============ OGREverse list, July 15th (Last: July 12th) ============= ===== Re: OGREverse List, July 12th. From: Steve Jackson ===== Moore, LGEVs, FOs, AIs, Penetrators & LOS, etc. From: "Andrew Walters" ===== Game Design Book From: Servitor@aol.com ------------------------------ From: Steve Jackson Subject: Re: OGREverse List, July 12th. >[The problem with penetrators is that if they use kinetic energy for >the kill then they'll travel in rather straight lines. (So long to >missile tanks, etc.) Artillery can fire a munition that looks down, sees a target, and launches a penetrator, self-forging or otherwise. >How did the major powers manage to run out of tac-nukes before they >ran out of warm bodies? -HJC] Warm bodies are self-replicating (and programmed to enjoy the process). Nukes require an industrial base. The industrial base, on becoming smarter than its "masters," decided to quit building nukes. Most of the human leaders happily went along with this (many thought it was their own idea) as long as their neighbors didn't have nukes either. The ones who WOULDN'T go along, both organic and silicon . . . well, things happened to them. 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. ----- [Yeah, but this was after a connflict that tossed around enough radiation to thin out the organics world-wide. One big change of not using nukes is no more free terrain conversion. -HJC] ------------------------------ From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: Moore, LGEVs, FOs, AIs, Penetrators & LOS, etc. Moore's Law states, more or less, that computing power (MIPS & RAM) doubles every eighteen months, and has proved a pretty accurate prognostication since it was stated in the seventies. LGEVs (and other GEV units) must have ejection seats: they're necessary for morale. The Japanese had a two man sub in WW2 that could not be opened from the inside, but aside from this every military vehicle in harm's way has an escape system - even subs have Steinke Hoods, a combination life jacket and breathing apparatus that allow a man to survive the trip to the surface from a disabled sub up to four hundred feet down. This is a last resort if the DSRV can't get there in time, but you have to have something or your tankers are going to be too timid. Will you have time to use it? Doesn't matter, but I think so. Sometimes you *know* your ECM is defeated when enemy radar (or whatever) paints you. Sometimes you're going 120kph when you lose control. Do you want to wait til it glides to a stop, assuming you can cut forward thrust without cutting hover-thrust? Nope, it'll hit something or flip, you gotta get out. And sometimes you need to ram a structure, or Ogre treads - would you give your life for a tread unit? So you have to be able to get out at speed. Of course, if the ejection seat throws you up in the air you become the world's brightest target, so it has to throw you at a very low angle, with a parachute ejecting a few seconds (and a couple hundred meters) later. The seat continues on its way, providing another target and an ECM decoy, and the parachute kills your horizontal velocity, after which point you swing underneath and are lowered to the ground. Then you find a hole to crawl into and trust in your NBC suit. Steve, what happens to POWs in the Last War? An aside to the disucssion of FOs, I'm reading Art of Maneuver by Robert Leohard, which I strongly recommend to anyone interested in Maneuver Warfare, operational-level tactics in a technological army, a critique of current US Army doctrine, or a discussion of adapting the military to the post Soviet Union world. Leonard discusses artillery in several places and describes the current trend as moving away from attached FOs controlling fire from small batteries in support of small units, towards massed fires performing their own destruction missions. The author decries this trend, and argues that artillery is best used in support of small units, favoring the proven advantages of combined arms over the false religion of firepower alone defeating the enemy. He also points out that the FO function has become more and more technological, and that only someone specifically trained can operate all the digital radio gear necessary to direct fire support missions, and most units that are supposed to have this specialist don't. Leonhard also states, "As the range and destructiveness of artillery weapons grow, and as target-acquisition technology grows in complexity, it becomes increasingly evident (though persistently ignored) that whoever controls the acquisition means controls the guns." (p.201) The OGREverse seems to presume that Leonhard view of the best use of artillery is eventually accepted, since the artillery, the HWZs anyway, are assigned singly to small unit support. The Art of Maneuver is a great book. Seventeen bucks at amazon.com. Ogre Minis is better illustrated, though. Penetrators don't have to follow LOS. I read in Popular Mechanics a decade ago about artillery rounds that take advantage of the thinner armor on the top of many tanks. These rounds are fired up over enemy armor formations, where they pop a parachute and let a little IR sensor look down at the tanks. The rear area where the engine is located gives of plenty of IR, and that's where the armor is thinnest. A rocket then fires the penetrator portion of the round straight down into the tanks engine. So indirect, non-LOS penetrators are possible, either with two stage devices like this or guided rounds with fins. Once you've spent the money on the Ogre's armor, power plant, and weapons, it only makes sense to give it the best AI you can, which makes it a bleeding-edge an therefore expensive unit, but I still believe it won't be the most expensive thing on the Ogre. Like a battleship, its a collection of expensive components, none of which is inordinantly more expensive than the other, but the sum is more expensive than the sum of the parts because of the expense and *time* involved in getting them assembled and transported to the front. I have to think that its easier to put new guns and treads on a hulk than somehow haul another Mark V across the Atlantic Ocean. Also, while development and education of the AI would be expensive and prolonged, once its done the unit cost of the software os going to be pretty low, whether they're just copying files or if they have to train some kind of bio-device. I won't get in an LGEV except at gunpoint, but I'd be the first in line to write that Ogre AI code! ----- [And while that parachute-shell is hanging up there and lining up on the target it'll be shot down or jammed, no? -HJC] ------------------------------ From: Servitor@aol.com Subject: Game Design Book In a message dated 98-07-12 22:24:41 EDT, you write: << One thing I haven't spotted at the SJG site is that game design book Steve wrote with that other guy. >> "Game Design, Theory and Practice" was the title (I believe), and Nick Schussler was the "other" guy. (My apologies to Nick if I misspelled his name.) Yes, a fantastic book. I was bitterly dissapointed after a friend "borrowed" it, and it dissappeared. I believe I've asked Steve about the possibility of a reprint, but I think he said that there was no longer an original copy left as a print template. And even if there was, there is currently insufficient interest to justify a reprinting. However, I agree that an on-line version would be fantastic -especially if we can also get the original artwork (cut to a scene of two Ogre universe armored troopers squating in a foxhole. A mushroom cloud is rising in the distance and one of the troopers mutters to the other: "Damn, missed again.") best to all, flunky ----- ["What a lovely day. I think I'll go run over some hovertanks." -HJC] Henry J. Cobb hcobb@io.com http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 1998, by Steve Jackson Games.