============ The Ogre Digest, July 30th (Last: July 28th) ============= ===== As the OGREverse becomes the REALverse... From: "Hunt, Kirk (Tucson)" ===== Dim AI From: "Herb Diehr" ===== 'Stealthy' Ballistic Missile From: Michael Powers From: AvaheilDotter@aol.com ===== INF riding Ogres? From: Servitor@aol.com From: "David R. Crowell" ============================== From: "Hunt, Kirk (Tucson)" Subject: As the OGREverse becomes the REALverse... "Battlesuit/Ogre drones were developed by the Combine..." http://www.darpa.mil/body/pdf/oavcontractorsfs.pdf Kirk "Desertcat" Hunt Purveyor of Pulse Rifles ============================== From: "Herb Diehr" Subject: Dim AI Here's a concept to think about. I saw a Goliath Ogre on Build Your Own Ogre (Search BYOO) and saw something I really liked: a cheap Ogre with very little to it. A Mark III with no weapons, just it's power plant (ready to blow!) Well, for 9 Armor Points, this is potentially a great tool. Just run forward until a good position is found and then blow. Take three of these instead of a Mark V in the basic scenario and watch the fun! Sure is a different issue. Now, putting a smart AI in this seems wasteful, so I suggest putting in a dumb AI (by comparison). I don't think I'd like to spend the money or talent needed to build the brilliant AI in normal Ogres, nor have that bright a mind knowing it was created to blow itself up. Too risky to eventually have one come to life and blow in the factory! So, how about a dim AI? This would reduce the cost of any Ogre by 1 Armor Point and add 1 to all die rolls against it (I call it the Anti-Ninja). No other effects. Opinions? Herb Diehr The Dire Wolf ============================== From: Michael Powers Subject: 'Stealthy' Ballistic Missile >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, At this point it sounds like you're not designing a ballistic missile; you're designing a extremely-long-range cruise missile that is ground-launched, rocket-boosted, and goes ballistic for most of its flight. Even today (much less in the future) I don't think that ballistic missiles would be considered effective weapons if people had been allowed to develop countermeasures. It's not hard to spot an incoming ballistic missile, and once you see something it's just a matter of getting enough ordnance on it to kill it before it gets where it's going. If you have a machine gun, and you see a bear coming at you from a half mile away, then the bear's not a problem... I'd think that long-range ballistic missiles, either 'historical' types like we have now or 'smart' types like Henry describes, would be used more like the V-1 and V-2 than anything else; you just fling a few into your enemy's territory each day as a way of saying "hey, we're still here, and we're pissed! Bye now." -- Michael Powers Graduate Student, GWU/JIAFS NASA Langley Research Center (757) 864 4457 -- m.t.powers@larc.nasa.gov ===== From: AvaheilDotter@aol.com Subject: 'Stealthy' Ballistic Missile << 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. >> Against laser fire, which would let that heat leak into the vehical, agility is not an effective defence. Which is why ICBMs are not in the Ogreverse. It is still hard to find an object that is flying BELOW the horizon until the last second, so cruise missles are valid attack weapons. Which might be what the "MSL" on Ogres actually are. ===== [Then why can't OGRE missiles "cruise" twenty hexes or until intercepted? The ability of a laser to target armor units to the far corners of the map says to me that defenses are much more about interception than stealth. It's just that a short burst laser gives no warning that active defenses aren't used against it. Question: If for the standard advanced OGRE scenario, you changed the rules so that the Mark V's missiles moved as cruise missiles (with their standard 6 point warheads), would the game still be balanced? If not, what would it take to balance the scenario? A D3 CP? Add a laser tower to the defending forces? -HJC] ============================== From: Servitor@aol.com Subject: INF riding Ogres? > 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, I want one! I see lots of potential scenarios built around Ogre-PCs. You're right about the cost, though. Even something the size of a MK V simply couldn't carry enough INF to make it cost-effective in "normal" battles. But "Special Ops" Ogre-PCs might indeed be feasible. The Killing Zone playtest made mention of an Israeli Ogre along these exact lines. Uhm, I'm pretty sure I can't repeat the stats here since its all copyright SJ Games and they haven't (to the best of my knowledge) printed/posted it yet. But the concept is pretty simple. Ogre body with weapons removed to make room for an INF bay. The question is, how much room does a squad of INF take up? I've got some ideas along that line and may turn it into a full scale article for my website after I go ask for some permissions. Speaking of websites; my apologies to those trying to access my OGRE website from July 28th to July 29th. I was having FTP problems during my (long overdue) update. For those of you new to the digest, its at: http://members.aol.com/servitor/Ogreindex/ogrindex.htm Please email me with what you'd like to see there. The site is for YOUR enjoyment (well, okay -I get a kick out of doing it too...) HCBM? (Henry Cobb's Ballistic Missile) :-) best, flunky (Servitor@aol.com) ===== [Hey, you're not supposed to leak anything about Killing Zone! Though it would be nice to have a resticted area on Pyramid to discuss it. -HJC] ===== From: "David R. Crowell" Subject: INF riding Ogres? Infantry Riding Ogres: Andrew, thanks for the thoughtful reply to my thought experiment. I sure don't want to see Ogre PCs added to the game either. I doubt they would be cost effective in any case. If you are going to build an Ogre, why would you just use it ferry infantry about and waste its potential as a weapons platform? Es[ecially when GEV PCs are faster. Stealth balistic Missiles: Interesting piece Henry, but be careful or Steve will have to re-write the entire game.... Now that ballistic missiles are possible, why do we need Ogres? NA Combine today? The July 28th Toronto Star has an article about a proposal to scrap the US/Canada border. Here is the URL: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Artic le_Type1&c=Article&cid=996271752349&call_page=TS_News&call_pageid=9683321884 92&call_pagepath=News/News ============================== [One of the events in GURPS OGRE is a break in to the Japanese data network that leads to the Japanese forces being given false orders that leads to their targeting their own forces. As we head to an "all digital" force, how do you prevent a network break in or a few traitors at the Fiendish Bunch of Infestigators from totally compromising force security? My plan is to have every member of the armed forces from second class private to the CiC generate a private-public key pair and have it digitially signed by their own CO. The private keys are never shared with anybody, outside of a general investigation. (And once revealed to the investigators that key is no longer used and a new one must be generated.) The point about having the keys signed by only the next level up, rather than a top level key authority is to ensure that while a traitor at the top level authority can fake a new key for the Marine Corps, it wouldn't match the keys everybody else already has cached and they wouldn't be able to create a fake lower ranking person that nobody would be suspicious about not having heard of previously without generating a complete chain of fake keys from the top level down. When sending out orders, a commander is generally acting on orders from a higher level and so would decypt with his private key the message signed with his own commander's public key (which is well known to him) then include the complete message from only one level up in the orders he sends out (still signed by that key) and adds the orders he is generating, signs the entire thing (decyptable via his public key) and then encypts the message for the public key of each person he sends the orders to. The result is that only the recipient can decode the message sent to him and his equipment automatically verifies the identity of the next two higher levels. But if need be, anybody can take a message sent to them and show the plaintext and the identity of the sender. Not exactly treason proof, but a lot better than what the Combine, er US Military is planning now. -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.