============ OGREverse list, Dec 16th (Last: Dec 13th) ============= ===== An odd idea for the Factory States era Ogres From: Trey Palmer ===== Scenario: The Nihon Invasion of San Francisco From: Trey Palmer ===== The New Ogre Deluxe Edition From: jkajpust@concentric.net ===== GURPS Ogre Weapons against Armor From: "Andrew Walters" ===== Short Thoughts on Militia and Related From: "Andrew Walters" ===== Ogre Unit Cost Formulas: Henrys From: "Andrew Walters" ===== Structures for Minis From: Servitor@aol.com ------------------------------ From: Trey Palmer Subject: An odd idea for the Factory States era Ogres Most of you, I'll bet, are familiar with the Nato alphabet and all its variants (Alpha Bravo Charlie Delta Echo Foxtrot Golf Hotel India Juliet Kilo Lima Mike November Oscar Papa Quebec Romeo Sierra Tango Uniform Victor Whiskey X-ray Yankee Zulu). Now with apologies to John Varley's "Tango Charlie and Foxtrot Romeo..." How about Ogres taking names similar to those? Victor Zulu Juliet Bravo Papa Mike And others... What do you folks think? I think it adds a bit of color and humanizes Ogres and their ilk. Bowden "Trey" Palmer ------------------------------ From: Trey Palmer Subject: Scenario: The Nihon Invasion of San Francisco Keith Johnson posted the following link and message in the OGRE board on Pyramid: > http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/scenarios/sanfrancisco/ > I would like to get some feedback on the scenario, as I plan on > running it at local conventions. Essentially, I want to insure the > fight is evenly matched. Let him know what you think. ------------------------------ From: jkajpust@concentric.net Subject: The New Ogre Deluxe Edition I also just picked up my Deluxe Ogre set. While I think it's a pretty good deal, I am a little disappointed. The cost is OK. Compared to GHQ type vehicles, the price is fine. Overall the quality is pretty good, with two exceptions. The poor bloody infantry is a bit rough looking. There seems to be a lot of tiny bits of flash on them -- and them being pretty tiny, that isn't trivial. But they are acceptable. The biggest disappointment is the GEVs. They look like space ships from Space 1999. I've always pictured a GEV as a hovercraft type of vehicle with rounded skirts and a couple of engine pods on the top back. These GEVs have four little "feet" thingies along with two fins poking out the top of the body. Alas poor GEV, I knew them well.... Jim Kajpust - Personal Responsibility - Personal Freedoms Michigan - http://www.concentric.net/~jkajpust ----- [I remember seeing a picture of a Combine GEV with the legs somewhere. Given the ground pressure that results when you consider the entire underside of a rectangular block as the footprint of a GEV's skirt, this version probally attacks in overruns by tilting its "feet" over. -HJC] ------------------------------ From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: GURPS Ogre Weapons against Armor Henry mentioned that the M-LAWS wouldn't have much effect against an AP battery. I'm a little concerned with the numbers, too. Speaking crudely and simplifying greatly, the M-LAWs does 6dx10 points of damage (avg 210, max 360), while Ogre tracks, the sides of armor vehicles, and AP turrets stop the first 500-600 points of this type of damage. I'm probably missing something. There is some kind of multiplier for damage that gets through the armor, and the AP gun has very few hit points once you penetrate the armor. For comparison, the standard battlesuit weapon is a 100mm HEAT launcher that does 6dx25 (avg 525, max 900), and the little (!) 80mm gauss cannon on the LGEV does 6dx65, but its only about 60% as effective at penetrating with the APFSDSDU rounds, so it does avg 1365 max 3240 points damage and the first 800 points or so don't count. Each of the Mark V's four track units has over 26,000 hit points. That's about 1,750 hit points per tread unit. I'm not a GURPS expert, so I probably missed something, but it looks like the most effective weapon militia can employ are satchel nukes. ------------------------------ From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: Short Thoughts on Militia and Related We've all read and written a lot, so I'll keep this very terse. Regarding mechanics, etc, I agree with Henry. The mechanics need to be simple. Militia would be advantaged in overruns: their weapons get better the closer you get, not true of a HVY. They also have better visibility, and can hide in smaller places. We don't need morale checks. The Militia are not interesting enough to deserve that much attention. Besides, indoctrination and drugs can make up for it. Morale rules are great in Napoleonics or other games where formation is critical to effectiveness, but not in modern games. We do need amphibious landing rules, or at least guidelines for designing scenarios with the current rules. I don't like the term Rifleman, though I see the problems with the term Militia. Rifles don't affect armor. Militia would likely use the M-LAWS weapon described in GURPS Ogre, Magazine Light Antitank Weapon System. Holds five missiles which, if they get a hit on the side armor of a light tank or missile tank have about a one-in-three chance of killing it. These things weigh 35 lbs. and cost under $10K. I think its reasonable to use the GURPS Ogre numbers because #1 they're canon, and #2 they're based on a lot of good physics. They also have man-portable satchel nukes, and the 10 and 100 ton models are easily big enough to take out a few armor units. It would be nice if you could throw them 500 yards, though. Militia are never going to go away. As Steve once said, "A navy with nothing but battleships would be a pretty poor excuse for a navy, but I wouldn't want to be the first person they got mad at." Your power-suited infantry are great, but they're expensive. Militia are, dollar for dollar, more cost effective. Of course, its not remotely all about money, but you can't afford to have powered infantry everywhere you need infantry. A lot of places are going to be garrisoned with non-powered infantry, whatever you want to call them, which would be rapidly reinforced with real stuff if attacked. You could probably run a pretty interesting game with a bunch of militia, on each side, augmented by a few squads of powered infantry and a few light tanks. Maybe one side has an Ogre Mark I. It wouldn't be as fast as regular Ogre, but I think the system would scale well in that direction. And