============ OGREverse list, July 10th (Last: July 8th) ============= ===== Re: OGREverse List, July 8th. From: Steve Jackson ===== My Ogre Web Site... From: "Stephen Said" ===== Roleplaying in the Ogre Universe... From: "Stephen Said" ===== A couple short FO comments From: "Pat O'Hara" From: Daniel Tulloh ===== Does cheap AI kill Ogres? From: Daniel Tulloh ------------------------------ From: Steve Jackson Subject: Re: OGREverse List, July 8th. Moore's Law: [thwacks Henry] Law students who have been reading ANALOG since they were about four years old tend to be aware of these things . . . My assumption was that the Ogre's hardware and software, whatever it is, is at the bleeding edge and worth protecting. I think that's defensible. Ogre roleplaying - It's on the list, but not the "short" list. I would, however, welcome a proposal from an experienced writer familiar with both GURPS and the Ogre world, since it now seems unlikely that Richard Meaden will escape from real life long enough to do this. Ejection seats on LGEVs - Perhaps more to the point, the LGEV pilot is a lot closer to the ground. Even if the vehicle is hit in a way that leaves the pilot and seat mechanism intact, would it have time to fire? I bet there are airbags, though . . . (Thinking further, though, an ejection seat might be a way to save the pilot when it was clear that he was trapped and ABOUT to get pranged . . . if it got him a LONG ways away from the vehicle, FAST, and left the abandoned buggy running and shooting on its own AI, to draw the enemy away. Now, when he disengages from his little paraglider, he's on foot on a nuclear battlefield, but he's not dead YET. In a Factory States scenario, where the weapons aren't nuclear, this holds up better. So . . . good idea!) Steve Jackson - yes, of SJ Games - yes, we won the Secret Service case Learn Web or die - http://www.sjgames.com/ - dinosaurs, Lego, Kahlua! The heck with PGP keys; finger for Geek Code. Fnord. ----- [Ouch! Hey, if they're not tossing nukes during factory states, how do they even scratch that super armor? -HJC] ------------------------------ From: "Stephen Said" Subject: My Ogre Web Site... Those who wanted a look at the campaign rules can downland 'em from my new Ogre Web site. If anyone want's there links listed on the site, please email me direct with the info. Also email any suggestions etc... http://www.impaq.net.au/~sas/ogre.html Regards, Stephen A. Said - Technical Manager Impaq Pty Ltd | phone +61 3 9841-6477 Melbourne, Australia | email sas@impaq.net.au Network Access Providers | www http://www.impaq.net.au ------------------------------ From: "Stephen Said" Subject: Roleplaying in the Ogre Universe... Hi Henry, I sent this once before but we had some mail problems, so here I go again... *** *** *** I used to role play in the Ogre Universe many aeons ago. The group I gamed with used the Car Wars roleplaying rules and transported them into Ogre. >From memory the skills we created were: Pistol - Pretty Obvious Carbine - Pretty Obvious Demolitions - Set explosives Heavy Weapons - Anything carried but not any of the above. Includes Hvy Wpn Squad weapons. Mounted Weapons - Any vehicle mounted weapon. Pilot - Wheeled - Pretty obvious Pilot - Tracked - Pretty obvious Pilot - GEV - Pretty obvious Tactics - Higher Tactics level gives the battlefield commander the choice wether he want's to delay moves for a later part of the turn. Ogre's had a Tactics rating. Logistics - Had something to do with strategic play? Getting ones hands on spare parts etc for an army or something like that? Strategy - Now this one escapes me completely. I think we had some bogus strategic move rules and therefore it was similar to tactics but at a strategic level. (Surprise, surprise...) Stealth - Good ol' sneakin' aroun'. Electronics - Jury rigging systems, hacking electrical locks etc. Hacking - Allowed the user to hack systems including building security and Ogre's. I remember an adventure once where we had to shoot the communications dish off of the Ogre to prevent an NPC killing us or something like that because we couldn't hack in as he had a better hacking skill or some such cliff hanging event. Anyways, it was quite cool. Some of the adventures I recall are: (i)Commandos (Demolition)- Breaking into a building/satellite installation to demolish it so the attack the next day was allowed to sneak up on the forces. (ii)Commandos (Assassination) - Kill the commander of the opposing force so the following attack was a little more even. (iii)Commandos (Kidnap) - Capture the enemy general so it added to our commanders Strategy skill or something like that... (iv)Battle (Hacking) - Hack into the opposing Ogre's AI to direct it away from our battle. (iv)Battle (Hacking II) - Steal the Ogre. etc etc etc... Real cool stuff. Mind you, we were only about 14 years of age at the time. Amazing what you'll do when you are bored... I might include them in my strategic rulebook. I am about to add those rules to my web site too, so stay tuned... Regards, Stephen A. Said - Technical Manager Impaq Pty Ltd | phone +61 3 9841-6477 Melbourne, Australia | email sas@impaq.net.au Network Access Providers | www http://www.impaq.net.au ----- [Speaking of OGREs in Car Wars, did you catch "Magic in Car Wars"? -HJC] ------------------------------ From: "Pat O'Hara" Subject: A couple short FO comments O.K. I get the Duh award. Regarding FO's Consider: We already have something called PLARS (Position Locating and Reporting System) The idea is to automate position reports and recon reports. All munitions