====== The Ogre Digest, November 4th (Last: November 2nd) ======== ===== Heavy Weapon Cheesemobiles From: David Morse ===== High Speed Movement From: AvaheilDotter@aol.com ===== Ogre Parts From: "Duncan McEwen" ============================== From: David Morse Subject: Heavy Weapon Cheesemobiles [sorry in advance for typos, its late, and I need sleep] I've been ignoring them for literally a decade, trying to convince myself they were unofficial, but then I got a box of minis with rules for Heavy Weapons Infantry. I have no problems with normal, self respecting HWI. I think they add an interesting new defensive dimension to raid + breakthrough. However, I strongly suspect that HW inf riding GEV-PCs and Light Tanks are game balance breakers. On either platform they've got a 7 hex move-fire, standing off the mighty Mobile Howitzer, but they get to the scene of the crime 5 times faster. Granted, a fully loaded GEV-PC costs 3 armor. However, in many cases one is able to talk one's opponent into letting one pay for the HW infantry out of the "and 20 infantry" part of the force, so the real cost is 1 armor, and 3 squads of infantry. That's quite cheap, in fact, for a unit capable of intimidating 3+ armor units. Tonight, an experienced player and I took a crack at the "Recon in Force" scenario printed in Shockwave. For those of you without a copy handy, its a combined breakthrough/raid on two maps. The attacker gets 25 armor worth of attacking GEVs, and GEV-PCs come fully loaded with inf for the special introductory price of 1 armor. I took 4 LGEVs, 10 GEVs, 8 GEV-PCs, 15 squads of HW inf (distributed evenly throughout the PCs), and 9 squads of vanilla inf. The defense took heavy armor in front, a cruise missile crawler in back, and all vanilla inf. My boys came in dispersed and slow, suspecting a cruise missile attack. On turn two he launched, and we got lucky and smacked it down, though extra cowardly attack pattern I was employing ensured he'd only get ~4 units, anyway. His defensive perimeter formed up. With my superior move+fire, I got the first shot on one flank, and deleted his forces with rounds to spare. Most of my units poured into the breach. His other flank got sloppy, wandered into move+fire, and got deleted as well. Net standing at this point: defense down 8 armor; offense down one LGEV. Miffed about the LGEV, we struck out for his big city. 9 infantry and a handful of armor put up a fight for about three turns, but couldn't do much better than the occasional disabling. They died about the time the PCs caught up. We glided into his big city with the road net intact, and started urban de-development. His trickle of armor reinforcement was useless against so large, centralized, and mobile a force. His infantry were hard to kill permanently, but the straggling survivors had been bypassed by this point. At the end of the night, ~20 armor units of my force made it home. They'd destroyed every single target town hex, and both river bridges, and 21 armor units of defense armor, and every single infantry squad on the southern map. The mounted Heavy Weapons squads stopped in at Depot, got some chow, scratched themselves, reloaded, and were ready to run the mission again. Have I convinced you that they are cheesy? I suggest two possible rules to close what I consider to be the "mounted HW loophole". I'd like to see some discussion on which would be better. 1. [extra cantankerousness rule] HW infantry count as two squads of infantry for purposes of riding vehicles. Use Battlefields rule foo.bar to govern HW inf splitting up among multiple vehicles. This lets the GEV-PC still carry 1 squad, plus a regular squad, leaving it a somewhat desirable combination. 2. [unsteady platform rule] HW infantry may ride on a vehicle, and may fire their one shot weapon, but not both during the same turn. This rule seems somewhat more realistic to me. Those HW minis look like civil war cannons without the wheels: Hard to turn the right direction in a jostling, weasely vehicle. ===== [Actually I don't see any reason why infantry should be allowed to fire while mounted at all. Change 5.111 to place the mount point at the end of the GEV second movement phase (So that the 5.11 stacked defense is always clear) and that infantry may dismount at any point during either movement phase and that they always dismount when firing or at the start of an overrun. (So Infantry riding Heavy Tanks work just the