- Dragons will not spew flame through fortifications, despite having a target waiting right there.
- Dragons on a chain will not spew flame at targets they can't reach. (They will, however, kill any dwarves that try dragging it more than 10 tiles)
- Dragons WILL spew flame at something it has engaged in combat, such as stray fortress pets, quite often.
You're actually a little wrong, Urist. Though it is true that dragons will not spew flame through fortifications despite being able to reach a desired target with their fire, their fire *will* travel through fortifications if it is spewed. I know this because fire has the same properties as all breath attacks. Recently I managed to cage a forgotten beast via the creative use of cage traps and a well-placed giant cave spider, so I experimented with breath attacks for awhile. This is what I learned:
*Breath does travel through fortifications
*Breath attacks will not be delivered through
fortifications.
*Monsters with breath attacks will deliver breath attacks regardless of how close their target may be to their own body (meaning that a dragon would breathe fire onto a dwarf if they were occupying the same tile, irregardless of its own health.)
*Monsters with breath attacks will not always use their breath attacks as their first resort, so if you're planning to
bait the monster into using breath attacks somehow, you'll probably want to use a creature which can take a lot of damage without dealing much in return, or you could use multiple weak animals.
Eventually, using all of the knowledge which I gained from my !!experimentations!!, I was able to construct... brace yourself for this...
A puppy-powered gas chamber. B
= = =
X X X
X X X
D
B = Beast
= = Fortification
X = Gas chamber
D = Locked door
The design can vary, depending on the size of the breath attack, but the way I had mine set up was a 1x1 room (just one tile) for the forgotten beast, which is right next to a 2x3 room that it is separated from by fortifications. A hatch is directly above the 1x1 area, and then above that hatch is another floor. The idea worked like this: I would drop the puppies into the hole above the 1x1 room with the beast so that they would land on the hatch above it, totally unable to escape. Then I would drop a prisoner into the gas chamber via a similar system, and they would land in the 2x3 room. Once the prisoner was safely in the room, I would pull a level which would open the hatch from underneath the puppy, dropping it onto the same tile as the forgotten beast. The forgotten beast would then unleash spontaneous bursts of it's breath onto the puppy, which would in turn pass through the fortifications and effect the prisoners. After feeding the beast enough puppies the prisoners hypothetically should have died, but the beast itself was very weak and its breath attack was having no visible effects other than a numbing sensation, so the project was put on hold until I could get a better test subject. The only downside with the design, aside from having a weak beast, is that it requires a lot of... reloading. But since I started with 3F1M wardogs, I already had way too many puppies than I knew what to do with. Actually, with my design, your dwarves would even be safe to go scavenge the armor off of the gassed prisoners after they died, just so long as you don't feed the FB
Since you have a dragon in your possession, actually killing your prisoners with it's flame-breath shouldn't be a problem at all using this method, and if you wanted to make your design more "practical" instead of having a whole chamber dedicated to the methodical slaughter of your invaders, you could put the dragon's 1x room at the end of a hallway and "feed" it once the goblins round the corner or otherwise run nearby it...
Actually... just imagine a whole hallway lined with these rooms! All the dead puppies... all the dead goblins! Muahahahaha!!!
EDIT: It has just occurred to me that dragons are both flying and building destroyers. In that case, you'll need to use a 1-tile retractable drawbridge instead of an actual hatch, and I recommend covering the "puppy-hole" area above the hatch with a separate retractable drawbridge PRIOR to flipping the lever which actually removes the bridge from underneath the puppydog or whatever other animal you choose to feed your new pet dragon. in the end, because it's a dragon it will require a little bit more work (two "hatches" instead of one, and also two separate levers for the "hatches") but this design can still be implemented safely. Without the extra hatch, you're risking the dragon flying up through the 1-tile space that the hatch usually occupies before you can close it back up, and then you're basically fucked. Also: I don't recommend feeding the dragon goblins because even unarmed goblins can eventually kill your dragon with repeated use.
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Topic: Weaponizing a Dragon (Read 2479 times)