============ OGREverse list, Dec 7th (Last: Dec 4th) ============= ===== Count them guns From: Sethkimmel@aol.com ===== All wet From: Sethkimmel@aol.com From: "Andrew Walters" ===== OGRE Transports From: "Andrew Walters" From: Jpattern@aol.com ------------------------------ From: Sethkimmel@aol.com Subject: Count them guns << Just got some Fencers from Canada, long story, but any way looking at the mini it has 10 AP batteries, I thought they had 8, or am I just being daffy once more? >> Well; the Mark V has too many AP's also (has 16; should have twelve...I think the Mark III has too many also. My minis are not in front of me right now). Sometimes the sculpters/artists aren't familiar enough with the gaming system/rules and do what they like/think is right, and not what should be. They however, are not as annoying about this as SF book cover artists, whose illustrations often have NOTHING to do with what's inside. Seth ------------------------------ From: Sethkimmel@aol.com Subject: All wet << Running low on fuel? Just drive into the nearest river (only a few feet out) and open the intake valves. The onboard systems (with solar back-up) will purify and process the water into hydrogen and oxygen for fuel. Simple. Supply trains only have to carry ammo and spare parts for the tanks, food and other supplies for the men. >> Sounds like an ex Traveller player...:-) ----- From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: All wet #1 Hydrolysis requires a whole lot of electricity, where is your machine getting it? Not solar power, not unless we get some very exciting new solar technology. Its coming from a fusion generator. If its on the vehicle, power the vehicle with the fusion generator and save the extra step and extra equipment. If its seperate from the vehicle its either a fairly large mobile field system that requires transport, assembly, operation, and then distribution of the fuel, or its a big installation and once again your transporting fuel. #2 Even if they're fusion powered and require no fuel you still need a sizeable supply train. Spare parts, food, port-a-potties, and *huge* quantities of ammunition for rapid-fire weapons depicted in all the artwork. I think the only thing they don't need is medical; I don't think there are too many things in the Last War that *almost* kill you. ------------------------------ From: "Andrew Walters" Subject: OGRE Transports Infanry, like everyone else, hate to be around Ogre, its part of the mythology. I like that aspect of the OGREverse, so I happily swallow it whole, but for those who don't want to consider the following good reasons powered armor troops would avoid Ogres... Ogres are large, valuable, and hard to hide. They attract fire. Lots of fire. If someone gets into a situation where they have to fire on an Ogre, they're not going to task just a couple of tanks or batteries to wear it down, you've got to focus a lot of fire power on it, overwhelm it, reduce it quickly. There will be lots of near misses thanks to the Ogre's ECM, and lots of munitions exploding as they are shot down approaching the Ogre, and lots of really big chunks flying off the Ogre. Wherever the Ogre is will be the center of the action. The Ogre can take this because of *meters* of BPC, ability to withstand shock, and very large mass. Powered BPC armor, yeah, yeah, yeah. What's it weigh? I guess I gotta use the metric system, cause that's part of the OGREverse ambience as well. A man weighs 80-110kg, I'm gonna guess that the powered armor weighs that much more. Any heavier and you couldn't put it on while its inert, and I can't imagine the stuff is powered up while you're donning it. I'm willing to be corrected, but I wanna say the man-machine unit masses 250kg, max. Assume that the few cm of BPC is invulnerable. When a nuke goes off nearby there's a shockwave, overpressure, winds hundreds of miles an hour. Our invulnerable soldier is not harmed. He is, however, due to his low mass, thrown a hundred feet in a fraction of a second. The same force applied to a tank will jolt it, but will not result in enough acceleration to hurt anything. The man is jelly. What's the specific heat of BPS? Unless its astronomical, a nearby explosion is going to cook the man inside. Radiators are useless when the environment is hot. The armor may be physically tough, but its still encasing a man. So troops are much more vulnerable than armor. The only reason an infantry squad has the same D1 as an AP battery