============ OGREverse list, July 19th (Last: July 2nd) ============= ===== DragonCon From: Servitor@aol.com ===== Gencon Blues From: Servitor@aol.com ===== Stealth in the 21st century From: "Wray Odom" ===== OGRE: The Miniatures! From: Kerr Ballantyne ===== Scale of combat From: dochtor@impop.bellatlantic.net ------------------------------ From: Servitor@aol.com Subject: DragonCon << [Go out to conventions?!? >> Sure! Why not Henry? Attention folks! DragonCon was a smashing success! I ran three games of OGRE Macrotures with a total of 27 people participating. Steve's panel on the future of Ogre was eagerly listened to by a group of the players of the first and second sessions. In fact, the only sour note was that Federal Express had failed to deliver copies of GURPS OGRE in time for people to buy them. Still, the overall showing of people at Dragoncon there to play Macrotures and/or miniatures was awesome. Even not counting repeats, there was at least two dozen OGRE fans there. And I'm sure at least a dozen more are now hooked on the game... BTW, Steve showed up for the panel, but conveniently was "unable to shake free to play" in any of the sessions. *Sigh* It's a pity to see a great player go downhill... Oh, well. At least he still runs a mean Lego Pirate game. My next stop is GENCON this August in Milwaukee. I will post the specific time periods for OGRE Macrotures posted here when I get the sessions okayed with the con people. Let me know if you can make it to Gencon to play! All subscribers to this newsletter automatically get a reserved spot in the games IF they email me and IF they show up and IF they have at least a generic ticket for the event. NOTE: Gencon rules will apply, of course, but even if everyone shows up with a specific ticket for the event, I can STILL squeeze in two more players from the list here. best, flunky (Servitor@aol.com) ------------------------------ From: Servitor@aol.com Subject: Gencon Blues Bad new folks. Due to situations beyond my control, I will NOT be able to attend Gencon. This will be the first Gencon I've missed in 8 years. But the bad news is that means OGRE Macrotures will not be there. My apologies to everyone who was looking forward to playing (again) this year. To those of you who made DragonCon, thanks for playing (and helping me unpack, setup and repack). I had a blast. I definitely plan on both DragonCon AND Gencon next year. I will keep you posted. Again, my apologies for Gencon this year. best, flunky (John Hurtt, Servitor@aol.com) (flunky copyright =A9 Mom&Dad, use as directed, do not fold, spindle or mutilate, dispose of properly after use, save the planet.) ------------------------------ From: "Wray Odom" Subject: Stealth in the 21st century Kirk Hunt writes: > Think B-2 Bomber or F-117 Fighter. Of course you see it, with the "naked > eye," but not with "electronic eyes." By putting in a LOT of electronics > and "stealthy" design features, you have an object the size of a house that > you STILL have to look for, instead of have a radar system ring a bell and > mark it for you. Now on the basis of size, this comparison may not be unjustified (although an Ogre would mass considerably more). However there are several other factors that must be considered. Speed: a stealth bomber is not invisible to radar just harder to see. These planes rely on speed to get in, prosecute the attack, and get out before an effective response can be mounted. According to the game scale, even a move 4 tank is only doing 60 miles per hour ( it could get up to 75 mph on a road, but that would hardly be covert) and this is in clear terrain giving little cover. Infrared: Stealth planes diffuse the IR signature of their engines by mixing the exhaust with ambient air and venting at the top of the wing. That is to say the body of the plane itself helps mask IR from the ground. An ogre will not have this option. it is on the same plane as the sensors. You may argue that it is powered by a nuclear power plant, not jet engines, but such power plants also generate heat that must be dissipated. Moreover, the nuclear energy will have to be converted kinetic energy by some kind of motor (probably electric?) and there will be heat losses in the conversion. Technology: "Electronic eyes" means a lot more than just radar. In fact, I don't even think that radar would be the primary concern because ground clutter would make radar detection difficult in any case. Other options would include ground pressure sensors, magnetic anomaly detection (those electric motors again), and image processing in a spectrum (ranging from infrared through visible light into high ultraviolet) by dedicated artificial intellegences. Also vibration sensing and