============ The Ogre Digest, July 28th (Last: July 21st) ============= ===== Warfields From: Kirk Hunt ===== OGRE Pictures From: Armored Core2 ===== INF riding Ogres? From: "Andrew Walters" ===== New Ogre Commander From: "Paul Chapman" ============================== From: Kirk Hunt Subject: Warfields A new build of Warfields is available at http://briefcase.yahoo.com/e071460kwh. Most notable are Scenario 3, Factory Wars and Scenario 4, Global Domination! Playtest, Playtest, Playtest. E-mail reports. Please? (Okay, there's a candy bar in it for you....) Kirk "Desertcat" Hunt ============================== From: Armored Core2 Subject: OGRE Pictures I've finally got the pictures up, but as yet haven't finished the site to display them. Those who are curious can feel free to check them out at the URL below. Be forewarned however that most of the images are very large and several aren't all that focused. I'll be touching them up as I have time but it'll definatly take a while. http://aslum.tripod.com/ogre/images/ ============================== From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: INF riding Ogres? Here's a few problems with INF Riding Ogres: From a psychological point of view, canon says they're afraid to get near friendly Ogres, and this makes sense. The Ogre is not human. The Ogre will consider them as anonymous and expendable in a way even a military bureaucracy couldn't approach. The Ogre will not be friendly, they will not build trust with it, they will consider it unpredictable. They can't depend on it to watch their flank or back, since in an instant the Ogre could accurately calculate that their flank or back is the eighth or ninth most important thing on the battlefield. Worst, the Ogre doesn't *need* them. From time without reckoning humans and animals have built relationships with each other based on need, even if all we need from them is to stay in their own freaking lane on the freeway. The Ogre doesn't need your help, the Ogre doesn't need information from you, the Ogre does not even need you to stay out of its way. The Ogre is big in ways other than size. The Ogre makes you small. From the practical point of view Infantry would have D0 if it weren't for their ECM - you can't tell where they exactly where they are. You know they're in a certain area, but you can't put a warhead close enough to hurt them, even if it hits where you aim it. With the exception of the Ninja, you almost always know where an Ogre is, but its thick armor and plentiful point defense make it hard to hit it in an interesting way. Many weapons target the Ogre, and most of them detonate harmlessly against 1.2m of BPC or are destroyed in mid-air by point defense. All these nearby explosions don't bother the Ogre, but they'd blow infantry off the tank, and probably disable them in the process. It would not be a safe place at all. A clever enemy, and aren't they all, would take some long-range shots that couldn't possibly hurt the Ogre (ie way beyond listed weapons ranges), but which will scatter the infantry. The Ogre-PC is a very interesting idea. There are many, many things that only infantry can do, but they have trouble getting through defenses alive, thus helicopters, paratroopers and SpecOps SCUBA insertions. But airborne ingress is no longer possible, so how do we get commandos to their targets? The Ogre-PC would do the job, and presumably you could overcome the psychological issues through training and programming. The problem of incoming fire would only matter at the moment of exit and entrance. It would be the most *unstealthy* approach since the first Persian war, and cost twenty times (GURPS Ogre numbers) a GEV-PC, but maybe it would have a use. But, truth be told, I don't want to see a Ogre-PC. It puts the Ogre in a subservient, chauffeur role. The Ogre I love is the scary, independent monster - not a team player. If we must have one, I think each squad that enters or exits receives an attack equal to the combined to the combined attacks against that Ogre in either the preceding or following combat round, or perhaps do some combat-during-movement along the lines of anit-cruise missile fire; that's the moment the troops will be most vulnerable, so they will be attacked that round. I've always supposed Inf can't ride MSLs because the launchers are moving and possibly firing, but that doesn't hold up two well. I think the better reason is that when you include terrain effects, INF are *faster* than MSL. Andrew ============================== From: "Paul Chapman" Subject: New Ogre Commander > Paul Chapman, head of our Miniatures Division, has acquired a new hat ( > http://www.sjgames.com/ill/img/2001/ogre_commander.jpg ). A longtime Ogre > ( http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/products/ogregev ) fan, he now officially > adds the title of Ogre Line Editor to his other duties. > > [I wish I could sit down and chat with this guy. Would you settle for email?:) > Mostly, I'd ask about Ogre Minis. Ask away. I'll give you the best answers I can. > Is there going to be another edition of the OGRE Minis book? Yes. It will be hardcover and full color, unless