============ The Ogre Digest, Apr 6th (Last: Apr 3rd) ============= ===== On the Marsh From: "Nicholas Elsden" ===== revised coastline maps From: Terry Hewitt ===== wheeled vehicles From: White Rat From: "Hunt, Kirk (Tucson)" ===== Two Mark IIIs vs 22 Armor & 30 Infantry? From: White Rat ===== Darren Breland's big game From: White Rat From: Michael Powers ===== New maps From: White Rat ===== Scenario contest From: White Rat ===== Bill Spencer's OGRE history From: White Rat From: Michael Powers From: patrick.odonnell@materna.de ===== Frequent Wind From: "Henry J. Cobb" ============================== From: "Nicholas Elsden" Subject: On the Marsh Darren Breland (I hope ! sincere apolagies if I have got this wrong, but I am a bit behind the times on this thread ...) wrote >Marsh Terrain > >Definition: Low lying, mostly costal, wetlands. Shallow water with small >sandy shoals, mostly covered with tall thick grasses. Wide open with few >trees and very little cover. Almost impassable to all vehicles except GEVs. > >Movement >- Same restrictions to all vehicles as Swamps except GEV's >- GEV's and Infantry travel as if across Clear terrain. > >Combat >- Treat as clear terrain >- No blocked LOS, LLOS >- No defense bonus for INF, except in Overruns. Defense Double for >INF in Overruns > >Let me know what you think. If you have rules for other terrain type, >please post 'em. > I used the following 'Salt Marsh' terrain specifically for a scenario derived from an incident in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, based on information about Egyptian use of the BMP combat vehicle in the salt marshes of the Kantara sector. The low ground pressure of the BMP allowed it to move through the marshes where other vehicles could not. As details of the historical action proved elusive, I used the idea for an Ogre scenario, with mostly salt marsh terrain, dotted with single contours representing higher dry ground ('normal' terrain), and with patches of Swamp and Water (lakes). The latter along with a river and stream provided some decent manouvering for GEVs whihc replaced the historical BMPs. A road and track were assumed to be raised above the level of the marsh on low causeways, and provided (predicatable) routes for attacking Mk I Ogres supporting the GEVs. 'Salt Marsh' has a lesser effect on vehicles than Swamp, but allows GEVs the mobility advantages of the historical BMP, and infantry an increased effectiveness. OGR HVY TNK ½ speed, Max 2", D6: 1-2 = Stuck GEV Move 8", no bounce INF Move - Normal. Defence x 2 As I said, this was developed to provide the effects required for one scenario - but could be of use to other players. Nick Elsden ============================== From: Terry Hewitt Subject: revised coastline maps The new (and I hope improved) maps are now posted along with a couple of variants. Check them out at http://members.theglobe.com/Londoner54/coastline.html Comments and suggestions are welcome. >From: "Joseph Bloch" >Also, just how high up can a GEV fly? Would it be able to go up a cliff? If I remember correctly, GURPS Ogre gives the max. altitude for hovercraft at 2 feet, so no. >From: Sean Bayan Schoonmaker >I'm not sure that the Cliff terrain type is really suitable to the >OGRE scale. That's exactly why I added cliffs - to see if there was a simple way to add the vertical dimension to the paper game. See below for a possible solution. >Also, the beach map has far too many of them. It channelizes movement >too much. I've made them less of an obstacle - see the revised maps. There are also versions of the maps without cliffs. >From: Michael Powers >I'd say just treat Beach hexes as Clear for GEV and INF movement and >all units' defense, and Swamp hexes for other units' movement. I like these rules - much better than the rules I came up with off the top of my head. >Also, a full kilometer or so of 'beach' seems like a pretty big beach! I knew the beaches were too big, but wanted them to have some effect on the units and didn't think just having beach hexsides would do that. The revised maps now show much narrower beaches (although the effect still extends to the entire hex). >*The Cliffs. I'd rather see an "Ogre Miniatures"-type version of >these. How about this: Cliffs are "generic" - that is they have no definite height. This allows the scenario (or the players) to set the height of the cliffs (based upon how much of an obstacle they want them to be) and use the Ogre Miniatures rules to define the effects of those cliffs. Of course, this has the disadvantage of making all cliffs the same height. Color-coding would work, I suppose, but it would be a pain always having to refer back to see what color represented each level. >*The map layouts. If you're trying to make the beach be a barrier for >the GEV map, then you >should have it appear on the topmost and >bottommost hexes as well; otherwise units will just >make an 'end run' >around it. oops! ... sorry. When I first drew the maps I hadn't decided if those hexes were