My trapper was doing his thing somewhere away from my town and he got killed by three goblins. There was no way I could do anything because the footmans were in the town, and pressing R to let everyone attack the goblins didn’t work because they were too far away.
Is there a way to not let this happen except for letting your trapper work right next to your town?
This is weird, because the range should be calculated out from the citizen locations. Not from the towns.
Now, should. I dont know if thats how they are implemented, but thats how they should be implemented 
It is. He’s saying the other villagers were too far away to help the trapper fight the goblins.
At the moment we can’t do much besides put some stockpiles by your trapping grounds so your footman patrol over there
We should be able to set checkpoints for the footmen, or select an area that they will defend.
Technically you can. But instead of placing a flag to act as a checkpoint, you can draw a very small stockpile.
The current implementation is all very early in development. I should imagine that once paths and roads are in the game your guards will patrol those, rather than the stockpiles. Barracks that act as a focal point for guards are also planned.
However, there is currently very little reason to place a trapper zone out in the wilderness other than aesthetics. They can be quite close to your town and still be very effective.
just going to re-quote and oft quoted comment… 