infantry are not useless against Ogres. They tend to die, but they do get their licks in. As "Pawns are the soul of Chess," so good use of infantry can make the difference in classic Ogre. And in GEV Infantry rock. Nothing blocks a road like a 3/1 in rubble. Do the math and see how much longer it takes the enemy to go around this. If its in woods or has MSL to back it up... As far as old equipment surviving, the last weapon in the US Army which has its ranges calibrated in yards is the .50 calibre MG which entered service right after WWI and was a prime feature of WW2. Still there for another couple years. Putting militia on motorcycles is a cheap way to make them fast, but it makes them very detectable and they could be killed if knocked off by a shockwave that would otherwise not injure them. As for backward compatibility of Maps, my Shockwave set from 1980-whatever doesn't fit my new Ogre/GEV board. Steve's making me buy a new copy of Shockwave! Of course I know the maps aren't going to get any larger, but I wish they were big. ----- [We have (had? ;-) another game for showing the effects of Militia vs MI. It was called Battlesuit. The best unarmored infantry ran around at 7 meters/sec (A hex per turn in GEV! ;-) and carried an attack that was +2 against standard infantry. (With a targetting bonus, this would be +5 or more than a 50/50 chance of damage. This would be about the effect of the 3mm Gauss Gun, if unarmored infantry were allowed to carry them.) -HJC] ------------------------------ From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: Ogre Unit Cost Formulas: Henrys I'm putting together an Ogre room for the Pyramid MOO, and one of the little toys is a Vehicle evaluator using your formula and giving the results in "Henrys". That is, that's what I'm doing if you don't mind. Its all your work, and I'll leave it out if you have an objection. Its instructions will include appropriate disclaimers and a pointer to your web page. It should be fun. I was also wondering how you would add Infantry carrying capability to a unit's cost. Some people (including you, if memory serves) use this commonly. As I was writing the MOO code for the formula I realized what a piece of work it is. It really is reasonably accurate, and I don't think I ever would have come up with it. Andrew ----- [The current formula in the OGRE Book would have been amazing, if it had been my first attempt. It was a few years after the last time I'll see Steve. I was bored with my engineering homework and wrote down the factors for the three main OGRE armor units (Heavy, Missile and GEV) and started looking for common factors. I threw together something that somewhat worked and mailed that to Steve. Well, he thought it was the best thing since laser sliced GEVs and he wrote up an article for the space gamer around it. The current formula is the third major revision. The biggest change happened when I switched to OGRE Minis factors and could use movement mode as a multiplier rather than an additive factor. As for Henries, I wouldn't put much faith in them, as they've deflated faster than the Euro did after George IIIrd's candidacy was announced. Currently they're trading at twelve to the VP or about 170,000 combine dollars each (Missile Tanks are cheap but Hypersmart missiles are EXPENSIVE!), which is strangely enough about the price for the house I'm looking at. (Unadjusted for inflation, invasion and earthquakes.) "And it won't be over till the OGRE's over there!" -HJC] ------------------------------ From: Servitor@aol.com Subject: Structures for Minis > Are we going to see Laser Towers, Jam Screens and Satellite > dishes coming back? While I have no facts, I do believe that DCP (the company that produced those items) is currently out of business, or at least in hiatus. How about it Steve? Any plans in the near future for any of those items? For those of you who can't wait, just go down to your local hobby store and look for the Evergreen brand line of scribed plastic sheet product. Virtually ALL of the old DCP stuff can be made (or at least approximated) by using the different types of scribed plastic sheeting. For example, the Laser Tower's body can be built by cutting 1/4 inch "Sidewalk" or "Tile" sheeting from Evergreen into the thin triangles used to shape the upper and lower parts of the tower. The Laser assembly itself can be approximated by cutting blank 020 sheeting into hex shapes (top and bottom) and then cutting out side pieces. The laser barrel can easily be scavenged from your "bits" box (you, as a modeler, DO have a "bits" box, right)? For those of you who do not have access to the Ogre Miniatures book (still available from SJGs folks!) you can still get good approximations via the SJG website, and through simply studying the counters in the boxed OGRE/G.E.V. game. You can also use the evergreen stuff to build all sorts of other OGRE structures. Now, I know I've been promising an Ogre web page forever, and I still have a while before I can get a "real" website up (need to get a good DSL provider and tell AOHell to kiss my fat ***) -So in the meantime, I'm gonna use the free AOL hometown page stuff to put up a TEMPORARY Ogre page real soon (within the week, I hope) that will have JPEGs of the Sci-Fi-Supply Ogre Macrotures (the inspiration for the upcoming Armorcast Macrotures), also of my painted minis and images of my scratchbuilt Ogre structures using the Evergreen stuff mentioned above. As soon as this page is ready, I will let everyone know through here. Hope it will be of help to new and old "Ogrers" alike. "And now for something completely different..." With the release of Deluxe Ogre and the imminent return of the entire miniatures line, I hope to see (more) tournaments being organized at upcoming conventions (Dragoncon, Gencon, Origins, etc.) There was a nice miniatures set-up at last Dragoncon (and I was there with the Macrotures for anyone lucky enough to attend) and the number of hardcore Ogre fans that showed up for Evil Stevie's lecture on upcoming Ogre stuff was enough to show that tournaments could attract a good crowd (if properly advertised in advance, like say, through Henry's letter here!) Any thoughts on this folks? Finally, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone out there! best, flunky (John Hurtt, Servitor@aol.com) ------------------------------ Henry J. Cobb ogre@sjgames.com http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 2000, by Steve Jackson Games.