============ OGREverse list, June 26th (Last: June 20th) ============= ===== Ogres in Role-Playing Games From: "Todd A. Zircher" ===== Forward Observers From: "Andrew Walters" ------------------------------ From: "Todd A. Zircher" Subject: Ogres in Role-Playing Games > Well, you could try writing solo adventures where one person plays > an Ogre...perhaps a Mark I with a Descartes package, off on some > advanced recon/strike mission far from the mainlines...the Amazon > Combat Zone, the Arctic, the Sahara CZ, or somesuch. The player > would pretty much have free reign to act as he pleased (do I blast > the CP, or just spy on it?), but would have little support (unless > he led a small contingent of human forces...but that's another > story). Problem: only one player. I always though a total conversion package for Quake would be good for that. Players could also work together or against each other in multi-player death matches. It would expand OGRE's reach into the computer gamer arena without a major expense in software development. TAZ ----- [Besides putting bitmaps of all the units on the screen, what's the point? Would it really have the flavor of OGRE? -HJC] ------------------------------ From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: Forward Observers I don't know where to find Henry's FO article, but while FO's have been central to artillery operations ever since cannon could shoot farther than their operators could see, I think we want to ask what they're going to add to the *game* before we add rules, since they can easily be explained away by technology... I'm not sure *seeing* is all that important in Ogre/GEC. Consider: Ogre Minis says cammo paint is irrelevant since "anything that can hurt you has far better ways of finding you than visual sighting". Even HVYs have a range long enough to reach further than I would expect to be able to see an enemy tank across anything but a flat, clear plain. And finally, the tac-nuke battlefield is going to have pretty poor visibility awfully fast. So that leaves us with various kinds of mechanical observations, and these would not have to be delivered by humans. We have reconnaisance drones now, both remotely controlled and pre-programmed, they were used as far back as Viet Nam. All you have to do is load your fancy-schmancy IR/whatever sensors into a HWZ missle and fire it. It lands near your target seconds later, gets its bearings, and starts transmitting the locations of hits and misses. Actually, the tac-nukes are so noisy that its not hard to figure out where they landed, come to think of it... So I guess my point is that if FOs would add a lot to the game they'd be cool, but we can just as easily say they're "built-in" to the rules as is. Andrew Walters andreww@farallon.com ----- [The Infs suppress enemy anti-missle defenses (SEAD), and the best way to overcome jamming is to get closer. If you can deliver the firepower to supress enemy defenses remotely then don't send in the grunts at all. See: http://www.io.com/~hcobb/gev/1996/gev96jan.lzh -HJC] Henry J. Cobb hcobb@io.com http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 1998, by Steve Jackson Games.