============ The Ogre Digest, May 15th (Last: May 13th) ============= ===== Asimov's 3 Laws From: "Brian Bell" ===== Militia From: "David R. Crowell" ===== Militia From: AvaheilDotter@aol.com ===== 4HD: the Four-Howitzer Defense, Revisited From: Servitor@aol.com ===== Infantry Weapons From: Stephan Beal ============================== From: "Brian Bell" Subject: Asimov's 3 Laws > From: "Andrew Walters" > [snip] > > And when an Ogre gets confused about who's who, its still very smart > tactically. > > So three laws, however well worded, won't prevent the occasional > rogue Ogre. With respect to Mr. Asmov, I keep wanting to write the story of a robot (or Ogre) that has the 3 laws applied to it. All the algorythims show that it worked. All of the lab tests shows it works. The first field test goes wonderfully! Then it picks up a news broadcast about an auto accident on highway 70 -- 3 people killed. "May not cause by action or inaction a human being to be harmed". It promptly goes on a rampage to destroy all cars and highways so that it cannot happen again. - --- Brian Bell bbell1@insight.rr.com ICQ: 12848051 AIM: Rlyehable YIM: Rlyehable The Full Thrust Ship Registry: http://www.ftsr.org ============================== From: "David R. Crowell" Subject: Militia > From: Darren Breland > With a move of 1" or 1 hex/2 turns that's still an 8.5 minute mile > (7mph)... with full gear> Perhaps "militia" are not merely foot soldiers but are mounted in light vehicles, the Ogre equvivalent of a jeep or Hummer perhaps. A name change to "partisans" would suggest that these might be civilian vehicles. This would eplain the higher mobility but would still leave them with weak defensive and ofensive capabilities. My first thought was that militia could be riding bicycles, but the resulting mental image was absurd. ===== From: AvaheilDotter@aol.com Subject: Militia That problem never came up in any of the games I played with militia (2). The player had them as speed bumps and there was no need to move them... OTOH, they could include some organic and hidden transport like mopeds... Ad Astra! Stan Leghorn ============================== From: Servitor@aol.com Subject: 4HD: the Four-Howitzer Defense, Revisited > HUUUUUUGE message from Servitor deleted Don't blame you, and everyone else thanks you. Yeah, I DID ramble on quite a bit there. Just above your entry was a great variation/report on the 4 HWZ defense which also had some interesting advise. Namely: "First MBs, then missiles then treads. Forget about SBs." It's interesting to me because I just finished playing and photographing the promised OGRE Macrotures battle report. I still have to develop the film, write up the report and provide graphics for the battle. But I thought I would share a bit with you in advance. I played a MK V Ogre against my two friends who controlled the defense in a standard "Get the CP" scenario. Their strategy I found out halfway through the game was: "MBs, missiles then treads, forget the other guns." Because I consider myself an experienced OGRE player (studiously ignores laughter from audience) and my friends are, well, not. -I gave them 24 armor units instead of the usual 20. They chose: 1 SHVY, 5 HVYs, 4 LTs, 9 GEVs, 4 MSLs and 2 HWZs (I rate HWZs at 9 VPs or 1 1/2 armor units.) We marked out the battlefield in the usual dimensions of 40 x 25 feet (which equals the approximate size of the OGRE board at 2 feet to the hex) and placed cones at the usual spots to show setup areas allowed. The terrain consisted of the usual few square feet of "town" and three "woods". The Hyde brothers elected to set all nine of their GEVs on the "sortie line" closest to the OGRE entry side. (This took them four points over the 50 pts I had given them for the setup area, but I let them have it.) The rest of the armor went just behind the other line, evenly divided up by the town in the center. The infantry all set up in the woods or town. Curiously, they didn't put either of the HWZs in the town, preferring to set them up one near each corner. The CP went (unsurprisingly) in the center against their baseline. With everything else being even, I decided to enter near the center of the board. My strategy was typical Ogre overkill. Charge straight in, sideslip to avoid any concentration of armor that could get me in a single "move-fire" and be sure to eliminate GEVs early on. You will have to wait for the battle report to find out who won. Let's just say that this battle certainly put the afore mentioned strategy (defense force targeting priorities) to the test. I have a feeling that shortly after I post this battle I will get a lot of new letters for my mailbag section. I will let everyone know as soon as I get this report up on the site. On another note, (Darren, may I borrow that bat? Thanks...) >If you want, you can slow down MIL even more.