going to be water or beach. I forgot about them and put up the maps without making them one or the other. Thanks for catching that - it has been corrected. >Also, perhaps the S map should have some terrain on the islands >(forests or towns, of course); >this makes that area less of a 'GEV >playground'. Good suggestion. The island hexes are now forest. Terry Hewitt ============================== From: White Rat Subject: wheeled vehicles > From: "Blount, Stephen" > >>I could not sleep the other night and started going through the archives. > I came across an article on alternate terrain rules and rules for wheeled > vehicles. I've always wondered about the wheeled vehicle rules. Apparently > they have not seen some of the new wheeled armored vehicles on the market > today. The French, South Africans, Italians, and several other European > countries make extensive use of wheeled armored fighting vehicles. In some > types of terrain they actually perform better than tracked vehicles and they > allow the vehicle to reach higher road speeds. If I get around to it I just > may come up with some alternate wheeled vehicle rules. You're absolutely right about the performance of wheeled APCs in many environments. There are some which can take on an MBT in firepower, though not armor (I seem to recall one of the LAV variants had a 155 turret and in early testing they determined that firing to the side while on a slope was a -bad- thing...). In my mind, the real prohibition against wheeled vehicles in OGRE is that the weapons being used are meant to defeat BPC...And that even a near miss from such a weapon is going to shred even 'solid' tires. This doesn't affect 'how they move' in the slightest, but it's my mind's eye view of 'why they aren't around much'. Other than that, I like Sumnerd1234's interpretation, rules-wise. It makes some degree of sense, but if someone insisted on 'wheeled vehicles' (rather than wheeled minis representing standard tracked OGRE universe vehicles) I would probably bump the 'D' result on the CRT one higher for them when fired upon. I.E., a 1-1 attack would give NE on a roll of 1, D on a roll of 2-4, and X on a 5-6 to represent the vulnerability of those wheels. For 'trucks' I use Russian artillery haulers of some kind by Micro Armor, which look roughly like a typically large-Soviet-clunky-style canvas-back military truck...Mounted on treads. > This drew a response from Paul Chapman stating that Ogreverse military does > not use wheeled vehicles. I disagree (sorry Paul). Granted the hovertruck > is a better mode of transport, but I could think of more than one instance > where MWHL vehicle types would be used. For example "third world" or > poorer nations that cannot afford GEV's, commandeered vehicles, etc. I agree that there are situations like this in the OGRE-verse, but feel that these vehicles are the equivalent of the Shermans still kicking around in the third world...They really don't stand a hope in hell against even a modern APC. > We also have rules for Marshes :-) : > > Marsh Terrain > > Definition: Low lying, mostly costal, wetlands. Shallow water with small > sandy shoals, mostly covered with tall thick grasses. Wide open with few > trees and very little cover. Almost impassable to all vehicles except GEVs. I like the Marsh terrain rules a _LOT_. One of my issues with swamp has always been that most folks 'view' it as marsh. Now we have, it seems, 'swamp with trees' (Think cypress swamp or mangrove) which sucks down tanks and smashes up GEVs, and 'marsh without trees (rice paddies, etc)' which sucks down tanks but is perfect GEV territory. Good show! ===== From: "Hunt, Kirk (Tucson)" Subject: wheeled vehicles I agree with Mr. Blount: TNK-T or TNK= Light Tank movement using treads TNK-W or WHH= Light Tank movement using wheels WHL= Civilian/Light vehicle movement using wheels The distinction could be important to OGRE Gurps or some future rules, but not enough for now to mess everything up: Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity! >Anyway, if you want to >model an all-terrain wheeled vehicle, the simplest way to do that is just to >use the existing TNK movement mode. The differences between an armored car >and a light tank are too small to be seen on the scale of Ogre/GEV. > >--Stephen Blount >sblount@intiso.com Stop it! You're scaring the children...and ME!! On a more serious note, let us hope (and pray) that as the OGREverse technologies are developed (I think it's vain to think they won't emerge) that their commercial value far exceeds their military usefulness. BTW: Here, where I (often) work, they are developing advanced turbine engines for use in Locomotives, helicopters and tanks. "Is that a aircraft cannon being mounted on that experimental vehicle testbed?" "Who are these Combined North American Defense Systems guys? Why are they goose-stepping?" ===== [Let's play, ask the pentagon! From http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/5423/lav25.html the LAV has a