How does sieging work, currently?

[leadpainter]

Let's say that there's someone outside my palisade, right now. They want inside, and have on their person basic tools (saw, shovel, axe, pickaxe, ect.) and the materials to assemble a battering ram. Inside my walls, I have the materials to build an archery tower. What should the theoretical attacker do for his best chances to get inside do, and what should I do as a defender to ensure my safety?

[MagicManICT]

You've pretty much laid it out. You can try to build up a few archery towers to do discourage the other player dropping a ram, but they could wait out those towers, or build the ram outside the range of the towers, and there's a decay cooldown for the places you put the towers that will prevent you from putting another nearby for some hours (or even days... I've not investigated enough to know the exact time to live and cooldown afterward... I didn't see specifics here on the RoB wiki). Otherwise, the player will drop a ram and it'll have a "ready cooldown" of some hours based on the age of the claim as detailed in the recent siege changes posting. viewtopic.php?f=39&t=67175#p847255

Archery tower basics: viewtopic.php?f=39&t=67175#p847255

[leadpainter]

You've pretty much laid it out. You can try to build up a few archery towers to do discourage the other player dropping a ram, but they could wait out those towers, or build the ram outside the range of the towers, and there's a decay cooldown for the places you put the towers that will prevent you from putting another nearby for some hours (or even days... I've not investigated enough to know the exact time to live and cooldown afterward... I didn't see specifics here on the RoB wiki). Otherwise, the player will drop a ram and it'll have a "ready cooldown" of some hours based on the age of the claim as detailed in the recent siege changes posting. viewtopic.php?f=39&t=67175#p847255

Archery tower basics: viewtopic.php?f=39&t=67175#p847255

How does an attacker defend their drying siege engine from archery towers, though? The only thing I can think of is to build it out of their range into wheel it in and repair it once it's ready, is that correct? In that case, what does the defender do?

[AntiBlitz]

they can waste their time building catapults to destroy the towers

[wonder-ass]

defender always has it easier which it should be tbh. attacker needs to spend a lot of time and effort to actually get in.
if they make a ram outside of the range of your towers you simply go outside and build 1 next to the ram lol they either waste time coming back there to bash it with their main or call it a loss.

[shubla]

If your claim is newer than 2-4 weeks, you cannot defend it.
After that, you can at least try to!