< Or not... I believe that MIL/SOL are actually mounted on unarmored, primitive and CHEAP vehicles. I'm not talking APCs here folks, not even heavy-duty trucks. I mean flat-top, light-weight transporters that carry a bunch of 'em at about 25 to 30 klicks an hour over "clear" terrain. They only have the 1/2 hex move 'cause it takes 'em awhile to get organized either embarking or disembarking, or for when they have to do weird things like ford a stream. Even in clear terrain there would be constant interuptions and detours for a cheap wheeled vehicle. This would also allow you to (logically) give them a road bonus. On the road, their transporters can actually make decent time. (But no more than bumping up to a full hex per turn. These things can't bulldoze through flimsy houses, small trees and other minor obstructions like even a LT could...) Of course, in an emergency they can get off the vehicle and fan out REAL quick. Can you say "INCOMING!" boys and girls? I knew you could. Just my bit of rationalizing... best, John Hurtt (Servitor@aol.com) ===== [If they have vehicles, why are they all terrain, unless they're doing motorcross? (Strange Robotech reference suppressed...) As for SBs, 2xInfs defend better against SBs than 3xInfs do. SB vs 2xInf averages one dead squad per shot but against 3xInf averages one and a third. -HJC] ============================== From: Stephan Beal Subject: Infantry Weapons > From: White Rat > > An absolutely wonderful report on game balance and on getting people > involved in the game. Many thanks! Image of the kid Apache-dancing around > the shattered OGREs will stay with me a while. *Chuckle* > > > From: patrick.odonnell@materna.de > > Subject: Is Ogre Intelligence really "Artificial"? > It's very interesting to consider what the PEF cyberneticists 'grooming' > the OGREs for the Vatican Guard would teach them. I can just picture the > end of a battle where a crippled heavy crew's jaws drop as this > multi-megaton monster done up in scarred purple and gold grinds to a halt, > one main battery levelled at them, and every speaker in their tank blares > out at full volume 'Do you attest your belief in the one true God and in > his son, Jesus Christ, who died that all self-aware entities' sins might > be forgiven? Would any of you like to make confession? You have thirty > seconds...' Now THAT image will stay with me a while. I repent, man, I repent! And what about the nun-motifed Ogres? > From: "Andrew Walters" > Subject: Ogres Going Over The Top & Isaac Asimov > > Trying to spoof an enemy Ogre would not be easy, but its clear that > both sides tried. It wouldn't be expensive, and the payoff could be > huge, so of course it would be tried. Even if you only made an Ogre > hesitate, it could save lives. So you get an extra Ogre brain or two > and maybe a couple of hot-shot cryptologists with a set of radios and > they get to work. They sample enemy signals, figure out what kinds > of codes and protocols they're using, and jam them, spoof them, > intercept them, anything. Everyone once in a while it will work. This would actually make a nice scenario modification: the CP (or jamscreen) has something like this. The Ogre must roll a die before moving. If it rolls a 1, it may not move (maybe a 1 or 2?). It declares each attack, then must roll again to see if it can attack (maybe on a roll of 3 or higher it can?). Or perhaps it just rolls to see if it can declare any attacks. I suspect, however, that an Ogre brain would have several processors per weapon, with security systems for each one, and that spoofing them all at once would not be likely. If they were all running the same bits, then you could fool them all if you could fool one. I strongly suspect, however, given the military's tendency to over-spec, that each weapon would have it's own security codes (probably even for each smart round of ammunition!). Verification of such information ("is this REALLY the correct round for my MB, as is stated in the maintenance log? And is that log accurate and official?") would take nanoseconds for a machine with the computing power of an Ogre. This could also be used as a control mechanism for Ogres on one's own side. Imagine this: An Ogre goes to fire it's MB. It looks at the unique security ID of the round it is about to fire. It checks it's logs to see if that round was loaded by an authorized maintainer at an authorized maintenance station. It could easily get further verification over radio by asking the maintenance station to cross-verify the validity of it's logs, which computers could do in microseconds. If an Ogre seems unstable, or goes haywire, or just isn't behaving as desired, these verification requests are simply sent a response of "invalid." The Ogre then cannot fire that round, because it is of dubious origin. The same could be done for all systems in an Ogre, virtually eliminating the possibility of rogues, but also limiting the usefulness of Ogres to the range of a maintenance station (forwarding stations, even mobile, are possible, of course, but introduce new layers of security problems). Of course, even HAVING a system like this introduces slews of security issues. I find the idea of Rogue Ogres entertaining and good story material, but highly improbable, anyway. Thus I don't think that such a control mechanism would be specifically needed, at least not to the extent of adding it separately to every system in an Ogre. ----- Stephan Beal - stephan@wanderinghorse.net http://qub.sourceforge.net - http://gwm.rootonfire.org http://byoo.rootonfire.org - http://dungeonmaker.sourceforge.net "Now I'm not normally the kind of person who likes to trespass, but sometimes you just find yourself over the line." -- Bob Dylan ===== [Yeah, I wanna build a giant cybertank that can be rendered useless with a radio jammer! Nobody can hear your broadcasts from inside a nuclear fireball... -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.