============ OGREverse list, July 26th (Last: July 19th) ============= ===== Scale of Combat From: "Eric T. or Maryann C. Holmes" From: dochtor@impop.bellatlantic.net From: Sethkimmel@aol.com ===== Stealth in the 21st century From: "Andrew Walters" From: "Hunt, Kirk (Tucson)" From: Patrick.ODonnell@materna.de ===== Conventional Wisdom From: Patrick.ODonnell@materna.de ===== I hear this Superheavy is one bad mother... From: ckbryant@mindspring.com ------------------------------ From: "Eric T. or Maryann C. Holmes" Subject: Scale of Combat Senor Murdoch wrote >It occoured to me that the GEV/Shockwave maps are about 4 km scale, does >anyone make maps of actual land areas, such as the town of Bastione in >(forgot country name, Belgum?) os Sheiffield, England, for a more real >feel to a battle. Most bookstores sell topographic maps of the areas you are looking for. If you are located in the US, try Barnes and Noble. I've had good luck there with getting 1::200K and 1::300K maps of Europe. You can also check the Defense Mapping Agency, NOAA FAA for their mapping of the US, Canada and other parts of the world. The question always is..."How much do you want to spend for the amount of use you will get from these products?" Eric Eric T. Holmes Artic Force Command (ARTFORCOM) o +. | * . ' \ \\_/|\_// / ___/(o)|(o)\___ ####"""""""#### Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings. OGRE MKVI They did it by killing all those who opposed them. ----- From: dochtor@impop.bellatlantic.net Subject: Scale of Combat Honestly, I made a error when I wrote that request, and now am making an attempt to correct it, becuase what I was thinking of was hex-mapped versions of real locations, without actually having to crack out the drafting tools and hex it myself, which I have done with weak to not-to-shabby results. However if you do posess a 1" to 8-10 km (about 1cm to 3-5 km) map of the 'Sheffield' locale, as this is about the scale of OGRE. It would be appreicated vastly by a fellow game addict. Was there any New Jersey maps you would like(hey the refight of the battle of Trenton Dec 25, 2076, where Von Richthofen's Amerika Korps made threir last stand, three great wars that go great togher!) Philip Gray wrote: > Dear Murdoch > > Maps of 'Sheffield' (England) are available (esp. when one lives nearby). > What ground scale are you looking for, and what is your snail mail address? > > Regards > > Philthy Phil > (Stealth - but I've got a Mark VI!) Murdoch Use what thou will shall be the web. File under will, file is the web.(thanks Evil Uncle Al) ----- From: Sethkimmel@aol.com Subject: Scale of Combat << t occoured to me that the GEV/Shockwave maps are about 4 km scale, does anyone make maps of actual land areas, such as the town of Bastione in (forgot country name, Belgum?) os Sheiffield, England, for a more real feel to a battle. >> or Gibraltar, or the Siberian coastline (a good graphics project-update the "icepick" map), or northeastern France and/or the Strasbourg to Metz area? ------------------------------ From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: Stealth in the 21st century I hate to get involved in these discussions because I know there are people who understand the science much better than I and I'm not sure how precisely we can predict the future that far in advance, but let me make three points that I think are important: 1) As I recall from the Designer's Notes Mr. Steve wanted to create the giant tank game and so created the future history in broad strokes to justify it. And its very reasonable, in broad strokes. In this sense its no different from any fantasy background, in that it asks the reader/player to suspend disbelief so we can all enjoy this great world that supports a great tank game, an infantry game, and now roleplaying. Cool. Its a lot more reasonable than WarHammer 40K or that Mecha nonsense. Its not an argued prediction, so I don't think it has to answer for all its science just because it mentions some, which brings us to... 2) Technolgy is changing *very* fast. I generally take with a grain of salt any prediction I read that's more than a year out, and if it has to do with military technology, I go as far as giggling. The first machine guns in the US Civil War were laughed at. Cavalry was used to some effect in WW I, and mules were vital to the US War effort in WW2. Some argued during and after WWI that the tank and machine gun would make infantry obsolete. People have been arguing since the 1930s that tanks are going to become obsolete any day now. After all, the Panzerfaust and Bazooka were pretty effective. Today's cheap, man-portable anti-tank weapons like the Dragon look pretty formidable, not to mention the A-10 and the watchacallit helicopters, but people are still designing and buying tanks. I don't think we can say with any accuracy