====== OGRE Digest, Nov 29th, 2003 (Last: Nov 20th) ======== ===== Cybernetic Warriors From: "Chris French" ===== Ogre-sized artillery From: David Morse ============================== From: "Chris French" Subject: Cybernetic Warriors > From: Sethkimmel@aol.com > Nothing new; look up the service record of Douglas Bader. I'm sure he > wasn't the only one... He was sitting down to do his work; the article referred to foot- mobile infantry. > [Or Admiral Nelson? -HJC] Nelson never employed prosthetics; it was the French Revolution, for cryin' in a bucket! Forty lashes with a wet noodle for the pair of you. > From: "Imre A. Szabo" > Subject: Mass production of Ogre brains > Manufacturing difficulties can drive up costs very quickly... Or, in this case, the incompetence of the builders. Sigh -- another way in which the words "Portland, Oregon" and "failure" are associated.... > [You may have a system so dense that you can't make a copy of it without > using so much energy to scan it that you destroy the original. -HJC] At which point, some other means will be found to store info. IIRC, they're already working on that.... > From: "Herb Diehr" > Subject: Ogre Construction Material > Hope the people of importance in research areas are faar ahead with this > idea... OK, I think it's time to point out a Unfortunate Reality [TM] to all o' you: The Spanish-American War was the last war humanity engaged in where the ratio of soldiers killed to civilians killed was above 1:1. There really isn't any point in developing weapons anymore; it's far cheaper and (as was demonstrated with the Ital- ians in Iraq) more effective to simply bomb a few discos or cafes, and wait for the civvies to panic. OGREs will never exist in Reality. They are simply too expensive, and the mere act of creating one indicates a desire to go to war. If nanotube technology goes anywhere, it will be incorporated into tire fences at auto-racing tracks, to ensure cars don't go sail- ing into the grandstands. (As for space elevators -- umm, might I direct your attention to what happens to the Martian SE in the _Mars_ trilogy by Kim S. Robinson, when a band of unsavory fanatics gets annoyed; now imagine that happening here.) > From: stephan > Subject: Ogre-sized artillery > IIRC SJ once noted that D6 was about the highest he was personally willing to > accept as being in line with the Ogreverse. [i may have that number wrong - > anyone remember the exact number?] > It was Defense 6; it's in one of SJ's designer's notes articles in the _OGRE Book_. > As Terry Pratchet might have once said, i've always had the feeling that "GO > was written by someone who had heard of Ogre, but never played it." To understand why _GO_ fails as badly as it does, realize: _GURPS_ turns are 1 second long. _O_ turns are *4 minutes* long. (That's 240 seconds.) So, in _O_, a tank fires once every 4 minutes or so (early cannon only took 5...), whereas in _GURPS_, that cannon fires once every *second*. There are Things In This World Man Was Not Meant To GURPS. CF ============================== From: David Morse Subject: Ogre-sized artillery > From: stephan >>From: David Morse > > ... > >>(movement 2). The gun was vulnerable, so demanded a heavy screening >>force, often infantry. >> >>Ogre super-gun >>D8 > > > "The gun was vulnerable..." > D8 is vulnerable!?!?! > Okay, there is of course the minimum-range vulnerability... > IIRC SJ once noted that D6 was about the highest he was personally willing to > accept as being in line with the Ogreverse. [i may have that number wrong - > anyone remember the exact number?] I read the article too, but there's already something published and official with D8. Free bag of chips to whoever figures out what it is. Since the Ogre's basically out of the game when the gun bites it, it has to be hella tough. Maybe giving it damage points like treads would be a better design decision (less dice sensitive than D8). So be it, it has 10 damage points, like Ogre treads. >> [I don't understand the design. >> Is this a direct fire weapon, a smart shell or some sort of missile? >>(Note that in GO, Ogre Main batteries can fire Cruise Missile warheads...) >>-HJC] Ah, that's kinda intentionally vauge, because: We have 3/4 smart missiles with unlimited ammo We also have 6/6 and 6/8 smart missiles with unlimited ammo (for the Combine this is just more of the above fired from a longer tube, IIRC). Only down side is these are mounted on flimsy chassises: howitzers. We also, also have 6/5 brilliant missiles, with severly limited ammo, and vulnerability to lasers. They're brilliant but not smart enough, apperantly, to be as good as the smaller, cheaper, un-interceptable, longer range, howitzer missiles. Chewbacca lives on Endor. This does not make sense. I guess for the super-gun I was imagining a barrel the length of the chassis, that fired a shell maybe 10 degrees above the plane. It travels very fast, and uses fins or jets or something wierd to do limited jinking / terrain-following en route to target. It aims for the general vicinity of the target then goes boom with a mid sized area nuke - smaller than a cruise missile warhead, but still higher yield than most Ogre weapons. Oh, one cool thing about "advance wars" is that it uses extremely restrictive stacking limits and move ordering to give actual blitzkriegs. Generally the enemy sets up a crust defense of tough and/or expendable units around the thing they want to guard. During your turn you pick a point and break through, and before you know it you have your heavy tanks attacking ther howitzers, while the rest of their army is looking around and wondering what the hell happened. Up to four players can play hot-seated. Its sorta "Empire", but with a reductionist interface. I like it! ===== [You are complaining about a weapon with the attack strength of a dozen LGEVs during overruns? But if Ogre Missiles don't rewl enough for you now, please try one of the following options... Ogre Missile overrun backblast http://www.io.com/~hcobb/gev/2001/gevnov06.txt Mini Cruise Missile http://www.io.com/~hcobb/gev/2001/gevaug05.txt -HJC] ============================= Send all submissions or mailing list changes or problems to ogre@sjgames.com Archives for this mailing list may be found at http://www.io.com/~hcobb/ General online support for the OGRE game is at http://www.sjgames.com/ogre Ogre, G.E.V., Shockwave and other products mentioned here are trademarks or registered trademarks of Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy at http://www.sjgames.com/general/online_policy.html