====== The Ogre Digest, November 13th (Last: November 12th) ======== ===== OGRE Macrotures battle-report From: Servitor@aol.com ===== mix and match missiles From: Dave Morse ===== More SATNUC plasma jet physics. From: David Walend ===== Ogre Missile Backblast From: David Walend ============================== From: Servitor@aol.com Subject: OGRE Macrotures battle-report > Over twenty squads of infantry transport and none of it was ever used. > (What did they think Light Tanks were for, especially with all the times > those got overrun Oopsie... Hee, hee. Uhm, forgot to mention in the setup part of the report that I don't allow Infantry to ride tanks in the convention games. This is for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with tactics. First, there are insufficient stands for the platoons to break down into the 2 and 1 strength squads that would be necessary to ride the available tanks (well, at least there aren't enough at the beginning of the game). Second, OGRE Macros tends to draw a lot of players (average of 10 to 12 players) and even with 2 players per Ogre, there are usually a half dozen or more players on Defense. Anticipating this, we built LOTS of armor units to insure everyone had, well, lots of units. As mentioned in the setup section, the Defense has a 76 point head start on the two Ogres. This is somewhat balanced by the Ogres having less terrain to deal with, but it doesn't change the fact that a well handled defense force can afford far more in attrition than in "normal" games of OGRE. Add infantry riding tanks and you can see the problem. This doesn't change the truth of your battle analysis, -I'm just apologizing for not mentioning the "no riders" convention special rule, and the reasons why for. So don't think too poorly of the Defenders at Dragon Con. (Of course, I still cringe when I remember that 2nd GEV move on turn 2...) Of course, we DO want to give the defense the option of INF transport in the future of OGRE Macrotures at conventions. Can you say: "GEV-PC" boys and girls? I knew you could. When? Not likely for quite awhile. But we definitely want to add them, LGEVs and MHWZs to our convention battleforce. Now that we know (officially) what a Paneuropean LGEV looks like, we only need find time to do them properly. best, John Hurtt (Servitor@aol.com) ============================== From: Dave Morse Subject: mix and match missiles Perhaps this idea will amuse you all: Ogre Rattler Missile: strength 6 range 5 Ogre Mini Cruise Missile: strength 5 range 45 via cruise missile rules (see http://www.io.com/~hcobb/gev/2001/gevaug05.txt for the fine print) Ogre Death Screamer Missile: strength 8 range 3 The Death Screamer's power in spillover is not halved. It is a big flying nuclear bomb, not quite as big as a cruise missile, but bigger than everything else in Ogre. Because of its whonking airburst, the D.S. gets a +2 to intercept a cruise missile. ________________________________________________________________ Now that the world's got some interesting types of munitions... Ogres may choose their missile loadout from the above 3 types of missiles. The types are recorded (secretly?) at the beginning of the game. Each missile rack may only have one type of missile loaded at a time. The type its being reloaded with is announced (secretly?) immediately after each shot - that is the type it will have available next turn. If its controller is willing to not fire the rack for a turn, the loaded missile can be unloaded, and a new type loaded, all without expending any ammo. ===== [Actually according to GURPS, the cruise missile warhead will easily fit into a Main Battery shell and cruise missile explosions do protect against other cruise missiles already. If a Missile Rack Ogre only has a few missiles remaining and lots of racks left, can it hold all of its missiles inside and not be subject to losing any when a rack is blown off? I wouldn't want to deal with the complexity of different missile loads (how much for a scatterable mine warhead?) but I've mostly changed my mind about the Mini Cruise Missile and would let it keep attack strength 6, at the cost of possible interception. -HJC] ============================== From: David Walend Subject: More SATNUC plasma jet physics. Henry J. Cobb wrote: >[OK, you know how some of the Hydrogen bombs are triggered by a fission >detonation that has the radiation reflected back to a point by a circular >shield to start the fusion going? > > OK, how about a nuclear pipe bomb. You've got a pipe made up out of >U238 or some other scrap material with a thin line of Tritium rich plastic >going down the center. At one end of the pipe you set off the fission >detonation and the near end of your plastic fuse goes into fusion and then >the shockwave travels down the fuse and is pushed together and kept in >focus by the radiation bouncing off the pipe walls so the result is a >narrow jet of material so hot that it can't be anything else but plasma and >stray particles. I really think you'd need a magnetic field to channel the plasma into anything but a big ball. So I found this reference: http://www.ncoic.com/empbomb/apjemp.htm How about a first-stage nuclear-pumped flux compression generator that powers a transverse vircator to set up a teravolt electrical field, followed by a second stage nuke to supply more plasma? It'd give a nice dumbbell