=============== OGRE/GEV list, Jan 23rd. (Last: Jan 18th) =============== ===== Computer OGRE From: Vance Geisler ===== Atmosphere and Feeling. From: Harry Flashman ===== So you want to drive the Missile Tank? From: Henry J. Cobb ------------------------------ From: Vance Geisler To: hcobb@slip.net Subject: Computer OGRE Is there any way for me to obtain the computer version of OGRE. I understand it is out of print! I recently started playing OGRE again...after about a 15 year recess. Are there any plans in the works for a more advanced release? Thanks. ----- [I think the problem is contractual. -HJC] ------------------------------ From: Harry Flashman To: "Henry J. Cobb" Subject: Atmosphere and Feeling. Hi, and thanks for the welcome. I hope this is the right place to send mail for it to make in onto the Ogre List. Basically I'm just replying to your welcome message. I'm very interested in seeing your list of Ogre literary references. I've been playing Ogre on and off since about '77-'78. I own a lot of Ogre stuff and have recently experimented with the varients on the www.io.com site (Armour and Aircraft expansions). In all this time, I've seen very little on the world of Ogre. Perhaps it's because I've never really been a big subscriber to wargame magazines and may have missed it published somewhere, but I've not seen much on the political and geographical situtation in the time of Ogres. There is tantilizing scraps of info in the rules for the games, and the map in G.E.V. but I'd like to hear more. I've read some of Laumer's BOLO stuff, but still this isn't the same world as Ogre. For instance, I'm aware that the two main antagonists are the Paneuropeans and the Combine, but basically, where are they located? If the Paneuropean forces are located mostly in Europe, are the Combine forces attacking Europe or vice versa? Or maybe most of the struggles occur in the third world in a grab for resources? Do you envision a wide scale war taking place, such as a world war, or a series of small isolated battles on the borders or in resource rich regions? I'm asking because I'm interested in the campaigne possibilities of Ogre. Also, I've never played the miniature version of the rules. I've seen a few miniatues here and there, but never really examined them closely. So, another question I have is, when you are painting your miniatures, do you use camoflage based designs? I often wonder, due to the state of warfare in Ogre and the size of the machines, how the Combine and Paneuropeans would mark their forces? Would they bother camoflaging a Ogre, or mark it in a way to identify it as friendly or foe, or just relie on the outline to do that? Thanks. I know this is a lot of questions, but this is a *disscussion* group :) Scott ----- [Actually, I prefer hcobb@io.com for the GEV stuff. What I'm working on is not a list of references. (I refer you to page one of the OGRE rulebook for that) The three-part piece is about themes in the fiction and the game, and how the closest story has ironical differences from the closest scenario. The background and history is extensively covered in the OGRE Minis book. ($14.95 at http://www.io.com/sjgames/catalog0.html), but very simply: The guys in the greek helments are EU + Warsaw Pack and the aggressors of the European continent who paint hourglasses on their OGREs are NAFTA + UK. At the moment, I'm taking a sidestep to advocate an issue, and have turned to rather poorly disguised fiction: -HJC] ------------------------------ Subject: So you want to drive the Missile Tank? From: Henry J. Cobb So you want to drive the Missile Tank?, you've come to the right class, and you've made the right choice. The M31A Missile Tank is one of our best and most popular units. -- Yes, cadet? Uh, Sir, why do we even need classroom instruction?, after all, all of the important stuff is gonna be drilled into our skulls by Hypno-training while we sleep. A very good question, but you've made a poor assumption. The Hypno-sets will make you reflexive warriors, you'll be able to fire without even thinking about it. A very good thing indeed, when some yahoo pops up a hundred meters away and starts showering you with nukes. But acting without thinking, when you don't know what you're doing, is a very good way to end up real dead, real quick. The most important thing we will teach you is when to disregard your new reflexes, when you know they're just not right for the situation at hand. Our first topic is the general tactics of the Missile Tank. From the Holo-vids you'd think that Missile Tank commanders always know just where the enemy formation has gathered on the other side of the hill, and with a push of a button can send volleys of missiles over on smooth ballistic paths to carpet-bomb the badguys into the stoneage. It just ain't so. Just because you're driving a Missile Tank doesn't give you eagle eyesight or X-ray vision. You can't see through rock or penetrate jamming better than anybody else. But Sir, why give us a long range weapon, if we can't locate targets at that range? Sometimes you won't have to. Your missiles have some smarts of their own, and can many times turn an approximate track into a dead target. Sometimes you get some help from your friends. Every battlesuited grunt is trained to locate targets, call for help, provide terminal guidance for your rounds and suppress the target's point defenses with their own weapons, so your missiles can take a more direct, less evasive and occasionally longer route to the kill. That's part of the reason that so many different platforms fire the same kinds of missiles, this way we only have to teach the grunts to guide in one thing they wheren't born with. And there's one other type of guidance you can use, even working alone. Anybody want to take a guess, yes? Is it Chain Guidance, Sir? Exactly, one missile will give you a glimse of the target, but get shot down, after it's sent back a data pulse, so you send the next one in on that improved target fix, and so it goes until you've gotten a kill, wasted all of your expensive ammo or fatally given away your own position. Now, we don't use this as often as the Howitzer boys, who need to engage at longer ranges, and can use their considerably greater launch rate to saturate target defences. But just remember that after that first missile the target is alerted to the threat and can seek cover, employ all active defenses and strike back. We perfer the single missile ambush, where the last thing a target sees is that lone missile doing its final popup. Even if they survive, all they know is there is a hostile missile armed unit, someplace nearby, but they won't know what or where. What they do next, is the thought I leave you with until next class. ----- [Now, after that, I really can't complain about the quality of any fiction sent in, can I? Just to not make me feel so bad (in comparison), just send in rough drafts. -HJC] Henry J. Cobb hcobb@io.com http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 1996, by Steve Jackson Games.