road speed of 100 kph, that's move 5. The LAV gets move 3/2 but no road bonus, instead it pays one MP to travel along road, two per clear or city hex and three MPs per woods or swamp hex. Swamp causes a disrupt check as usual. The fun part is that it is listed as being amphibious! Take a full turn's movement to enter or leave a water hex. -HJC] ============================== From: White Rat Subject: Two Mark IIIs vs 22 Armor & 30 Infantry? > From: Stephan Beal > > From: "Andrew Walters" > > The Ogre rules discuss a scenario where the attacker gets two Mark > > IIIs and the defender gets the Advanced scenario defense (20 armor > > and 30 inf) plus two extra armor units. We discussed this today and > > decided it favored the Ogres. Then we tried it. It *really* seemed to > > favor the Ogres. > > Agreed. I've tried this one a couple of times and the Ogres STOMPED the > defenders every time. This echoes my experience. I'm inclined to pin down one of my local gamers for a marathon session, adding a couple of armor units and 5 infantry each time. By the amount of OGRE usually remaining in my experience, I'm betting that somewhere around 26/40 is what will turn out to 'balance'. ============================== From: White Rat Subject: Darren Breland's big game > From: Darren Breland > Tried this last weekend: > Meeting engagement between and Paneuropean Shock Troop - 3 Ogre Mk III's > and a Combine Reinforced Battalion (I guess) of 330 points (mini's). > > We added a twist, 75% armor 25% infantry. > > It was great fun, a long game (about 2 hours) and ended in a draw point > wise. With most of my opponents armor in smoking ruins and 2 decimated > Ogres, the third retreated (Ogres are big, but not stupid :-) ) We used > a terrain setup similar to the Shockwave map so that the GEV's had some of > their teeth taken away. There isn't a lot of clear terrain that GEV's can > take advantage of. Since it was a "meeting engagement" neither side had > the benefit of emplacements and had to fight for terrain. Came out pretty > good. It didn't favor either side really (except I rolled BAD on more than > one occasion with the Ogres...doh!) and played real well. Okay. I'm drooling on my keyboard. Can you tell us just how MUCH of your opponent's armor and infantry was remaining? ===== From: Michael Powers Subject: Darren Breland's big game Probably part of the reason the really big game went so well is that you didn't have the same armor-to-infantry balance as by-the-book Ogre matchups. Most of those float around a 60-40 or 50-50 armor-to-infantry balance, if converted into points; I believe that SJ actually mentions this somewhere, that they specified infantry amounts precisely because otherwise the defender just took all GEV or all HVY (or all HWZ!) and the game was over in a couple of turns. One scenario I'd like to see was mentioned earlier on the list; it was the 'Mark III on Defense vs. Two Mark IIIs Attacking' setup. This one had the Basic selection of units plus a Mark III on the defender side, and two Mark IIIs as attackers. Has anyone tried this out? (I'd do it myself, but around here interest in gaming begins and ends with Pokemon.) -- Michael Powers Graduate Student, GWU/JIAFS NASA Langley Research Center (757) 864 4457 -- m.t.powers@larc.nasa.gov ============================== From: White Rat Subject: New maps > From: "Joseph Bloch" > The maps themselves look great. The only suggestion I would have is that you > explicitly state that infantry moving "up" the cliffs should start its turn > adjacent, and then use all it's MP's to cross the cliff hexside. Also, just > how high up can a GEV fly? Would it be able to go up a cliff? I have MAJOR issues with 'flying GEVs', including a lot of the illustrations in the GURPS OGRE book. A hovercraft whose skirt gets more than a few inches above the ground (six inches or so would be 'WOW that's powerful!' loses cohesion of its air-cushion and sinks down until enough pressure is re-established. I dunno -what- the Combine GEVs are (I've heard everything from ducted-fan to Harrier-style ducted-jet) but the PE GEVs are definitely classic 'skirted' hovercraft. I suppose that since jet engines seem to be involved in both cases, if you dumped your jet thrust straight down you could get a very brief 'bounce' of a couple of meters, maybe, but the odds of you hitting nose-down would seem high, and dumping your air-cushion even higher. This would be a desperation 'crap there's a main battery pointed at me!' tactic and not a 'standard mode of operation'. GEV jockeys may call themselves pilots, but their maximum ceiling is probably less than ten centimeters above ground... I was intrigued by the new Combine LGEV...If its fins pointed down instead of up, some argument might be made that it was a land-running ekranoplan (wing-in-ground-effect) vehicle. The simplest way to explain these is 'a plane without enough thrust to take off, but enough to ride a compressed air cushion generated by the leading edge of its own