what we'll see in 2060. I would equally accept the "all-aircraft, tanks are obsolete" premise and the "no aircraft, tanks rule" idea of Ogre. The only thing that's certain is that it will still come down to 19-year-olds with rifles. The only thing I would reject is anyone's certainty about anything else. 3) There several other forms of stealth and detection/lock-on avoidance technology already in use. There are IR flares and Sonar decoys. There are some really cool radar spoofing technologies. There's smoke. It seems to me that if an optically-guided missle were heading at you one thing you could do is shine a modest laser at it to burn out its sensors. Sound and vibration can be distorted and interfered with so that they will not give a tight enough location for targeting. The Ogre has a lot of processing power, it doesn't need it all for target prioritizing (heck, you and I can do that); the rest of that formidable brain is evaluating threats, contemplating the environment, coming up with the right deceptions, the right manuevers, the right countermeasures. Remember, with BPC a near miss is a as good as a mile. Bottom line, the Iraqis had a lot of tanks left after Desert Storm, and a lot of tanks came out of the Kosovo hills after Allied Force. Tanks are stealthy, tanks survive. Andrew Walters ----- [IIRC Mr Jackson was trying to adapt a certain popular story, but the contract fell through and so they needed to scramble, or something like that. -HJC ;-] ----- From: "Hunt, Kirk (Tucson)" Subject: Stealth in the 21st century In response to Wray Odum: You're right, the game doesn't match up to the "real world" completely. My original point was that the game is "internally consistent & rational" about how the technology effects things. It makes sense that a "stealth OGRE" is harder to hit than a non-stealth OGRE. The trade-off in firepower and toughness are "about right." That parallels some Realverse weapons systems. The OGREverse is a guess that I don't think is TOO far off the mark. Technology is changing constantly. Kevlar radically changed the modern battlefield and makes body armor for the typical soldier an option. Individual soldiers now carry IR or Infrared sensors in the field. "Artificial muscles" have been developed by AlliedSignal (now Honeywell) Corporation; can "battle suits" be on the horizon? Biphase Carbide Armor is just an improvement on Kevlar.... The Afghans and Vietnamese were knocking down modern aircraft with "hand held" weapons and looting them for equipment and materials. To my knowledge, they never quite fielded a M-60/T-27 or a helicopter from stolen parts, but the resources allowed them to carry on the fight. What would have happened had the Allies (or Axis) captured entire truck or tank factories INTACT? (That was the point of the Soviet "scorched earth" policy.) Plutonium Fission is not the only way to make a nuclear weapon, even now. (Do you remember the "Neutron Bomb" debate in the press a few years ago?) Cold or Warm Fusion could suddenly change EVERYthing... (And hopefully eliminate the perceived need to fight over oil wells in the first place.) And may the prospect of Nuclear Winter continue to scare everybody senseless... Today's point? The OGREverse battlefield isn't unsensible. It's a possible reality, given a few IMPROVEMENTS in current technologies. That's why we sometimes call Science Fiction, Speculative Fiction... Kirk Hunt Purveyor of Pulse Rifles ----- From: Patrick.ODonnell@materna.de Subject: Stealth in the 21st century Kirk Hunt writes: >Think B-2 Bomber / F-117 Fighter ... No. Think of the new *Sea Wraith* stealth destroyer (yes that is right STEALTH DESTROYER) which was just recently put on the drawing boards by the British or the, already floating, experimental, *Sea Ghost* of the U.S. Navy. Further, *Stealth* for very large objects has been called *Night Attack Capability* since right after WWII. Lessons learned, it is very possible to *hide* very large objects. It just takes some doing. As far as heat and other *Signatures* there are methods for lessoning, NOT ELIMINATING, their *Noticability* already being used by the Israeli Defense Forces on their armor. Project that technology forward to the future. > ... I'm not sure what a "Micro Nuke" is in the context of this discussion ... This is where you'll get nothing but agreement from me. IMHO, OGRE would go from *UNREAL BUT FUN* to being MUCH more realistic if nuclear ammo was not a part of it. {But, just as a point of interest, what would you replace them with?} >>... are all very interchangeable and recyclable. Thus looting the battlefield is an option. >... How many German tanks were using American parts in WWII? Can you really put Russian parts on a Bradley vehicle without serious modification? Good points. But, again I point to the Israelis on this issue who have shown us *How it is done* when it comes to *Battlefield Salvage.