============ OGREverse list, Sep 11th (Last: Sep 3rd) ============= ===== OGRE Cruiser From: "Stephen Said" ===== Reinforcement Pack Question From: "Mark Haynes" ===== Mark IV in OGRE From: "Mark Haynes" ===== Stealth and micronukes From: "Hunt, Kirk (Tucson)" From: "Matthew D. Goldman" ===== Field Test From: "Mark Haynes" ------------------------------ From: "Stephen Said" Subject: OGRE Cruiser mhhhmmmm, the ol strategic rules are ready for the first biffo an i am so excited! i have brand new sets of ogre, gev and shockwave! woo hoo! a few questions though... can OGRE's carry cruise missiles either internally or externally? how would you factor all this stuff in? trucks and trains? what can they carry? i am thinking like the big flatbed trains and stuff that were supposed to ferry gear around were there a wwIII. can a train carry 5 heavy tanks for example? how long to load/unload? what can trucks carry? can you ferry around cruise missiles around in them and get them onto crawlers at the other end? i guess the real issue here is, can trains and hover trucks be used to move around the heavier units. in the ogre miniatures rulebook, it talked about converted oil tankers to move the early mark I's and II's. are there ship/train construction rules that can make moving units on a strategic level around or should i come up with my own? all of a sudden, the train scenario becomes really important... regards, stephen said webcast master whoopi limited melbourne, australia e: stephen@whoopi.net w: www.whoopi.net p: +613 9696-4747 f: +613 9696-9390 icq: 1854143 ----- [According to GURPS OGRE, a cruise missile plus launch rack weighs as much as three of a Mk-Vs missles plus racks, but I'm sure that must be a misprint... -HJC] ------------------------------ From: "Mark Haynes" Subject: Reinforcement Pack Question Okay, here's an oldy but a goody. In my 1987 version of the Reinforcement Pack the Body Blow scenario has an Attacker set-up of: 75 STR INf and 150 POINTS of armor. Now we always played this game (yes, more than once!) as 150 armor UNITS. Was the POINTS reference a typo, or was it a return to the OGRE 1st edition armor value rating? I checked http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/errata/reinforcement-pack.html and all it mentions is the Fencer "tooth pull". Have I been getting my but kicked at this scenario all along because I let my attacker come swarming in with 300 LGEV's? (Sidebar: between all of us, we had 9 or 10 complete sets of OGRE/GEV/Shockwave & Reinforcement pack, so we had the counters to spare). From the "For What it's Worth" Dept: This charge of the "Extremely Numerous Brigade" was when we discovered the LGEV overrun enmasse as a means to neutralize an OGRE. As the defender, I ONLY had 2 Mark V's and 6 Mark III's plus a handful of INF & other armor. After that first game, we house ruled that an OGRE's AP could be used in an overrun on armor units, but only at their rated attack strength of one. It gave the OGRE a few more teeth, made them harder to walk all over with "flight wing", and brought the game almost into line with the cover illustration of the second edition of OGRE (that's the one where and OGRE is "nuking" a HVY only a few meters in front of it with an AP gun). Anyway, does anybody think that this rule would severely unbalance the game? It worked fine for us, and actually put a little fear back into the Overrun. On the economic side - How many LGEV's can be created for the same resource expenditure as an OGRE Mark V? The first round of the overrun costs you 15 LGEVs (2 from the MB's, 6 from the SB's, one from a ram and 6 from the Missiles - there being so many your going to lose all of them anyway) so is it a cost effective assault? Mark Haynes "God may not play dice with the universe, but I have to." ----- [Sorry, that's 150 VPs of armor or 25 armor units. I suppose. -HJC] ------------------------------ From: "Mark Haynes" Subject: Mark IV in OGRE This is a real easy question, I hope. Anybody know what the "recommended" defense force is for a Mark IV OGRE attacking in the OGRE game? I swore it was in the miniatures rules, but I can't seem to locate my copy right at this moment (look for my new "self-help" book: Entropy can be your Friend: Applied Chaos Theory as an Organizational Tool.) And now for something completely different. My wife's progress in OGRE is quite disturbing. In our first game, I won with a complete Defensive victory in the basic game. In game two, I managed to destroy the Mark III's last tread unit when it was in the hex adjacent to my CP, a Defensive victory but only by a hair's breadth (I had 10 STR INF, 2 GEV and 2 MSL TNK left in my force). And she had a long streak of "bad" rolls to boot in game two. Not too shabby for somebody who's never played a wargame in her life, she only learned chess about two years ago, and we've maybe played a dozen games of that. In seven or eight years, when my son gets old enough, I'll teach him OGRE and then I'll have a real "Nuclear" family... Mark Haynes "God may not play dice with the universe, but I have to." ----- [Lots of GEVs. Oh, you mean the total force. Same as against a Mk V, they cost about the same. -HJC] ------------------------------ From: "Hunt, Kirk (Tucson)" Subject: Stealth and micronukes >Second, how large does the weapon have to be, to be effective against BPC as >described. The larger this number is the worse the environmental impact of >using these weapons. The smaller the number the less likely that nukes would >be used in favor of conventional (and very effective antitank weapons) The heat and gases from "conventional" explosives or "rocket powered" projectiles would tend to choke the planet, or at least the battlefield, as well, albeit at a slower rate. (Have they finished cleaning up Kuwait YET?) >As for "hiveloc" rounds, it seems to me, you are going to either be shooting >very shallow trajectories at short ranges (requiring rules very close to >laser line-of-sight) or very high trajectories causing the projectile to slow >down to terminal velocity (admittedly no small velocity of a very dense >projectile, but probably "hiveloc" The US Army