sonic detection would be of some use -- you don't think a tank weighing several hundred tons is going to move over rough terrain and through undergrowth softly and quietly, do you. Incidentally this would be my reason against stealth LGEV's , Those turbines are going to make a lot of very distinctive noise. > Realize that there are SERIOUS cost, survivability and performance > compromises to make a stealth unit. That's why we haven't converted all > Realverse air combat units to a stealth format... And likely never will. > Smaller OGREverse armor units would yield less payoff than an OGRE, so it > just isn't done...often... Actually, I think you have that turned around somewhat. The smaller the unit the easier it would be to make "stealthy". In fact, the unit that would benefit most from such technology would be the dreaded cruise missile. You have no expectation of getting it back; you just want it to reach the target and you will give it every opportunity you can to do so. The fact that so many of them do not is testimony to the efficiency of detection methods in the 21st century. > Micronukes and other long war factors: I like to think of the Micronukes as > having very short half-lives (minutes or seconds), making them effectively > potent conventional munitions. I'm not sure what a "micronuke" is in the context of this discussion, but consider this. First all nuclear weapons rely on the fission of uranium or trans-uranium elements. Even if all of the fuel is expended you are still going to have some products that will take a few years to decay. Moreover, there are alot of misses caused by projectiles being physically destroyed by point defence. This means a lot of plutonium being exposed to the environment, either immediately or by the spillover damage of subsequent rounds. Next, how big is a "micronuke"? BPC armor is going to require a fair amount of energy to breach. For the sake of argument, lets make the following assumptions: 1. One attack strength point equals one kiloton yield 2. All attacks are at 1-1 odds 3. All misses are assumed to be rounds that were destroyed by point defense rather detonating ineffectively. This means you will need at least 69 kilotons yield to immobilize and disarm (not counting the missiles which I will assume are expended rather than distroyed) a Mark III and 98 for a Mark V. A similar output would be used against the defender. How many such battles would it take to throw up enough debris to initiate a nuclear winter? To sterilize enough ground to make agriculture impossible around a given urban center? How much damage could a given nations infrastructure indure before its economy collapsed. How many nations would collapse before the global economy collapsed? I do not think it would take very long at all? >On top of that, the materials and systems of > the Last War are all very interchangeable and recyclable. Thus looting the > battlefield is an option. How many German tanks were using American parts in WWII? Can you relly put Russian parts on a Bradley vehicle without serious modification? Are vehicles rendered inoperative by nuclear detonations in such condition as to be salvageable? I'm just asking. Another point of unreality to consider. For the sake of game balance, Steve Jackson made a cruise missile cost twice as much as an armor unit. In the real world, an Abrams main battle tank costs $4.3 million and a Tomahawk missile costs $0.6 million. How many generals do you think are going to expend 12 armor units and 200 men in favor of, say, 10 cruise missiles to eleminate a Mark III. (He might even get lucky and take out the Ogre with the first missile.) Again, I say the game makes absolutely no sense in the real world; I play it because it is fun ( and that is the best reason for playing a game.) ------------------------------ From: Kerr Ballantyne Subject: OGRE: The Miniatures! Henry, Finally were getting miniatures as according to the home page. All I can say is hurray! Any news at this time when we are going to start seeing them? Also, will we loyal players actually get Mark VI, Mark II's and the Dopplesoldier models? Kerr ------------------------------ From: dochtor@impop.bellatlantic.net Subject: Scale of combat It occoured to me that the GEV/Shockwave maps are about 4 km scale, does anyone make maps of actual land areas, such as the town of Bastione in (forgot country name, Belgum?) os Sheiffield, England, for a more real feel to a battle. Murdoch Use what thou will shall be the whole of the web. File under will, file is the web.(thanks Evil Uncle Al) ------------------------------ Henry J. Cobb ogre@sjgames.com http://www.io.com/~hcobb All OGRE-related items Copyright (c) 2000, by Steve Jackson Games.