in the Orgeverse hove some AI and do their own fine targeting In other words you fire and forget the shot because it will guide itself. The main problem with telemetry (information returned from the round) is RF Noise. Lazers can go a long way toward solving that problem, perhaps somethng else by then. Why do we need Forward Observers? There are no rounds to zero in. Everything does an acceptable job of finding it's own target. All targeting information is shared between units. I don't see the advantage. Regarding Forward Observers and game play, I think it would just muddy the waters. I don't see a need for it to balance anything else, and I like the clean way Ogre plays. Each turn is made up of very simple operations. I would like to see some rules regarding terrain effects for destroyed units, and over kill. But I don't think FOs add to the game. PatO Tanks for your support ----- From: Daniel Tulloh Subject: A couple short FO comments > From: "Andrew Walters" > HWZs shoot missles, not non-missles. Well, I guess that kills the idea of an FO zeroing in a unit firing ballistic rounds. > Secondly, the way US Navy ships are interlinked today, the datalink shares > sensor data between all the platforms. I don't understand this much better > than is necessary to play Harpoon II badly, and though it will undoubtedly > become much more difficult to communicate across a future, nuclear battlefield, > I would assume that if two units could *talk* they could share other data as > well. So the exclusive designation of spotters and shooters seems ackward. Yeah, the US Army shares information amongst its various entities as well - its called "the digital battlefield." By passing sitreps to other entities, the Army hopes to reduce fratricide. The exclusive FO designation was a bit awkward, I was typing it as I was dreaming it up. (by the way Henry, I have to apologize if my response to your comments seemed "flamey" ... I don't really have an excuse, it was just a really long day) There is some justification for a linkup of spotters and firers, however. This is mostly due to the problems of trying to resolve a target location from the reports of many observers arriving at different times. There are sophisticated "fusing" techniques to generate a probable x,y location of a given target, but a sig- nificant amount of computing power is required to generate this data. Perhaps by the time that OGRE's come on the scene, computers will be able to solve these problems relatively quickly. ------------------------------ From: Daniel Tulloh Subject: Does cheap AI kill Ogres? > From: "Andrew Walters" > Ogre, and its accompanying rationale and future history, was > written in 1979, before computers started doubling in power > every eighteen months and became cheaper than TVs. The original > designer's notes describe the size of the Ogre stemming from > the desire to protect the expensive investment in the computer, > and give it as many weapons as it can handle. > > Maybe Steve could update this aspect of the rationale. It would > be darned pricey to develop the Ogre's brain and software, but > the unit cost would not be the most expensive thing on the Ogre. If OGRE AI required truly massive amounts of memory and very high processor speeds, then this might drive up the cost of building an OGRE. > (I've always assumed that Ogres are nuclear powered, but I suppose > they might have really big diesel fuel tanks. Anyone?) I'd vote for nuclear power. Diesel engines would require refueling, limiting the OGRE range. Motors are always susecptible to breakdown as well. If the main power plant failed, well ... a stationary OGRE is a dead OGRE. > The AI found in missles, first of all, would be an expert system-type AI, > not heuristic, because, hey, how much learning is a missle going to do? > As an expert system its going to be a very task-specific AI. It can pick > its assigned target out of the noise, struggle against various jamming > techniques, dodge anticipated counter-measures, and in short get to the > target. These are the so-called "smart" munitions. These are fielded today. > Adding the ability to *locate* other targets adds significantly to the > missle's cost, and adds gear that would either reduce warhead size or > increase total mass, meaning its slower and easier to hit. Then it > would need to evaluate that data ... These so-called "brilliant" munitions are being developed today. This level of AI is fairly limited, however - issues of tactics, strategy and whatnot are not considered. > ... and send some of it back This capability exists today as well. The US Army has a missile with a TV camera mounted in the nose that trails out several km of fiber-optic wire behind it. The image from the TV is transmitted over the wire to a controller who guides the missile in to its target. > [Wrong, Moore's Law predates OGRE, but I think we can forgive a law > student for a little ignorance. (Please don't kill me! ;-) Moore's Law? Henry, can you elaborate? > The choices are basically: Cheap AI or Cyborgs. Expensive, deployed > AI only makes sense in a world of $500 toilet seat covers. -HJC] Developing AI is expensive. Implementing it may not be - it may just be a matter of mounting the necessary hardware. Dan ----- [A diesel or other air-breather has a slight problem operating inside a nuclear fireball. The offical notes state that all military vehicles are nuclear powered. Any volunteers to pilot the LGEV? -HJC] Henry J. Cobb hcobb@io.com http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 1998, by Steve Jackson Games.