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[Vaporo]

Recently I managed to capture a dragon in my current fortress. Naturally, I want to train this thing into a weapon of war. Unfortunately, though, even though it is now labelled as "Trained," if I ever try to let it off of its restraint it immediately rampages through the fortress. I've tried Google for hints, but haven't turned up much.

I've assigned an animal trainer to the dragon and disabled all of his other labors, but he still seems more interested in training my voracious cave crawlers than the dragon.

So, here are my questions:
A: Does assigning a specific trainer have any advantage of the "Any Unassigned Trainer" option.
B: Can I convince the trainer to keep working with the dragon even though it's already "Trained." Will that even have any affect?
C: Could repeatedly letting the dragon revert to Semi-wild (or fully wild) and retraining eventually cure it of its violent streak?
D: Does anyone know any other tips about integrating a dragon into your dwarven society?
E: The dragon did kill a dwarf on the way in, and I know there was an old bug where animals that killed a dwarf could never be trained, but I had thought that was fixed. Did the fix just not apply to dragons?

Help is much-desired. Thanks!

[PatrikLundell]

A. I never do it. The chance/risk of bonding should increase with dedicated trainers, as should the risk of reversion to wild because the trainer was occupied (e.g. on a half year prayer bender).
B. No. Trainers do retraining when it's "due" according to some logic, although stretching trainers thin can cause them to fail to train something that's "due" for further training.
C. No. This is a megabeast bug. Megabeasts and military are automatically hostile to each other. The only way around it is to always keep militia and megabeasts well separated. Note that merchant caravan guards are military in this sense.
D. -
E. -

[Mort Stroodle]

I once tried boxing one in fortifications outside my fort. Didn't go well. They're very finicky about actually shooting the fire through fortifications, and if you try to block their line of sight with bridges, the bridges will just get burned when the dragon uses fire. They'll burn even if the bridge is made out of something dragonfire-safe, because I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a dragonfire-safe mechanism. Also, don't try to put the dragon on a chain if they're not trained. Building destroyers can destroy chains even though they're supposed to be docile when on a restraint. Also also, don't let your military near an untrained dragon while its being hauled between cages/restraints. The dragon is docile when its being led somewhere, but your military will still kill it for some reason.

For non-defensive purposes, you could stick it in a big room with nest boxes and get some delicious dragon egg roasts. Stick some cage traps in the hallway between the egg room and the fortress and the dragon will re-cage itself before it can enter your fort (just make sure nobody's around to encourage it to burn your cage traps!). Otherwise, consider just pitting it in your moat and calling it a day.

[Vaporo]

C. No. This is a megabeast bug. Megabeasts and military are automatically hostile to each other. The only way around it is to always keep militia and megabeasts well separated. Note that merchant caravan guards are military in this sense.

Well, you seem to have hit the nail on the head, there. Watching a bit closer when releasing the dragon reveals that it's actually passive towards the citizens and seems to be initially passive towards the military as well. However, it's aggressive towards any other animals, tame or otherwise, that cross its path, and as soon as it's off its chain (artifact chain, by the way, so maybe that's part of why it hasn't caused any problems with being on a restraint) the military charges the dragon.

I also tried war training it and assigning it to a militia captain, but the military still didn't accept it.

I can safely move it around my fortress since the military doesn't seem to bother it and it doesn't bother my animals while it's being led around. So, I suppose that I could still set it up as a flamethrower outside my front gate or build it into a trap for the HFS, but I won't be able to send it out on raids. Shame about that. Hopefully this gets fixed in the near future.

Also, it's (unfortunately) a male, so no *Dragon Egg Roasts*.

[bartbartholomew]

You could always edit the raws. I keep reading that removing the [MEGABEAST] tag will allow your dragon to live in relative peace.

I can personally confirm that switching dragons from [MEGABEAST] to [SEMIMEGABEAST] isn't enough. The rampage going on as I write this has absolutely murdered my FPS. It easily roasted a marksman really good. Something about being caught in boiling steel being bad for your health. However the sword dwarf blocked the fire at least 6 times before getting his neck ripped out. The real victims are all the bystanders who got melted.

[Vaporo]

You could always edit the raws. I keep reading that removing the [MEGABEAST] tag will allow your dragon to live in relative peace.

I can personally confirm that switching dragons from [MEGABEAST] to [SEMIMEGABEAST] isn't enough. The rampage going on as I write this has absolutely murdered my FPS. It easily roasted a marksman really good. Something about being caught in boiling steel being bad for your health. However the sword dwarf blocked the fire at least 6 times before getting his neck ripped out. The real victims are all the bystanders who got melted.

I have the opposite problem. Just one or two of my hammer lords annihilate the dragon. Of course, some of them have been training for 10+ years straight, so yeah.

[Vaporo]

Small update:
I finally caught a female dragon and pastured her together with a male. As long as I keep my military well away and the animal trainers keep retraining them, they seem perfectly content to stay that way:

They also don't seem to bother my other animals while they're pastured, so that's a plus. Hopefully, I'll soon have an army of them.

EDIT:

Success! And with two more on the way already.

[Maul_Junior]

Small update:
I finally caught a female dragon and pastured her together with a male. As long as I keep my military well away and the animal trainers keep retraining them, they seem perfectly content to stay that way:

They also don't seem to bother my other animals while they're pastured, so that's a plus. Hopefully, I'll soon have an army of them.

EDIT:

Success! And with two more on the way already.

Congratulations! Now you just have to wait 250 years for them to grow to any manageable size.

but once you do......

[Bumber]

Congratulations! Now you just have to wait 250 years for them to grow to any manageable size.

but once you do......

They can breathe fire from the moment they hatch. Better to just station them in some fortifications for defense.

[Vaporo]

Well, since this came back to the top I'll give another update.

If you give them enough nest boxes, these things apparently breed like rabbits. I now count 54 of them:

I had been keeping them in the large room in the lower right corner with a bunch of nest boxes, but their population was starting to get a bit out of control, so I shut it down and roped them up in separate rooms.

Also, another problem arose. Occasionally, the dragons will become unchained/unpastured after training and decide that they want to see my dining hall, where they would inevitably encounter my military and probably immolate a few civilians during their battle. Thankfully, I found a solution. I put a pressure plate over the exit to the room set to detect citizens and creatures larger than 100,000 (10,000 on the pressure plate construction list). Since all of my dragons are greater than 3 years old by now, any dragons that wander out will trigger the pressure plate and cause a floodgate to close, sealing it in, usually along with the trainer who released it. The trainer will take the dragon back to its rope, so I just have to periodically check and release any trapped trainers. I may throw a food stockpile in there at some point, though, just to be safe.

I think that this happens because of "failed" training sessions...? I'm not entirely sure, but now all my dragons are trained to masterful and my trainers are all legendary, and it hasn't happened in quite a while.

I may put them out at my front gate behind some fortifications at some point, but for now the front gate is still underdeveloped and surrounded by very flammable wilderness.