Battering ram takes this long?

[Kabraxxis]

Long story short, found an abandoned mine all palisaded up, constructed a battering ram to get inside and for the last hour and a half-2 hours replenishing stamina to give the wall a whack with the ram doesn't appear to be doing any damage at all. Is there a strength stat check, or how long should I expect to keep at it?

[Ninijutsu]

You need more strength. I would suggest getting more people as well.

[Kabraxxis]

Does damage multiply, or add to each strike depending on how many people are helping?

[kralmir]

the damage you do is your str in square, so 16str = 4 damage, 36 str = 6 damage, 144str = 12 damage, etc

now a ram adds 20 damage and lets up to 4 people combine theyr damage, so with a palisade that soaks 45(some claim 40, but fuck em untill they can actually show proof) so the remaining 4 people would need to do a average of about 7(49str) damage to do 3 damage per hit to the palisade(it has 2500health) and ofcourse the way dmage works you cant replace those 4 people with 1 of 196str cause 196str = 14damage, half of what 4 people each with 49str would do in damage together.

[Zamte]

676 strength is required with a ram to do 1 damage per hit to a palisade wall (sans pickaxe). Even at this point though, you'll take ages to destroy it. I wouldn't seriously consider trying to solo ram a palisade with under 1.2k (9 damage per hit or so) strength.

[beni2]

so with a palisade that soaks 45(some claim 40, but fuck em untill they can actually show proof)

loftar : Oh, no, sorry; we lowered the palisade soak to 30. I had forgotten about that.

in irc a couple of days ago

[Zamte]

I'd really prefer they make a post stating such, somewhere, because that change totally goes against the whole point of the update. With only 30 soak, it's only 961 strength to do damage to a palisade in melee without a ram. That's doable for many of the people who were doing it before. Add in a pickaxe and you only need 784. They wanted to make walls require rams, but there are people out there with plenty more than 784 strength. In fact the requirement to damage a palisade in melee with a soak of 30 is less than you'd require to do it with one person with a ram if it's 45.

It just seems... incredibly counterproductive.

[Avu]

Palisades were way too strong. They were never supposed to completely replace brick walls. The update is a good one though the stealthy nature of it's announcement isn't.

[Zamte]

Yeah, I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I guess it's because it's tricky to balance in general. On one hand if you make it have too much soak, it's impossible to melee down but it gets to the point it's also very difficult to knock down even with a ram. With it having 30 soak, it's rather easy to ram down, but now it's melee-able again. I just thought the idea was to make walls require a ram to knock down at all.

I wish rather than making the ram contribute damage, they'd make the use of a ram just change the soak of the wall. Say make a Palisade with the ram only have 10 soak (with the ram contributing no damage itself anymore) while without, it soaks 40 (1,681 strength to melee it), and a brick wall require 30 with ram (again no damage contributed by the ram) and 70 without (5,041 to damage it). Then using a ram to knock down your own extra walls for replacement or removal wouldn't require a viking strike team (100 strength solo and 900 strength solo respectively), but it'd still be difficult (for palisades) or impossible (bricks) to melee them down.