with a meter of BPC around it is ECM (which is also why more squads grouped together are tougher). But what good is ECM if you're on/near something too big to hide? Ogres do have ECM, but its only effective up to a point - Ogres do have armor for a reason, and if there's a reason for *meters* of BPC, you don't want to be around it wearing centimeters of BPC. Additionally, the Ogre is inhuman. What if it decides you're expendable? Not a cruel waste of human lives, just a mathematically calculated decision based on your potential contribution to the battle and your replacement cost vs whatever the Ogre may be able to gain. Will the Ogre run over a man to save a few seconds when inside a HWZ field of fire? Perhaps you are advancing alongside it, and it slows and cuts across behind you when enemy armor approaches: the armor will not overrun you to get at the Ogre, you're too dangerous in an overrun. So the enemy armor blasts you before proceeding after the Ogre; you never get within weapons range, and the Ogre gains two valuable minutes. Whatever, make up your own scenario, but the Ogre will calculate the loss of infantry into the mix and make the decision. A human commander might not, or might tell you. The Ogre won't tell you, you don't need to know and you might spoil the plan. These are reasons not to be near an Ogre, I think they go double for being on/under it. When playing Ogres, do you not *regularly* say to yourself, "I'll move here, the three HVYs will get a free shot at me, then I'll crush them and go over there," or "I'll charge the HWZ, it will only get two shots at me before I roll over it, and I've got enough tread units that it won't slow me down?" The Ogre is *perfectly* willing to make such sacrifices. Do you want to be in that equation? I'm not sure what it takes to get people to go into battle with the casualty rates of the last war, but I'm guessing that part of it is convincing soldiers (whether its true or not) that their fate is in their own hands, and that skill and courage will get them through it. Training and hardship can create the kind of trust between people that will let them rely on one another in such a situation, but what does it take to get a man to rely on an intelligent machine? He might gamble on a rifle, a tank, or a horse that he's trained with, but a machine with a personality is different. You can always factor the rifle/tank/horse out of the equation by dropping it, bailing out of it, abandoning it, whatever if its no longer helping you, but you can't get rid of the Ogre, it has its own *volition*. Finally, the rules reflect that infantry will find its advantages where always have, in cover, dispersement, short ranges, tight spaces, and ambuch. The proximity of an Ogre detracts from all of these. I still think you're better off with a regular Ogre carving a path for some GEV-PCs. They can trail behind while the Ogre reduces defenses, then use their speed to arrive on target simultaneously. And if things go badly, there are more defenders than you thought, whatever, the troops were never put at risk. The Ogre can take care of himself... ----- [Specfic heat isn't the best way to judge this sort of armor. Most of the "armors" suggested so far for use against nuclear explosions rely more on deflecting than adsorbing the blast. (Except water, what with that phase change and all.) -HJC] ----- From: Jpattern@aol.com Subject: OGRE Transports Henry wrote: << OK, every hex the OGRE travels off-road roll and on a six one of the squads gets scraped off >> Heh! Yeah, I thought of that, too. Okay, forget riding outside or underneath the OGRE. How about this: the barrel of each main battery can hold 1 troop counter worth of infantry, who spend all their time praying the OGRE doesn't forget to *not* fire the guns. Hmm, maybe not. :) I guess it's back to the clandestine insertion and removal idea. Jeff Moore jpattern@aol.com ----- ["clandestine insertion"? Is this some sort of day that will live in Infantry? How about escorting that Mk III with a Battalion of Hover Militia? (Twelve armored hovertrucks carrying 36 squads of militia for a total of 24 VPs) Or you can team the "flying greenhorns" with a recon section of six LGEVs. (The total force cost is 42 points, but is at least as annoying as a dozen GEVs. Try them at RAID sometime) Hint: Nobody likes to overrun militia... -HJC] Henry J. Cobb ogre@sjgames.com http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 1998, by Steve Jackson Games.