same as always.) Infantry riding inside vehicles (such as Hovertrucks) do not dismount at the start of an overrun, but one squad per carrier may dismount after each friendly overrun fire round. (So defending riding inside infantry never gets the first shot and attacking riding inside infantry always takes at least one shot inside the carrier.) The Cheesemobile drops the infantry and either runs or stays stacked with them to face retribution during the next turn. Actually, given the Cheesemobile, is there any reason not to allow the full Atk 3/4, D 2, M 3/2 Cub for 9 VPs? (It's got a third the first strike, for half the price of the Cheesemobile. And I'll limit it to six shots, fires once per turn if you ask nicely enough.) Fear the power of Cheese! -HJC] ============================== From: AvaheilDotter@aol.com Subject: High Speed Movement << Ogres lose 1 tread per extra hex of movement they take. >> This I disagree with. The Ogre is going to be no more vulnerable to such movement than a regular vehicle. Off road movement would have a tread attack of 1 point, road movement would be completely safe. For the Ogre,at least. I doubt the road is going to be much good after being tenderized by a 1000 tonne tank doing those speeds... Ad Astra! Stan Leghorn ===== [From reading some of the Bolo stories, I've thought about a rule that lets damaged self-aware Ogres travel at their undamaged speed, at the risk of additional tread damage. -HJC] ============================== From: "Duncan McEwen" Subject: Ogre Parts Since Henry asked for it, here ya go. > [Here you go, enjoy. > > I'm still looking for silly weapons. (As long as they're not too >silly...) And will probably put together a silly version of the Javascript >spreadsheet to include all the silly weapons. -HJC] Hover Ogres. Hover Tread units Treated just like regular tread units, except all attacks are at 2:1 odds and each hit destroys the attack rating in hover units. Ogre movement progression begins at 1/0 and goes 2/1, 3/2, 4/3. I recommend that no Ogre ever be given 4/3 (all in hexes, not inches.) I don't know how these balance out or cost or anything, but they seem pretty reasonable. Other silly weapons could include: Battle Field Laser Turret Cruise Missile Silo (Wasn't that in the Ogrebook 2K?) Improved Point Defense Suite, +1 D all systems. (Owch!) Just some more ideas. Thanks, Duncan NA Combine ===== [Stealth is already better than +1 D, the cruise missile only weighs as much as three Ogre Missiles and the Laser Turret requires 20 Mark-III power plants to run it. Oh, all right, here goes. (But note that the direct fire weapons in Gurps Ogre come in too fast to be deflected.) Improved Point Defense (Silliness: 2), same stats as the AP gun, except that they cost a full VP each. After each attack is declared against the Ogre but before it is rolled, if the attacker does not have LLOS on the Ogre, the Ogre may assign a single Point Defense gun to add one to the defense of the item in question. (Treads are attacked normally, but take one less point of damage on successful attacks when defended.) That Point Defense gun may not defend anything else or engage in ranged fire (Using it as AP in overruns is fine) until the end of the Ogre's next turn. Point Defense guns may also target Cruise Missiles on an 11+ (It is suggested that normal AP guns be given a 12+ roll against cruise missiles. Especially if you let Ogres carry cruise missiles.) Cruise Missile with Cradle Defense: 2 Cost: 18 VPs (includes cruise missile) Weight: 12 Hardpoints: 2 Silliness: 3 Laser Turret Attack: 2 Range: 30 hexes (LLOS) Defense: 4 Cost: 24 VPs Weight: 20 Hardpoints: 4 Silliness: 4 The cost and weight includes the extra power plant it takes to run the laser. Example: Laser Ogre OK, one laser, 8 Point Defense and 2 mains (for the cruise missile defense) is a total load of 52. At a speed of six and a load factor of around 16.5, we need 5 treads per inch or a Mark-II hull upgraded to Y2073 standards. Total cost is 82 VPs or about seven fixed laser turrets. Example: Fast Cruise Missile Crawler (When you absolutely, positively have to deliver that nuke!) Cruise Missile, 4 Point Defense, 16 treads as 2 tpi times 8 inches, total load is 32, power ratio is 16, cost is 38 VPs or over twice the expense of a standard cruise missile crawler, but at least it's airmobile and express delivered. Anything else? -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.