wing under forward thrust'. Maybe Nihon LGEVs will be like this...? > Perhaps non-armor units moving "down" a cliff could do so without burning > their entire movement for the turn. Agreed. I would've made it half their movement for a REALLY high cliff. Remember, these boys can move 3 klicks in 4 minutes horizontally...Otherwise use the Minis rule which infantry ignore cliffs when going down them, but act as a stream when going up them. > I'm not sure that the Cliff terrain type is really suitable to the > OGRE scale. Also, the beach map has far too many of them. I > channelizes movement too much. I think you're wrong about the Cliff terrain. I've used quite a bit of it in minis games, albeit handled differently. On the other hand, you hit the nail on the head when you stated that it channeled movement. A couple of well-placed how batteries would make this map an ugly, ugly place... ============================== From: White Rat Subject: Scenario contest > From: Stephan Beal > Hey, that's not fair... several weeks ago I sent a couple questions > regarding the rules to the address listed on the contest announcement > page and never got answers (and no bounced mail, either), so I stopped DITTO! ============================== From: White Rat Subject: Bill Spencer's OGRE history > From: William Spencer > News item today: Jesse Helms wants the U.S. to get out of the nuclear > test-ban treaty. (Sponsored by such folks as nuclear-weapons scientists, who > say that were the ban lifted they could work on and test Ogre-style > micro-nukes.) Jesse Helms wants a lot of things...Most of them don't happen. > Seeing that the U.S. hasn't quite signed the comprehensive test ban treaty, > as well as some of those other treaties (like the land-mines ban), and is > selectively ignoring others (like the ABM treaties), it looks like, in a > worst-case scenario, we could be headed for another Cold War: the U.S. vs. > everyone else. The Sovs ignored the ABM treaty, too. As did we. There's a remodeled Nike station near me which was part of a four-station-array ABM umbrella for the SF Bay Area. The ABM treaty has to be one of the more laughably ignored bits of 'peace talk' in the 20th century, sadly. > I had this sudden mental image of tanks crossing that famous "longest > unguarded border in the world" to the North - and paratroopers over Mexico. Nope, we'd just make them staggeringly economically dependent on us...Whups, already done! > The U.S. "pressures" Canada and Mexico to federate into what will become the > North American Combine over the "oil crisis." > > The European Union, outraged over the U.S.'s flagrant disobedience of many > treaties, drops out of NATO and starts its own weapons program, beginning > what will become the Paneuropean Federation. More likely a motion would be made to expel the U.S. from NATO, and the remaining members would then form the core of the PEF. > The U.S. abandons its defense treaty with Japan, causing Japan to build-up a > state-of-the-art Army and renew its old feuds with China. This brings Japan > out of an economic recession and brings a new set of people into power. Japan already has a state-of-the-art army, in spite of the fact that they're not allowed to. Oops, there went another broken peace treaty... If you read the actual accords under which Japan surrendered and the details of the part which insist they can't maintain a military force, we should technically be at war with them -now-. > A Cold War begins, punctuated by conflicts across the globe as U.S. > "peacekeepers" sends troops to "troubled" countries. We're there. > A possible flashpoint: one country doesn't want the help, and calls for aid > from Europe, citing old treaties. Somalia, except they didn't call for help, they just showed us what several thousand motivated militia and civilian mobs could do to our 'best and brightest'...Which was a much-needed wake-up call. If you study what happened there, we couldn't possibly have been asking for it more if we'd mooned them with a giant target painted on each buttock. > The U.N. is no help, of course. The U.S. keeps using its Security Council > vote to veto anything useful. If things are as ugly as you're implying, the UN more than likely boots the US out. > As the oil continues to "run out" - or at least, so the oil companies say - > the squabbling for resources continues. This is something we do have to look forward to. While 'reclamation' technology is getting better every day and we're going back to 'dead' oil fields and pumping more out of them, we do have a finite energy source there, one which will need first abetting and then replacing by other sources. While the first and second world nations are in a position to do this, the technology involved is beyond the reach of most third and fourth world governments. This is likely to lead us to a situation where even more than now, the third and fourth world are forced to feel dependent on the first and second world powers, causing envy, fear and