====== The Ogre Digest, October 24th (Last: October 20th) ======== ===== Re: Pan Pacific Allaince (sic) Webpage. From: "Eric T. or Maryann C. Holmes" ===== SATNUCs, GURPS Ogre and the 60 ton LGEV From: David Walend ===== GURPS Ogre Atomic Shotgun. From: ogre@sjgames.com (Henry Cobb) ============================== From: "Eric T. or Maryann C. Holmes" Subject: Re: Pan Pacific Allaince (sic) Webpage. Guys: Just visited Paul's web page......It's COOL! Pan Pacific Allaince Webpage (revamped) can now be foiund at: http://members.tripod.com/panpacalliance/ Question: Where can we get plans to build the Ogre Macros? Eric Eric T. Holmes Arctic Force Command (ARTFORCOM) o +. | * . ' \ \\_/|\_// / ___/(o)|(o)\___ ####"""""""#### Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings. OGRE MKVI They did it by killing all those who opposed them. ===== [I was going to include my new Ogre design system, but after reading the above page, I'd thought I'd settle for the following table: Year of introduction of various Ogres into Pan-E service. Mark-I (Pikeman): 2080 Mark-II: Never. Mark-III: Late 2079 or early 2080. Mark-III-B: Never produced in England or Europe. Fencer: 2084 Fencer-B: Unknown, but after 2084. Mark-V (Huscarl): 2081 Doppel: 2089 Total number of Pansy Ogres in 2076: Zero, Zip, Nada, None. "He who invades a coastline defended by Ogres tends to become part of it." I'll run the Ogre design system next time. -HJC] ============================== From: David Walend Subject: SATNUCs, GURPS Ogre and the 60 ton LGEV Henry, Thought I'd add my two cents about SATNUCs, and wound up writing this instead... --------------- Ogre/GEV's combat system's all or nothing approach doesn't match up particularly well with GURPS combat as presented in GURPS Ogre. Some areas are very close. Some aren't. Ogre/GEV weapon effects are one of /the defender is fine/the defender is temporarily disabled/the defender is out of the game. Thicker armor counts for a lot. Spill over fire can destroy disabled units, but can only disable healthy ones. Healthy GEVs can escape reprisal completely if they give up position. Combining fire from different guns and different units in the same volley increases effectiveness with diminishing gains. But firing in successive 1:1 shots is generally better than linear. If an early shot disables a target, a later shot is much more likely to kill the target. Guns can not engage more than one target in a turn. A turn is four minutes long and represents what whole units do in an I go/you go system. Ogre/GEV combat is abstract. Even Ogre/GEV movement is abstract. ----------------- GURPS Ogre does a good job with /the defender is fine/the defender is out of the game. Basically any vehicle hit by a lucky SATNUC round gets cracked. Thick armor determines how lucky that has to be. GURPS Ogre doesn't do a great job with /the defender is disabled. How realistic is the whole directed plasma jet thing? One thing that I like about GURPS Ogre is that, for the most part, it's a fantasy extension of existing technology. From my experience at lower amps and longer durations, making plasma anything but an expanding sphere takes baroque EM fields. But others at a conveniently placed national lab might be able to shed some light on this. Any Z physicists on the list? GURPS Ogre's GEVs' speed doesn't count for much of anything on the game's scale. Combining fire in GURPS Ogre is more or less linearly more effective by counting up the SATNUCs lobbed on the target over time. A tank or an Ogre could empty its magazine in less than four minutes on as many targets as it chooses. ------------------ I think a lot of this could be addressed by focusing more on accuracy of the weapons, and uncertainty in the defender's position. "Disabled" could simply mean that the defender's position is so well known that laying an accurate shot is easy. A disabled vehicle would be focused on hiding, so wouldn't dare fire or move overland because it would give away its exact position. That interpretation would let a disabled vehicle fight at full effectiveness in an overrun. Instead of plasma jet generators, SATNUCs could drop small guided nuclear bombs. Something with D4 or D5 could require a direct contact explosion with a nuke. D3 might represent something that could only handle a near miss, had some vulnerability like a turret, or a larger, slower target that was easier to hit. D2 and D1 might represent lightly armored vehicles and turrets vulnerable to near misses. That would address the 60-ton LGEV problem by stripping off some armor. The SATNUC shell could include some powerful sensors that transmit position information on available targets before they go off. Spill over fire would disable units by finding them. Since a previously disabled unit's position is known, killing that unit with spill over fire would represent an opportunity