I had a bit of luck with my first fort and caught three dragons. I changed them to PETs (just like anything else which was exotic) and I think they are not very good for fight. First there's no real difference between war dragons and normal dragons - they all tend to follow their master, though sometimes wander a bit. That means if set loose they are always near your people or constructions. They must be able to path to their target to fire at it, so they cannot be chained. They can be placed at pastures though, and this is my main mode of using them.
They happily start fire when enemy is present, but fire is quite dangerous even outside - I had to build above ground cisterns, pumps and aqueducts, operated from safe place, to quickly flood some critical areas, including my main hall, just in case. Dwarves will go into fire. Dragons will fire through your dwarves at enemies. It's dangerous.
Dragons are not armored, so they can be killed quite easily. I had a fire breathing FB trapped. I pitted two dragons against it. At first they had upper hand - safe from fire, while FB wasn't fire proof, easy victory I thought. But after dragon fire melted away all fat from that FB, it's limbs and so on, and even burned its BRAIN, it was still fighting. And it first managed to kill one dragon by kicking its brain out (dunno how with these limbs), then after exchanging some fire it did that with another. I savescummed and put my military dwarves against the FB - first one came, shot once, hit it in the brain and killed instantly. And that was the end of military career for my dragons. While the enemy melee goblins pose no real threat to them, enemy archers are as dangerous as my military were to that FB. And fire doesn't kill instantly, nor does it render affected limbs useless, it usually causes massive bleeding. Dwarf may walk a long way before it is killed with fire (or by a lignite block burning inside a hauled bin). Fire doesn't catch all dwarves (or enemies) going through it - with a massive fire, when dozens of my citizens went through flames, I had only three deaths. Most of these dwarves were not affected. It is pretty safe to collect items from tile which contains a burning lignite block for example.
I found that tame dragons are a good way to start fire if you want it for some reason - it's easy to pasture a dragon, then set a goblin cage linked to a lever somewhere behind an intended target. It works good, though it would work better if it was actually more useful. Maybe in a modded game, where not only Funny people are dangerous, but regular attackers too...
As for untamed dragons, I really see no use for them, though it is possible to start fire of course, just in a bit more convoluted manner. But why? They are fun animals to keep, and to brag about to other dwarven kings, but, without modding, I see no other point than some fun.
Hm, only thing which comes to mind and can be really useful, is to instantly vaporize a bridge, to prevent enemies from crossing it, or to allow them to plunge down. Raising/retracting a bridge takes some time, and dragon would destroy it automatically, should a foe happen. But it would be easier and more dependable with a tamed dragon, which involves modding.
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Topic: Weaponizing a dragon? (Read 3157 times)