currently uses "Copperhead" smart artillery munitions that "hunt down" a target using "passive" features. (Fins, partially external guidance, etcetera.) Add 2nd or 3rd generation technology, maybe add a little rocket boost and/or rail gun launch and you have a VERY ugly attack ability... >First of all, regarding those Iraqi and Kosavar tanks, those are examples of >what I would call "defensive stealth." Ogre/GEV already supplies rules for >camoflage and defensive cover. MY question was about units getting behind >enemy lines and attacking covertly using "offensive stealth" (similar but not >quite the same). Offensive stealth units are tough to build and operate, and don't hold up well in slugging matches. (Example: Submarines.) _I_ can't see the payoff being high enough for anything smaller than a OGRE. However, since it is a GAME and using the "Subtract 1 from rolling results" techniques: Suggestion 1) An attackless recon unit that would allow off-board bombardment. Suggestion 2) Any unit can be stealthed by making it cost 2 armor units + the original cost of the unit, plus cutting attack by 1/2. (Example: Stealth Heavy Costs 3 Armor units and only has a 2/2 attack.) Have Good Days folks... Kirk Hunt ----- From: "Matthew D. Goldman" Subject: Re: Stealth and Micronukes Hi! I'm not a physicist; however, I've 3 of them in my family. > From: Wrazor@aol.com > Man, a lot of subjects to cover under one heading, but here goes: > > Nuclear munitions: > When I said I wasn't sure what a micronuke is, I really had two questions in > mind. First, how small can you make a tactical nuke in terms of yield. As I understand it, it isn't the just the quanity of material, it is the density you compact it to. Also if you work with non-standard material, ie. not uranium or plutonium, the material is a lot less stable and more easily made to go boom. > As to someone's statement that "plutonium fission is not the only way to make > a nuclear weapon," he is right to this extent you could also use uranium-235 > or some other fissile material. However, nuclear weapons are either strictly > fission weapons or they are fusion weapons (neutron bombs are specialized > fusion weapons). I believe the real problem is what sort of shelf life you want for the weapon. The US plan of deterrent calls for long term shelf life (20 to 30 years?) Whereas the OGRE Universe has about a week to a month required shelf life. > Cold fusion is not an option. I'm always amused when one of my mother's friends as my dad or my other siblings about cold fusion. > Lastly on the subject of reality. I understand most of the points on salvage > and when pursued in this manner find it totally rational. I don't think > however, that just because we make our weapons modular/interchangeable > among our systems, we are going to try to make our systems interchangeable > with theirs so that we can make use of them. After all, that sword would cut > both ways. Ask the Israel. about salvage. I'm sure that the Arabs would really not like to be one of the major suppliers of weapon systems to Israel. And look at the various types of heads available on screws. That all came about because of war technology. You can't reuse the invader's body armor if you don't have a screwdriver with a philips head! Matt -- O O __ | \| O O /|\ -/- _ __\ O _\O |/ (/ O/ /\- /|\ / \ / ) / \ | /O _ O/_ _ O_ ^_ / \^_ )\ / \ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Matthew Goldman E-mail: goldman@visi.com My day today? Nothing major, just Xenon base gone, Scorpio gone, Tarrant dead, Tarrant alive and then I found out Blake sold us out. ------------------------------ From: "Mark Haynes" Subject: Field Test Whilst in the middle of my Spring Cleaning (yes, I know my calendar is off, but at least I know when the Millenium will really change) I ran across my old Jr High yearbook. These provided immense humor for my wife to see just how much of a 7th grade geek her husband was in 78/79 but more important to me was the 3x5 index cards I found in the back. In barely decipherable cryptic notes are our "new" OGRE/GEV units. Most have been duplicated by other creative geniuses, but the only two of note that are somewhat original are as follows: APC A 1/2 D 3 M 3 Terrain effects as a Heavy tank. The APC was basically a HVY TNK chassis with a small turret and room for 2 SP INF. The difference is that these units carried the INF on the INSIDE, so they got the D3 of the APC, additional INF could ride on top just like a HVY. We always treated it as 1/2 an armor unit (in our minds at the time, it was a BPC M113 with a gun, but now I'd say it's a BPC Bradley). If I remember correctly, it play tested quite nicely and it "Henries" out at 3.09 so that much we managed to get right. Funny thing is that we never really thought along the GEV-PC lines. We had a rule that loading/unloading had to be at the start the movement phase (figuring it took more time to get inside something than to just grab a piece of it as it goes by), and of course the units had to start the turn in the same hex (we kept the loading/unloading only at the start of a movement phase in effect for the GEV-PC, so you had a chance at blasting the whole platoon in transit). GEV-HWZR A 6/6 D 1 M 2/1 Terrain effects as a GEV. Okay, this was the result of a bunch of greedy teenagers, but it almost played out fair. We had another house rule just for this unit: It only got one movement phase on a turn that it fired (a rule we applied to our MSL-GEV also). So it could advance (or retreat) 2 hexes and then shoot OR it could shoot and then scoot 1 hex. Like all Howitzers, it was worth 2 armor units and it actually "Henries" out at 11.71. I'm hoping that somebody could playtest these a little more aggressively and see if they are worth anything in the game. While I'm teaching my wife to play OGRE (it disturbs me a little to see the bloodlust she fields as the OGRE) she isn't quite up to speed for hammering these units out. I'd be more than thrilled to get some feedback. ------------------------------ Henry J. Cobb ogre@sjgames.com http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 2000, by Steve Jackson Games.