~Necro~Necro~Necro~
Okay can we get summary post of all the knowledge we have on dragon breeding programs?- Change dragons to semi-megabeasts to increase the amount of them. Possible take out other SM's to increase amount of dragons.
- Add Child tags.{!!Question!! Anyone have proof on dragon size slowly growing over the years or is it a snap change?}
- If not, make a table of dragon size as a function of time. Maybe finagle it into arithmetic or geometric progression based on tastes then add a fuckton of intermediary title,size tags that update every 5 years? Like Baby 1,10kg,Hatchling 5,15kg, Hatchling 10 20kg,Hatchling15 25kg, Hatchling 20, 30kg, Whelp 25, 50kg or w/e.[Consider making whatever passes for adulthood early to allow for breeding at 5 years then add additional "ages" after that]
- Egg size Has been reporting speed up birth times. It has also been reported to have no effect and it's the baby/child tags that influence it.
- Disable the cooking option for the egg, disallow eggs in your egg/roast stockpile
- Make sure your most skilled trainer is on the dragon to allow for more egg warming time.
- Fortification walled dragonfire turrets are a solid application of them. Add the most heat-resistant bridges you have to raise in case of heavy ranged fire?
Probably kill off lots of migrants via medical training drop shafts to keep dwarf and item counts low to keep ~150 fps?
To answer your questions:
The age on the child tag determines when they are considered adults and can start laying eggs (so [CHILD:1] means they are adults after 1 year). It does NOT determine size - that is determined by the BODY_SIZE tag. Science done elsewhere has confirmed that this is a linear increase. So cutting the age on the body_size tag by half doubles the rate at which they grow, etc.
Egg size does NOT determine when the eggs hatch. The long delay in hatching was due to having too many animals. While over the animal pop cap, no new animals were born - dragon or otherwise. I had an alligator sitting on a clutch of 25 small eggs for two years. Mass-butchering the less useful animals resulted in animals being born normally.
A dragon will lose 1-2 levels of training while waiting for the eggs to hatch. Be sure to disable training (or even lock the dragon away completely) during that time so that the trainer doesn't re-train the dragon and accidentally kill the eggs.
Bridges are useful for dragon pillboxes. Note that the mechanisms used must also be dragon safe (Periclase, Dolomite, Adamantite) or the bridge will deconstruct, even if the bridge itself is dragon-safe.
As a side note, clowns are
not flammable, even by dragonfire.