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[haberdasher]

my current fortress is encircled by a solid wall, broken by a single gap with a retracting bridge that opens onto a deep hole. my goal with this fortress was to never develop a military, and to seal up the fortress from the outside world entirely after the second year. however, I got bored with that pretty quickly, and decided that I needed some offensive power to stave off the tedium of an invulnerable fort.

to that end, I set traps and caught/trained elephants and proceeded to build a drop hangar for them. however, I've run into a few problems, and I'm hoping someone can either help me out or dash these aspirations completely so I can move on to some other project.

problem 1) herding the elephants onto the launch pad is proving to be a logistics nightmare. I have an idea to remedy this particular problem, in which I completely wall off the launch pad save for one door, and draft my animal trainer into his own militia squad. I station the trainer inside this room, where the elephants will follow him; set the door to not let pets pass, cancel the trainer's order so he leaves, mark the door as forbidden, and pull the lever.

problem 2) I'm using a retracting bridge as the floor of my hangar, but I think I'm hitting a weight issue because the bridge doesn't retract while elephants are standing on it.

I remember seeing a thread like this that used dwarves instead of elephants, which I imagine would be considerably easier, but then there's the problem of getting the dwarves back inside without compromising the security of the fort (granted, when the enemies are dead, the fort is already secure, but I'm trying to leave as few holes as possible).

anyway, anyone have any experience with this, or suggestions on how I should move forward?

[Girlinhat]

I assuming you're using an older version.  Current version has elephants that cannot sustain themselves due to unbalanced hunger issues, causing them to grow hungry faster than they can eat.  (Why Toady didn't fix this one is beyond me, a very small number fudge in the raws fixes it.)  It also features pasture zones, allowing you to place animals directly where you desire.

Otherwise, I'd say cages attached to levers to place the beasts where you want, and hatches instead of bridges.

[darkflagrance]

Bridges cannot operate if large creatures, like elephants, stand on them.

You can try pitting the elephants from 1 z-level above the launch pad hatches, and surround the launchpad with walls or doors so the elephants cannot escape.

[SirAaronIII]

You could make a meeting area for the elephants to walk towards, then lock the door behind them, but then you run the risk of other animals and/or dwarves running onto the platform too.

[thijser]

If I remember correctly this can be done quite easily with hatches and chains. You see if an animal that is chained is standing on a hatch that opens and drops a few z-levels then it will be released from it's chains.

So what you have to do is create several chains and chain a elephant onto each of them then surround them with hatches and link them all.
like this
hhhhh
hchch
hhhhh
hchch
hhhhh
make it larger if you need more.
c=chain
h=hatch

[hitto]

(Why Toady didn't fix this one is beyond me, a very small number fudge in the raws fixes it.)

I'm fond of "let's remove the dungeon master, and oh yeah, your LEGENDARY ANIMAL TAMER can NOT tame a FUCKING MARMOT if you don't cheat"

[Naryar]

Dwarf Fortress: Using catapulted elephants as a totally serious weapon of war.

[Fredd]

All the egg roasts and beer mixing in dwarven stomachs are a deadlier weapon