hatred. A friend of mine wrote a future history on this. In his version of the world, we're only about three decades away from what he termed 'the Have-Not War'. > renewed efforts on the part of CIA. And thanks to the development of > advanced cloning technology, Fidel Castro remains in charge for the rest of > the century... Man, you really ARE a pessimist! *LOL* Johnny Perchalski (Moderator: SFBay-OGRE) ===== From: Michael Powers Subject: Bill Spencer's OGRE history I like it! Though I do have some concerns. *I can't see the US just ditching Japan in one line; we're still pretty tight (heck, half of the Japanese automakers are owned by American companies!) Maybe neo-traditionalists take over the government and turn Japan back into a violently xenophobic country. *There's no need to invent environmentalist reasons for the reduced use of aircraft--Laser Towers will handle that just fine. *Russia would be just as much of a resource target as the Middle East; I could see the Paneuropeans getting themselves into a WWII-ish 'War on Two Fronts' again. *When everyone in the world is at war, who really cares about patents? Instead, just say that the South Americans refuse to provide the NAC with the raw materials for advanced pharmaceuticals (and, ironically, they end up going nowhere as the Paneuropeans and Chinese don't have the technology to make anything from them, and the Nihon don't like anything that's not Made In Japan.) I like the 'cloned Castro' thing, though its origins lie in pulp SF rather than mil SF. -- Michael Powers Graduate Student, GWU/JIAFS NASA Langley Research Center (757) 864 4457 -- m.t.powers@larc.nasa.gov ===== From: patrick.odonnell@materna.de Subject: Bill Spencer's OGRE history >I'm depressed. I keep reading the news and I keep seeing the OGRE world coming closer. And it's not a world that you'd actually want to live in, you know? (Pat turns on the Ogre Digest Stereo. And, what is, by coincidence, playing in Dolby Surround? "Don't Worry Be Happy." 8~) We thought that the Ogreverse was just around the corner back when "Ogre" first came out. Only, for other reasons than what you've named. It didn't happen. Big, expensive, Ogres make BIG, almost irreplaceable, targets. Laser Towers still ain't all dat and a bag-o-chips ... although they are getting closer by the day. *Stealth* does work. Etc, Etc, Etc ... >I keep reading the news and I keep seeing the OGRE world coming closer. And it's not a world that you'd actually want to live in, you know? Yeah, I know. > ... worst-case scenario, we could be headed for another Cold War: the U.S. vs.everyone else. In certain respects this is the way *Things* are today, it is just called the "Cold Peace" and not a "Cold War." We don't have to look to the future for this one. The U.S. is currently #1 and there is no #2. Not even a distant #2 either as a single nation or as a group of nations. We all know what happens when one puts oneself on a pedestal, right? All others do their part in trying to knock you off ... including so-called *Close Friends.* Think *SERIOUS ENVY.* > I had this sudden mental image of tanks crossing that famous "longest unguarded border in the world" to the North - and paratroopers over Mexico. Again, unlikely. The U.S. could have done this long before now. There are reasons they never have and probably won't in the near future. As hard as it might be to believe (what with the constant litany of "Imperialism" charges coming from the rest of the world on a daily bases) the U.S. has proven to be a rather peaceful and complacent lone superpower. History has seen a lot worse (Think Napoleon. Think Genghis Khan.) > Somewhere along the line, in the rest of the world: You forgot one very important flash point in your list: !>INDIA vs. PAKISTAN Subject: Frequent Wind Recent events in the middle and far east have got me thinking about how the US Navy is going to manage bases in the future. The really decent harbors around the world that are located near trouble spots are centers of commerical activity, but a unregulated mixed use harbor leaves open the possibility of another Stark style incident. So in light of recent tensions in southeast Asia, what if the US negotiated a long term lease on Cam Ranh Bay once the Ruskies get kicked out (see http://www.usvtc.org/na2.16b.htm), with a surounding duty free zone with the offer of treating any value add provided in the treaty zone as immune from US or Vietnamese tarrifs or quotas. The relevance of this to the OGREverse? Imagine the scenario. A Combine naval base surrounded by a heavily industrialized treaty zone in the middle of a suddenly hostile country. (Darn those French polical agents, they did it again! ;-) The Combine ground forces have to sacrifice themselves to buy time for refugees to cram onto freighters then the Combine navy has to break out and protect the freighters off the map. Henry J. Cobb ogre@sjgames.com Archives at http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 2001, by Steve Jackson Games.