things go _completely_ haywire. At the moment, the author (SJ) has other things on his mind-- witness our recent layoff situation-- but will be working on it in the coming months. > If so, will it have rule numbers to speed up cross referencing? It may, but I don't know if SJ has made any final decsions regarding the update. > And what is going to be done about the huge differences between the > cruise missiles in Shockwave and OGRE Minis? (The other differences > between the board and minis games don't have quite the literal impact of > the cruise missiles.) -HJC] I'll be encouraging SJ to reconcile all discrepancies between the board and minis rules in the new edition. I doubt the final version will be entirely Shockwave or entirely OM, but a blend of the two. Short answer: we're working on it:) Paul Chapman Miniatures Division Manager Ogre Line Editor Steve Jackson Games paul@sjgames.com You can't spell "progress" without an Ogre! ===== [Good to hear back from you. I've been delayed a bit by the current chaos in my life. I still haven't quite left the country but I did need to move all my stuff out of the old apartment. If you don't mind, I still have plenty of questions. I've heard rumors that Steve is somewhat dissatisfied by the way GURPS OGRE came out. If this is to be redone at some future date might I suggest that the difficulty in shoehorning OGREs into the GURPS mechanics suggests that GURPS (if it is to be universal) will need to allow for options to customize high technology in the same way that the magic system is adjusted to fit various fantasy worlds. (Any sufficiently cool technology being indistinguishable from religion after all.) The effect will be that the entire design rules will be so distorted that a design that works very well in one world will not be even remotely practical in another. For the OGREverse, these options might be superlightweight armor, optical jamming, effective anti-missile and bulky AI. The effect being to drive designs towards size (to use the bulky but lightweight armor and include defensive systems) but keep the weight down enough to yield hovercraft (up to a certain size.) Having had more than a few moments to hurry up and wait lately, I've come up with some odd ideas of my own... In the designer's notes for the first OGRE game, Steve says that he had to assume effective ballistic missile defense in order to clear the way for the OGREs to be the weapons of mass destruction of choice. In the years since, the same arguments have been used again and again against the feasibility of anti ballistic missile systems, that the attacker would rely on massive attack, massive numbers of decoys or other means of delivering weapons of mass destruction. (Say, sending giant robot tanks up unguarded rivers...) But, one countermeasure I've never seen postulated is stealth. (Stealthy cruise missiles count as an alternative delivery means to ICBMs.) Now, how do you make a ballistic missile stealthy? It climbs straight up on a pillar of fire, hangs way up there in the sky and then comes burning down through the atmosphere. The first element is construction from composite materials. This not only reduces the radar return in comparison with metals, but the total weight is reduced, reducing the amount of fuel that is needed to boost the missile and the thermal signature that comes from burning it. The next step is to remove the weight of the oxidizer for the first stage and gather oxygen from the air along the way to burn in a jet engine. (Which has a lower thermal signature than a rocket anyway.) So the Hybrid Composite Ballistic Missile (HCBM?) launches from an ordinary looking truck, climbs up about 20 miles and then the first jet engine stage detaches. The second stage is a rapid burn solid rocket motor that punches through the thin upper atmosphere and burns out in ten seconds then detaches from the rentry vehicle. The rentry vehicle vents liquid nitrogen from an internal tank to chill its outer skin to prevent detection by IR and it's composite structure absorbs rather than reflecting radar waves so it coasts along undetected, not even bothering to make midcourse corrections. (though its sensors track the positions of stars so that it does know where it is.) When it hits the atmosphere again, the rentry vehicle is within fifty miles of its target track, but it isn't a simple cone, but rather a hypersonic lifting body, (Like a stubby version of the space shuttle), that glides down on a five gravity deceleration path to deliver the nuke right above the target point. It's a white hot target at this point, but a very agile one, who's only source of energy is the height and velocity the first two stages gave it. Overall this design should be about as complex to develop as a standard ICBM, but cheaper to build and much more effective against any defense yet proposed. For a different take on ballistic weapons see: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-072801bomber.story Next time: Treason Proofing the military. -HJC] Henry J. Cobb ogre@sjgames.com Archives at http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 2001, by Steve Jackson Games.