* The key is not to try and interchange parts between differing technological resource bases. The key is in taking two, or more, of the enemy's vehicles, which were yielded inoperative but are less than destroyed or operative units that were captured, and making workable units out of them ... giving them new paint jobs ... and using them yourself against the enemy. And yes, this is already very doable. At the beginning of WWII Hitler's best 400 and some odd tanks were captured from the Czechs. Best, PJ ------------------------------ From: Patrick.ODonnell@materna.de Subject: Conventional Wisdom << [Go out to conventions?!? >> > Sure! Why not ... Well, not all of us live where the conventions are. The only real convention in the area of Germany where I live is the upcoming Games 2000 Con in Essen. It happens to be one of the most international and largest game conventions in the world. Last year White Wolf, TSR, and a couple of other very big names had some SERIOUS floor space there. But, SJGames doesn't do that Con. Even though they have an MIB wanne-be [me], who speaks the local lingo as well as English and, who would gladly volunteer for the stand etc ... So, the question "Why not ..." can be a little more complicated than what your reply makes it seem, Servitor. [Some of us only get to dream of playing with Macrotures. We'll probably never actually get to though.] ------------------------------ From: ckbryant@mindspring.com Subject: I hear this Superheavy is one bad mother... Greetings, all... I last played G.E.V. back in the heady days of the early nineties, until just recently, when my kid brother found it on a shelf in my study, and just went ga-ga, as you can perhaps imagine. So now I find myself a happy participant in the Ogre Rennaisance of 2000, having now purchased the current edition for both him and me. Funny how you forget what a great game it was--and is! Clean, fast and dirty on the one hand, and yet having such a wonderful balance and subtlety. Every game is a puzzle for the tactician to mull, as well as (depending on the mood), a slam-bang episode of ultra-violence to swell the heart. But anyway--on to the topic. I remember, of course, the original "Superheavy" from Shockwave: D4, no AP guns. And I remember, of course, taking them into battle once, or maybe twice, before I decided it just wasn't worth the trouble. It looked good on paper, but it was a big white elephant in the field--and it drew enough attention (and fire) that you never had to worry about it for long. Now, this didn't really bother me. G.E.V. is about the Heavy Tank and the hovercraft, and I just thought that the wussy Superheavy underlined the point that the Heavy was a local maximum--the best possible set of engineering compromises and trade-offs for a "front-line battle tank" in the world of 2085. And yet--gadzooks! I look in the new Shockwave, and see that this ain't your daddy's Superheavy tank! D5 makes it the baddest target on the map, and the two new AP guns, far from a garnish, make it all but immune to infantry. I haven't taken the 2000 model out for a drive yet, but I was just meditating on those new stats. You need twice as many Heavies (2), one and a half times as many G.E.V.s (3) to get 1:1 attacks--and that's really punishing on the Heavies, where most of the attack factors are "wasted." One answer would be to pull up the infantry, and combine a squad with every Heavy to get up to 1:1--but then those AP guns turn the grunts into a fine red mist, without lessening the long-range punch. But the main strength of those AP's is that they let the Superheavy chuckle at the constant nightmare of all other armor commanders: the infantry overrun. Once upon a time, they used to tattoo inside the eyelids of every tank jockey: never get within 3,000 meters of an infantry platoon. But now? You want to overrun a Superheavy with decent odds, you have to bring in four squads just to die on the first round, and another three squads to get in one good die roll. One-third of the time, they'll fail, and then you loose seven squads of infantry for nothing. Gosh. This new tank is a monster! So, you guys who have been playing with the new Superheavy: what do you find? Are they starting to dominate the center of your line, or do you find that two Heavies are still a better deal? Is the ideal armor company a platoon of Superheavies, two of Heavies, one of Lights, plus a MHWZ or two MSLs? I'd love to hear your experiences... All the best, Craig ----- [It depends on the terrain, but I think they'll be super powerful in woods, as long as they stay away from infantry. (6 point attack is a 1-1 against grunts?) -HJC] Henry J. Cobb ogre@sjgames.com http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 2000, by Steve Jackson Games.