert.  In the alert screen (m -> a) arrow down to (in example) your civilian alert, choose the marksdwarf squad you want defending Burrow X, and then hit enter to attach that squad to that alert.

You can also assign the squad to the alert manually, with the squad screen (s -> choose the letter of your squad -> t until you reach the correct alert).  Attaching the squad in the alert screen, however, automates this step.
« Last Edit: November 25, 2015, 06:06:13 pm by Daris »
Logged

vulture

  • Escaped Lunatic
    • View Profile
Re: I'm starting to hate the military system
« Reply #6 on: November 26, 2015, 03:24:33 am »

My method for getting marksdwarves to do what they are supposed to do is to make sure their firing positions don't have any other walkable ground nearby on the same level, and no path to the enemies. I.e. the zone where the enemy are is one z level below the fortifications your dwarves are using, and the only place they have to stand is in the firing positions. Then when you give a station order, they will generally stand right next to the fortifications and start shooting at any visible invaders. The same principle works with archery towers outdoors: make the firing positions 1 or 2 z levels above ground, and have a 1 tile wide walkable perimeter around the inner edge of the fortifications (with the core of the tower either being solid stone or having no floor.

When obeying a station command they will positions themselves near the point you specify on the same z-level. So make sure the only places they can possibly stand are the ones you want.

It's probably not feasible to retrofit this to an existing fort, but is pretty easy to do when planning the defenses of a new fort.
Logged

Shonai_Dweller

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: I'm starting to hate the military system
« Reply #7 on: November 26, 2015, 08:15:37 am »

Yeah, I do something like that. A sealed off bunker of crossbowdwarves to soften up the enemy as they approach. Placed near the entrance hall where the real military is waiting. I even put a stockpile of high quality bolts in there in the hope that one day they'll figure out how to pick them up and reload (pretty sure they don't).
Logged