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40d:Sparring
Sparring is a form of non-lethal combat engaged in by soldiers to train their combat skills in fortress mode. Sparring takes place at barracks; off-duty soldiers will engage in mock combat with other off-duty soldiers, causing incidental injuries as they go but also gaining experience.
It is said that there must be a minimum amount of floor space in barracks before soldiers will spar there.[Verify]
To assign a soldier to sparring, you must take his or her squad off duty. This is accomplished by opening the military screen, selecting the soldier from the list, choosing to view the selected squad, then toggling the duty status until it displays "Squad is standing down". You must have at least two melee soldiers off duty before sparring will begin, although they need not be of the same soldier class. If the conditions are met, the soldiers will automatically choose to spar at their own discretion.
Rotating soldiers between an always-off-duty training squad and a series of on-duty patrol squads can be an effective way of training soldiers without having to assign off-duty status to each soldier directly.
Note: The champions are under no obligation to not crush your windpipe with a single blow. This is not a karate class, this is a bunch of dwarves punching each other until they learn not to be punched. You do not get a fancy rainbow of belts, and you are not guaranteed to survive. But you will learn to roundhouse kick, insofar as a dwarf can roundhouse kick.
Equipment
When soldiers spar, they practice (and thereby gain experience) with whatever weapon and armor they have been assigned, including shields. Thus, in order to train axedwarves, it is necessary to assign the recruits axes, and so forth with all other weapons. The weapon you wish for them to spar with can be chosen through the Military screen, and then the weapons selection.
Sparring Injuries
It is possible to severely wound a partner during a sparring session. When practising with wrestlers, the worst injury that is likely to happen is a broken bone, although even this can be fatal if unfortunate circumstances prevail, such as crushing the other soldier's throat whilst the most damaging injury performance wise is a blow to the spine, which prevents sparring from the injured party for the rest of his/her life, although it won't prevent the dwarf from fighting or training with a crossbow.
In the event that a soldier is injured while sparring, the soldier will rest until he or she recuperates, just as with any other injury. In the event of a broken limb, it will take a full season before the soldier will be available for action once again. Mangled limbs and other injuries may take much longer, if they heal at all. There are plans to allow these more serious wounds to "heal over"; such wounds will be permanent, but the pain will go away, the wound will scar over, and the dwarves will be able to get back to their normal duties in a limited fashion (see Future of the Fortress).
If a soldier accidentally kills another, the accidental murderer will receive an unhappy thought. However, killing another during a sparring session is not a crime and will not be punished by justice[Verify].
Sparring injuries can be very brutal to a fort's soldier population, leaving many dwarves with moderate injuries if precautions are not taken (see below). If your troops get injured frequently by sparring, it's a good idea to keep a solid proportion of your soldiers on duty so that you don't have too many injuries in case of a siege or ambush. If your troops are getting injured, however, you should take precautions.
Certain injuries, notably those to the neck and brain, will never ever heal, even if they are only minor scratches. A dwarf with these injuries will never spar either. If a military dwarf gets a minor neck injury before he or she has gained much combat skill, you may want to release him or her from duty so that dwarf can at least serve your economy as a hauler (or Royal Guard), and a new dwarf can claim his or her weapon and armor to practice with.
Avoiding Injury
The following tactics can help your dwarves avoid sparring injuries:
- Equipping soldiers with good armor is always useful to protect injury, whether sparring or fighting real threats. Iron chain is good, steel plate better, high-quality steel plate best of all. High-quality steel shields are also recommended. See Using Armor for more details.
- Equipping soldiers deliberately with weak silver weapons is an excellent way to reduce the risk of injury. Silver weapons do only 50% of the damage of iron weapons. Wooden weapons also do only 50% of the damage of iron ones, but can only be gained through trade with the elves. Beware, as it can be time consuming to force your soldiers to switch back to good iron or steel weapons in the event of a siege or ambush; if your soldiers enter battle with their sparring weapons they will be much less effective.
- It is strongly recommended to send soldiers through a basic training regime by allowing them to spar without weapons until they achieve several levels in Wrestler skill, then begin their training for weapons directly. This can help reduce the amount of injuries suffered, as Wrestler skill is used to determine the probability of dodging attacks in addition to its offensive purposes.
- Likewise, the more training your soldiers get in Armor user and Shield user, the more likely they will be to avoid injury. Thus it is safest to give your soldiers plenty of Wrestling practice, while equipped with armor and shields, before cross-training them for weapon usage.
- You might also want to buff up a dwarf's stats before sparring -- for example by setting them to pump a screw pump that isn't attached to anything. This can increase a dwarf's Toughness (and thereby resistance to damage), although it may also increase Strength, which is believed to increase damage inflicted.
- It is also worth noting that Guards spar just like off-duty soldiers, and when appropriately equipped, this will have all the effects listed above. Taking advantage of this by recruiting directly from the Fortress Guard and Royal Guard will help ensure that even the newest recruits will have at least some training should they be sent into battle.
Target Practice
Soldiers armed with crossbows will not spar; the equivalent to sparring for a crossbow-armed dwarf is shooting at an archery range. As with sparring, the crossbow-dwarf's squad must be set to stand down. Unlike sparring, dwarves do not need partners to practice archery. The dwarf must be equipped with a crossbow and a supply of wooden or bone bolts: metal bolts will not be wasted on target practice. The shooting range must also be designated properly from the archery target (see that article for more information). Marksdwarves do not gain Armor user, Shield user or Wrestling skill shooting on a range, so it may be useful to get them involved in a few unarmed, armored sparring matches in the barracks so they can handle return fire (or a close-quarters ambush).
Marksdwarves will use the hammerdwarf skill to spar if there are no available wood or bone bolts. So it's a good idea to make sure your crossbow dwarves are wearing armour.
Live Combat Training
Soldiers gain experience in martial skills from fighting in real combat as well. For obvious reasons, it is best to boost your soldiers' experience by sparring before they enter a real battle. An untrained soldier can easily suffer a career-ending injury from a goblin invader, whereas a Legendary weapon and armour user can cut a swathe through an invading column without taking a scratch.
Miners use their pick when fighting unarmed, and get bonuses from their Mining skill. They gain experience in the Mining skill rather than Wrestling. Because of this an expert miner can quickly level-up when sparring unarmed.