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[Ghriszly]

I've been having a lot of trouble getting my military training. I finally managed to get my melee squad to do some individual combat drills (would like them to train together) but my marksdwarves simply refuse to train. I've followed every guide I can find to no avail.

I have a barracks set for sleeping and storing equipment and an archery range set for training with each target designated and pointing the right direction.

The squad has a training schedule set and is active/training in the squads menu.

They all have crossbows equipped but I don't see any quivers in their inventory.

I have them all set to hunting with all other activities disabled but I still see them "storing item in stockpile" or "store equipment in bin/barrel" or "pickup equipment"

I have plenty of crossbows/ammo and quivers for everyone. I have even put stockpiles of them in the barracks and disallowed bins because I read there was a problem with them. I really have no idea whats wrong.

[Saiko Kila]

I understand you enabled hunting only for tests, because normally hunting should be disabled and never enabled on anyone in militia.

Make sure you have enough bolts enabled per squad (I'd say about 40 bolt per person, unless you use exclusively metal bolt, then it can be lower) and they are set to training/combat (menu m-f). Make sure that they are actually assigned (green marker or something, depending on graphics pack). The same for hunting, which uses different assignment for ammo and weapons. They won't pickup quivers if they don't have ammo to get, even if they keep their crossbows.

Barracks should be set for training. I'm not sure about sleeping and storing functions, because I don't use them. Marksdwarves set for training will train in barracks even without ammo, but of course not in shooting ranges (which can overlap physically with barracks). They will train melee related activities in barracks.

[atari911]

I do the following which seems to work pretty well:

1) Create a squad with ranged weapons. Check their equipment after assigning to make sure they all at least have a ranged weapon.

2) Mark the squad to have a couple hundred bolts for combat and a couple hundred for training. Edit your numbers to match your production. I usually do 200 for combat and 1000 for training.

3) Create archery targets. Create the room, select the correct firing direction and then assign the squad to train there.

4) Right next to the archery targets (the same physical room seems to work well), create a storage space for ammo and allow bins.

5) Produce (or buy) lots of bolts.

6) s-t to activate the squad.

With this method I usually can eventually get all of the targets to be used at the same time. I regularly get elite marksdwarves with the amount of training they do.

As a side note, I also always assign a weapon rack to armor stand room for them to train in when they are not shooting at the targets. I'm not sure that it has any effect on the archery practice but I hate to have them hanging out in the tavern when they are not shooting. This does result in them getting good a wrestling and using the crossbow as a hammer (it works quite well actually). to combat this i have raised archery positions surrounded by fortifications. Putting an overhanging roof above them will also stop them from jumping over the wall and going harakiri on their asses.

One last thing... I also always have the archery targets designation overlapping. I normally have 5-6 archery targets all with different size rooms to get them all to stagger when shooting so it looks like they are trying different ranges/distance. Not sure if this makes any difference but at least I can testify that overlapping does not harm the training.

I'm playing 44.10 with DFhack.

[Tarqeq]

I generally agree with the above, you should try those.

The only thing I would add is that if you want them to shoot targets during their regular trainings, I think I recall that overlapping barracks and archery range helps.

[OmahaMH]

I created my first dedicated crossbow squad last night and set them up with ten targets in their barracks, hoping many would shoot at once.  I'm observing that only one shoots at a time, and always at the same target.  They all /seem/ to be getting experience (up to level 2 marksdwarf after a couple of realtime hours) but I'm wondering why only one goes at a time.  I think my ammunition settings (train with bone, which are constantly being produced, fight with metal, which I should make more of...) might be off.

Ten targets in a row, all designated as rooms assigned to the squad (T but not I or Q) and a cabinet nearby defines a proper barracks (that overlaps most of the archery "rooms") with TIQ for the squad.  I had originally channeled in FRONT of the targets to allow bolts to be reused, but then they stopped using the targets, which I think is because they need to be able to access the front of the target physically?  So, I constructed a floor over the channel.

I'll report back if tweaking ammo or changing anything establishes a more impressive firing line.  Speaking of ammo, if I've designated bone bolts for training and metal bolts for combat, do the dwarves carry 25 of each and use what is necessary at the moment, OR will they keep bone as long as they're training, and then delay when I order them to station or kill while they drop the bone and pick up some metal ones?

[atari911]

Oh one more important thing.... Make certain that all the targets are set to be shot at from the right direction. I often miss this and get it wrong on some. (Added this to my original post's list).

@Ghriszly - I also sometimes get only one marksdwarf training at a time and I think that it is mostly due to the amount of available bolts. You can check the bold stocks assigned to each squad in the military ammo screen to verify.

[anewaname]

All military dwarfs will train using Individual Combat Drills until they some levels in basic combat skills like Discipline and Fighting, then they will participate in group training. It may be that they are just getting in shape and losing some weight first, or it may be that they need some skill levels... This probably is part of the issue you noticed, where they did ICD for some time instead of group training.

[Sarmatian123]

I've been having a lot of trouble getting my military training. I finally managed to get my melee squad to do some individual combat drills (would like them to train together) but my marksdwarves simply refuse to train. I've followed every guide I can find to no avail.

I have a barracks set for sleeping and storing equipment and an archery range set for training with each target designated and pointing the right direction.

The squad has a training schedule set and is active/training in the squads menu.

They all have crossbows equipped but I don't see any quivers in their inventory.

I have them all set to hunting with all other activities disabled but I still see them "storing item in stockpile" or "store equipment in bin/barrel" or "pickup equipment"

I have plenty of crossbows/ammo and quivers for everyone. I have even put stockpiles of them in the barracks and disallowed bins because I read there was a problem with them. I really have no idea whats wrong.

I think you hit something we call a military clothing-bug issue. The trick is to make personal assignment of the military equipment to each hunter and keep some crossbows in stockpile, which have no owners.

Also about active/training in squads alert menu. This signal works to opposite. Turn it off to see if they then pick up on their training schedules.

Also about training schedules, you may wish to amend them, so every month 2 of them in squad trains and whole squad once a 6 or 12 months. It helps with something important during training. Sparring maybe, and sparring marksdwarves will do too from time to time. Oh and it is ok to have marksdwarves assigned both to barracks and archery range. Archery range always take priority from what I noticed during 1 month long training pass.

[redcup]

I was having the hardest time getting my marksdwarf squad to train more than one person at a time at the targets and I thought I had everything set up right. However, I found this article http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Advanced_marksdwarf_training_guide#Squad_training_orders and after following the "squad training orders" section I got many dwarves at a time to use the archery range. It sounds hacky, but it ended up working for me.

[atari911]

I was having the hardest time getting my marksdwarf squad to train more than one person at a time at the targets and I thought I had everything set up right. However, I found this article http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Advanced_marksdwarf_training_guide#Squad_training_orders and after following the "squad training orders" section I got many dwarves at a time to use the archery range. It sounds hacky, but it ended up working for me.

Thanks for the link! I remember doing something like that in the past but it was too tedious. I'm going to start implementing that macro though! 

[tedward1337]

I don’t know if this has been mentioned, but in the schedule screen you can choose how many dwarves you want to carry out the order. I have it set to the number of archery targets available, and the others can be set to routes, or archery pillboxes I have set up. Hope this helps!