====== The Ogre Digest, December 16th (Last: December 13th) ======== ===== Decals! From: stephan beal ===== Strange Things From: stephan beal ===== The curious case of the unimproved Ogre. From: AvaheilDotter@aol.com From: White Rat From: Servitor@aol.com ===== bug in ogre formula? From: David Morse ============================== From: stephan beal Subject: Decals! > From: Armored Core2 > > > From: "Paul Chapman" > > > > What would _you_ like to see? Is an Ogre sheet too > > specialized? Should the > > Lots of #s and Letters, definatly kill markers, that'd > be awsome. Amen. :) i don't even have the minis rules and i'll get 'em. Unrelated, and perhaps a bit high-end, but since Paul's listening: i would love to see snap-together maps, like some a saw a few years ago online (don't remember where): they come in hex-shaped plastic bits of different colors and you snap them together. Something with 1-3" snap-together hexes would be really cool. :) ============================== From: stephan beal Subject: Strange Things > From: Darren Breland > Ogrethulhu Mk V. - 300(!) VP ... > Special (my comments): ... > - It also "eats" units. Dunno the rules but it sounds nasty.... Semi-related: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/countermoves/files/Works%20In%20Progress/Articles/AwfulGreenThingsFromTheOgreverse.html (that's all one line, in case your mailer wraps it) ----- stephan Generic Universal Computer Guy stephan@einsurance.de - http://www.einsurance.de Office: +49 (89)  552 92 862 Handy:  +49 (179) 211 97 67 "Reasons spoken are often excuses." -- Melissa Hamous ===== [Uh, Einstein was the first chap to seriously suggest that matter could be destroyed. You see he had this formula... -HJC] ============================== From: AvaheilDotter@aol.com Subject: The curious case of the unimproved Ogre. << [I presume that the empires generally stopped building older ogres once they could increase the load factors enough. (I'm still surprised that the Mark IIIB didn't replace the Mark III entirely. There must be something I'm overlooking.) >> Game wise, I think it is an oversight. Justification could be one of 2: 1) That much firepower on a MKIII chassi may have overweighed it, causing reliabilty problems. 2) The MK V was not too much more expensive than the IIIB and much more powerful. With a 33% increase in treads, it takes a LOT more to stop it than the IIIB. The III's were the cheap footsoldiers... Ad Astra! Stan Leghorn ===== From: White Rat Subject: The curious case of the unimproved Ogre. It's possible that the manufacturing cost of the Mk III-b was closer to the Mk V than the Mk III, and that as the war wore on, fewer and fewer targets were worth the cost of an OGRE that could be taken by a small one. As a result, the expensive III-b is overgunned for most small frays but undergunned for the big, brutal ones, and is discontinued due to cost/utility factoring. Ratty ===== From: Servitor@aol.com Subject: The curious case of the unimproved Ogre. 1) The MK III was cheaper to produce. History is full of examples of armored vehicles that were rapidly eclipsed by later designs but were still used for decades because they did the basic job and were cheaper, -no matter how more efficiently the later design did the task. (Can you say "Sherman"?) 2) The MK III was extremely difficult to transport over oceans. No aircraft was capable of doing it at the time of the MK III's inception (or so the source material says) and even ocean-going vehicles were taxed. But with the MK III being the "standard" Ogre of the time, ingenious methods of transport were eventually developed (packaging, underwater adaptations for self-transporting Ogres, etc.) But the MK III could be transported by tanker, the MK III-B (presumably) could not. This is also why Mark I's remained in service so long. They were easily transported throughout the world on conventional aircraft. Specially built aircraft could transport the MK II, but at far more expense (and risk). Hence, the Mark I's remained in service even though the MK II's were better armed. 3) Beyond the cost of materials, the Mark III Template was far more widespread, with far more support than the MK III-B. This means the MK III was probably cheaper than a formula would suggest. Up to 10% or more for mass-production. The III-B simply wasn't prevalent enough. Also, "Third-World" sales of MK I's and III's insured that these two classes would see even higher production runs than normal, which could increase the "discount" even more. Of couse, I could be completely wrong... best, John Hurtt (Servitor@aol.com) ============================== From: David Morse Subject: bug in ogre formula? > As for the year of introduction, I'm just working from the history as > given and have yet to devise a fancy curve for load factors over time. > > But to a certain extent I expect that there would be sudden > breakthroughs were a certain material or technique finally becomes usable > and gives a quantum leap ahead in performance. Ah. I guess my complaint about the huge 2 AP => 10 year discontinuity really is just a user interface issue with the Javascript calculator. I could suggest some alternatives, but I'll spare you unless you're interested. > If I'm feeling really nasty, I'll chunk out a table of year that a > tread system was introduced, load factor it could bear and the cost per > tread. (But even the best treads would work out to less than 2 VPs each by > the formula.) -HJC That sounds good to me. I re-ran the cyclops experiment with a Mk-I, and for only 10 VPs and 13 years per, you can keep adding main batteries, up to a total of three (!). It sounds like your expenso-tread idea would curl up that troublesome linearity. And once we have that, run the thing backwards: el cheapo treads! Rereading my first post, I seem to have thought that, given an identical number of treads, an M2 ogre should cost less than an M3 Ogre. Maybe M2 ogres just weren't practical, and that's why they weren't built. On the other hand, it could be interesting to have a "porcupine": moves real slow, shoots lots of quills. The feeling I get from the literature is that the empires did indeed continue limited production of some cybertank lines even after they were obsolete. Lets call this the build-obsolete hypothesis. I guess we have a few data in favor of the build-obsolete hypothesis: Mk III never fully supplanted by III-B or V. Mk VI was rare, so presumably didn't supplant much V production. And more against it: Mk I stayed in production indefinately, but wasn't cost effective. Mk II phased out, basically. Fencer and Huscarl fully replaced by Doppelsoldner. Hm. ===== [Yeah, things are happening in the way of hardpoints to protect against such abuses. The Europeans were much more pressed in terms of production facilities while the NAC had to transport Ogres all over the world and had a much wider selection of Ogres to produce than anybody else. Just with the Mark V, Mark IV, Ninja, Vulcan and Mark I that's five templates that must be produced while I suspect that certain client states might be trusted with a Mark III, but not the IIIB. (The IIIB is dangerous against a Mark IV, but the Mark III is not.) On the other continent the Europeans could focus all their efforts on building just one or two makes of Ogre at a time and either have the Ogre move to the battlefield on its own or break it down into a bunch of little boxes for local assembly. If I'm reading the GURPS maintenance rules correctly, any Ogre should break down totally after two days in the field, unless it stops for routine maintenance every four hours. So I guess that's what inspired the creation of the Vulcan. -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.