shot or a well-laid SATNUC shell that caught multiple targets. GURPS Ogre tank gunners will resist the urge to unload the magazine if combat is much more about detecting targets accurately than about hoping for a lucky shot. A probing shot to flush an enemy, followed by a single killing shot might preserve the ammo. It also suggests a new all-sensor probe shell. An attacking unit first tries to get a fix on an enemy by firing a probe, then drops a nuke right on top of them. This even fits the I go/you go model. The attacking unit gets the advantage of position, and gets his sensing shells out first. The defender may not ever get a chance to return fire. Making GEV speed able to elude a hit in GURPS means making 150-200 mph movement count for a lot. From the table on p. 201, that sort of speeds stops having much effect at around 450 yards. But 50 mph (tank speed) shouldn't count for too much. This speed stops mattering at about 100 yards. I propose that guided munitions behave as if they were fired from a reduced range, about 200 yards, instead of offering a flat bonus or base skill level by TL. (Also, that lets a gunner be skilled at guided weapons. The skill would represent getting the guided weapon to just the right spot for the guidance system to take over, or feeding it just the right hints before firing.) If you can swallow that Ogre/GEV movement is very abstract instead of just a little abstract, a GEV's second phase movement can represent evading reprisal by "getting lost," or even slipping in an undetected attack run. Less dedicated dodging would mean that GEVs could have greater defense just by being fast, making for even lighter LGEVs. ----------------- I'm not subscribed to Pyramid, but I hope that adds something to the discussion. Forrest ===== [GEVs get twice their speed modifer against indirect fire as per Gurps Ogre page 105. And they are toast against heavy direct fire as they ought to be. Personally I think the SATNUC rules almost work (with some changes noted below), but I agree that the LGEV should be stripped down to DR 100 armor all over (complete protection from SATNUCs that don't get a direct hit) and have better stealth. As for D results, maybe your GEV got flipped over by a near miss (exposing the weak belly armor) and you need to get the jack out? -HJC] ============================== From: ogre@sjgames.com (Henry Cobb) Subject: GURPS Ogre Atomic Shotgun. Newsgroups: sjgames.gurps The current SATNUC rules need some clarifications, so here's my take on the situation. Once a SATNUC cluster has blossomed, roll once for every target in the attack radius that doesn't have the correct IFF codes. The roll is munition TL (11) plus the square root of the number of submunitions plus the size modifier of the target minus half the cloak and jam values of the target. For example, a Heavy Tank firing a 175 mm MB SATNUC cluster at a Superheavy needs to roll 11 +4 (19 submunitions) +7 (target size) -7 (half of radical emission cloaking) -4 (half of Jam-8) or 11 on three dice. For every two points less than this number rolled, one additional subminuntion scores a direct hit on the target. For example, if the Heavy rolled an eight then two submunitions would score direct hits. As all the submunitions strike at the same moment, reduce the top armor of the target by 1 DR per every 500 points of direct hit SATNUC damage (BPC is tough against Nukes!) AFTER resolving all the penetrations by all the submunitions. For example, if the two submunitions rolled 20 and 25 then no damage would penetrate the DR 5000 of the Superheavy's top armor and that armor would be reduced by 180 points to DR 4820. In a really target rich environment or with a really good roll, the targets may undergo more hits than there are submunitions to go around. In this case roll randomly to remove hits until the total of hits is equal to the number of submunitions. The bus vehicle may be programmed before launch to seek out a specific subassembly or target type. Any submunitions hits above half (round down) the difference in the size mods of the subassembly and the target strike the subassembly instead and any random hits above the number of submunitions are removed from non targeted hits first. Example: A Missile Tank fires a missile at an Ogre Mark-V's main battery and it isn't shot down. The roll to hit the Ogre is 11 +2 +9 -7 -4 = 11 or less and the Main Battery has a size mod of four less than the Ogre itself, so on a roll of 5, two submunitions will strike the Main Battery and two will strike the Ogre's top armor. (most likely just scrubbing 160 or so points of armor off of each.) Henry J. Cobb http://www.io.com/~hcobb Any sufficiently cool technology is indistinguishable from religion. ===== Henry J. Cobb ogre@sjgames.com Archives at http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 2001, by Steve Jackson Games.