After countless failed attempts, I've finally perfected methods to get marksdwarf training working nicely, and without micromanagement.Many here are quite aware that marksdwarves are fairly buggy, and often refuse to use archery ranges, or stand in front of them, and fail to fire their crossbows. Well, I've got a solution for you. This should also apply to Bowdwarves and blowgunners but I haven't explicatively tested it. I'll note the differences for them as they come up.I present to you NCommander's Ulitmate Guide to Marksdwarf Training:This is pretty well known, but for the sake of completeness, for every markdwarf in your squad you need the following- One crossbow/bow/blowgun- One quiver- One stack of bolts for each markdwarf to fire(bowdwarves use arrows, blowgunners use darts. I'm not 100% that blowgunners need quivers ...)Crossbows can be made out of wood or bone at a bowyers workshop, or out of metal at a metalsmith/magma forge. Quivers must be made of leather. Make sure you have enough between your hunters and markdwarves before activating their squad; I've seen dwarves fail to grab a quiver until deactivated and reactivated. Because Marksdwarves do nothing BUT archery train with this setup, you're going to need a *lot* of bolts. Better have a weaponsmith/woodcrafter/bonecarver dedicated to the job on repeat.If you're going to draft a hunter, clear his labors, andthat your hunter has put his quiver and crossbow away. If you don't, he'll generate equipment mismatches. If you have this problem, don't panic. Open your idiot in the "k" menu, then open his inventory, find the quiver, and forbid the bolts in it. He'll dump them, and properly reload. If you do a citizen's milita, I recommend hunters go in a melee squad, it will likely be less painful.If you don't use hunters, you may want to remove their bolt assignments. I use hunters, and haven't had significant issues as long as I've careful when I draft them.The first rule of marksdwarf training is you do *not* assign them a normal barrack. If they have that, they will always prefer to train as hammerdwarves with their crossbows vs. actually shooting the stupid things.Instead, build a room with a bunch of archery ranges. I recommend putting them against the left most wall so the shooting direction is automatically correct, but this should work regardless.The room must be large enough that the marksdwarf has a one gap space between them and the target; I just make their "barrack" 10x10, and put an ammo stockpile in it.Here's a screenshot.Once you build your range, you must define it as a room. Make it so it touches the far wall, and don't worry, range rooms can overlap. You have to do this for each. Make sure the shooting direction is correct! In addition, your marksdwarf squad MUST at minimum have train, and squad equipment set.Repeat this for each range; you'll have 5-10 targets overlapping each other and assigned to your marksdwarves squad (in my screenshots, they are the "Home Guard")This is by far the most difficult part. Fear the 'm' menu, for it eats children. The 'm' menu is confusing on the best days, but this guide will walk you through it.The first and default page is the positions page. Ignore it for now, you want to make the right uniform for your marksdwarves, press 'u' to bring up that screen. Do yourself a favor and just delete the default archer uniform. It's wrong and will not work properly.Create a new uniform, and add the following:- crossbow (do NOT used individual choice, ranged; you *will* end up with dwarves who think an axe is a ranged weapon)- shield (optional)- leather armor- leather headwear- leather legwear- leather armor- leather legwearMake sure "exact match" is selected. This appears to fix most of the issues of them not picking up quivers. You might be able to get away with over clothing however.Here's what it should like if you did it right:Now press 'p' to go back to the positions menu. When you create the squad, it will ask for a uniform. This is misleading; the game *only* applies the uniform to the first dwarf selected. We'll fix that in a moment. Select your recruits, like so, then switch to the 'e' menu. Select your squad, then press 'U' (that's captain U) to bring up the uniform selection screen.Here's what it looks like.Highlight your crossbow uniform, and press 'Shift-Enter' to assign it to all positions in the squad. If you then check the positions screen, at the top, it will say 10/10 marksdwarves, instead of 1/1 markdwarf 9/9 wrestlers, which is what will happen if you leave it on defaults.We're almost done. Go to the ammo screen.If you haven't done anything with marksdwarves before, then the defaults are correct, go to the schedule screen.If you're setting this by hand, here's what to know.- Each squad needs the correct ammo- Crossbowman/Markdwarves use bolts- Bowman use arrows- Blowgunners use darts- Set a material preference if you want*, and set it so bolts are used for both training and combat. I generally have enough ore that it isn't hard to mass produce copper bolts. They will gum up if bolts for training and combat are different, here's the bug report: www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?action=post;board=11.0 * - might gum up if they pick a quiver with the wrong ammo. I strongly recommend just leaving it as "bolts"Generally, for me, once they get elite or legendary, I just put them on patrol duty and have them stop training, in which I change their ammo assignment.Now, for the magic bit that gets them doing nothing *but* training. Open the schedule screen, and look at the orders. The default is "Train, 10 minimium".Press x to delete the order. The schedule screen will change to show no scheduled orders.Press 'o' to pull up the give order screen. Press o until 'Train' is set, and then press + so it shows minimum 1, like this. Then press shift-done to give the order. The screen will look like this:Now do it again, for the total members of your squad (you CAN give more than 5 orders, you just have to scroll in the orders screen to see it). When you're done it should look like this, after doing it 10 times.Copy and paste the order to all the months. You can also set Sleep in Barrack at need to increase their training time, though this will raise the stress levels of dwarves in the squad due to tired thoughts.You're almost done. Activate your squad, and after they finish picking up equipment, watch your bolt supplies vanish as your marksdwarves do nothing *but* archery training.Yup. Here's how it works. Military dwarves have a preference list roughly as follows to training- Squad training- Individual Combat Drill- Spar- Archery Training (if equipped with a bow).Squad training and sparing require multiple dwarves (and yes, marksdwarves *will* spar as long as they're noivce hammerdwarves*). Training, minimium of 1 forces them to work solo. Since they don't have a normal barrack, they can't drill, which leaves Archery Training as the only possible way to train. Except for food and drink, they will *constantly* offload bolts, switching to "Cannot follow orders" when the fortress's supply is depleted. As soon as bolts exist, they'll reload, and make them disappear too.* - Replace hammer with sword for bowdwarves and blowgunners.Archery training grants less experience than live fire (8XP per bolt vs. 30XP), but no micromanagement, no hauling, one setup, and you can ignore it until you get that glorious announcement that Urist has become an Elite Marksdwarf.The short version: DON'T USE STATION!There's two ways to stop them charging into melee. Patrol Routes, and Defend Burrors order. I'll expand this guide once the science is done.For patrol routes, marksdwarves *will* not take a Pickup Equipment order as long as they have line of sight on their enemy. Have them go through a door or something, and as soon as they loose sight of the goblin/forgotten beast/demon, they'll immediately go find bolts and reload.I'm still sciencing the Defend Burrows order to see how effective it is at preventing melee charges.