shape to the plasma splat. If the field were strong enough, it would hit the ground in a column. It'd also send a fountain of plasma straight up. (How hot is a nuclear explosion in kelvin? From that, I can get the velocity of the plasma, and figure out what field the vircator needs to produce to give a nice column. Electrons up, nuclei down, I suppose.) Plus it lets us say "nuclear-pumped flux compression generator" while pointing at hard science. (Is BPC a conductor? Given its thermal properties, it almost has to be. Given its stealth properties, it almost can't be. Wonderful stuff, and a deal at $100 a pound.) >All of the submunitions go off at exactly the same time, but about 50 >yards away from each other so that the radiation doesn't have enough time >to travel over and mess with the neighbors before they blow. -HJC] And you can choose the time that they are going to go off just before firing. I'm sold. I'll take 19 now, and pick up the rest on Thursday. Is Visa OK? Thanks, Forrest ===== [Actually I suspect that the "time to ignition" is set by the bus vehicle just before scattering the sub-nukes based on the sensor input or time of flight that caused it to trigger the release. -HJC] ============================== From: David Walend Subject: Ogre Missile Backblast > [But the Ogre Missile does more, not less damage to the primary target >in an overrun. (Personally I think the increase in attack strength is due >entirely to the reduced time point defenses have to attack the missile, but >it's clear that the warhead is not stepped down any.) Guess I wasn't clear. "Pull its punches" meant "doesn't do spill-over fire." I figured the double damage was from more submunitions hitting. Or from a big warhead going off very close to the target instead of high above it. Or from the target running away from the missile and blundering into line-of-sight of the main gun. Heck, I've got enough troubles from Ogres without their missiles doing spill-over damage to my infantry in an overrun. How about "In an overrun, rattler missiles (and missile tank missiles) only have time to pop up, zero in on one target, and fry it. Otherwise, they'd be shot down because they don't have time to reach dodging speed after launching." Otherwise, one missile spill over washes each infantry squad at 3:1. Two missiles would be 6:1. (Is that right?) >Anybody know which GURPS book has got the Scramjet stats? (now that >they're not science fiction any longer...) I've been thinking of another >weapon to fire from those Main Batteries, a dart with legs. -HJC] GURPS Vehicles, 2nd ed. p 35. Page 135 talks about performance. If I remember correctly, Mach 8 is a good theoretical limit for speed in the atmosphere because that speed ionizes 's atmospheric oxygen. Going faster takes much more thrust, and not many sensors can see through the pretty blue glow. Forrest ===== [Well, Missile Tank (and HWTZ) missiles do have submunitions, but the official design of the Rattler is one big shaped charge nuke. If you switch to Mini Cruise Missiles then the missiles cannot be combined into a single attack (one of the limitations of the switch that makes up for extreme range) and the odds when overrunning infantry are: Terrain Squad death per missile Clear 2/3rds Forest or town 1/3rd But each squad adds to the chance of shooting down the missile before it can explode and what is your infantry doing overrunning Ogres anyway? Speaking of cover, I've been thinking about sending in my suggestions for cleaning up the rules for a combined miniatures and boardgame rulebook (To establish a base for Killing Zone) and the suggestion I've got for Marines is that they treat water as forest. Underwater Ogres can fire only AP and Missiles and only in overruns (ramming is the same as always, against targets on the bottom.) Marines can choose if they'd like to be engaged in an overrun against an Ogre, but conduct overruns against infantry and GEVs normally, except that they always get the terrain bonus, even when overrunning other units. GEVs cannot overrun underwater Ogres (or vice versa), but can fire at them at range, and treat fire in their own hex as being at one hex range. So if Marines entered a hex with hostile GEVs and a hostile Ogre, they'd first have to deal with the GEVs and then once they're cleared out of the way the Marines could choose to swim down to engage the Ogre. Underwater Ogres have doubled defense against howitzers, Ogre Missiles and Marines and quadrupled defense against all other attacks. This is for the shallow lakes and rivers found on the GEV map. In deeper water even Marines can't reach them and naval units use special anti-sub weapons against deep Ogres. Note that when Marines accept an overrun by an Ogre or initiate one, both sides have doubled attack and defense strengths that cancel out. I'm going to have to try 10 loaded official Cheesemobiles as the advanced Ogre defense, with stacking and overrun. In order to make up for the Cheesemobiles limited strike range against Mark-V missiles (Seven hexes to Eight), I'll push two GEV-PCs up front with all their buddies just out of missile reach. (Ten of my reduced strength heavy hover platoons should cancel out to a standard fuzzy, with the reduced defense strength making up for the slightly improved overrun resistance and adjustable fire.) -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.