====== OGRE Digest, April 19th, 2003 (Last: April 11th) ======== ===== mines for hexes From: David Morse From: "Chris French" ===== Strategic Ogre From: David Morse ===== Re: MK VI scenarios From: "Chris French" ===== Mk VI cost From: "Chris French" ===== History of PanEuropean Missile Tanks From: "Chris French" ===== rules-lawyerly Ogre ramming questions From: "Chris French" ===== rules-lawyerly Ogre ramming questions From: reaper28i ===== Ogre rules in just 34 sentences From: David Morse ============================== From: David Morse Subject: mines for hexes > OK, how about atk 3, range zero, move zero, defense very high? That > comes out to about 1 VP. Seems reasonable, but I postulated higher costs because I wanted mines to be practical in Breakthrough. I guess that's just not possible while still having them practical in any other scenario. Imagine if the defense could buy these suckers in Iron Mountain. Sad mr Ogre Mark III-B would lose before getting in range. ===== [If you've got lots of time you can make a dandy defense. Iron Mountain has always been a race scenario. I wouldn't allow hidden mine emplacement during a scenario. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/5/30225.html for some current ideas on mines. -HJC] ===== From: "Chris French" Subject: mines for hexes > [Armor is factored in Da Formula as a general protection against hazards. OK. I was pointing out that the mine rules being discussed "bypassed" armor altogether -- they had a flat-rate chance of offing a unit. > Putting in mines as zero range hypersmart missiles might make some sense. Sort of a _B_ Bomb Drone from hell? Sounds good. > OK, how about atk 3, range zero, move zero, defense very high? That > comes out to about 1 VP. How high? (IOW, can a unit clear a minefield with gunfire?) > [You were using my design for the LGEV, right? Neg, my Khan. (Oops, sorry, wrong game.) I was using Standard-Issue LGEVs, assuming that in a basic "KTCP" game the Defender had taken his entire armor force (20 AU) in a LGEV battalion, and had arranged for a Fuzzy- Wuzzy-style attack on the unit, scattering his forces 1 per hex outside ram or gun range. Then the OGRE uncorks its Special Attack missiles, which use CM rules to determine damage. (Don't say anything about stacking the GEVs -- it only makes matters worse.) > Moves ten hexes in each movement phase and carries a one-shot missile > tank attack too. -HJC] Umm -- no. First, I'd not heard of it until now. Second, it sounds like an escapee from _The Munchkin's Guide To Power Gaming_. :) > [You need to paste in the errata. > http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/errata/reinforcement-pack.html OK. Thanks. ===== [The defense of the hidden mines doesn't have to be that high. Ogre AP guns are only D1 but they can't be destroyed by any amount of spillover fire -HJC] ============================== From: David Morse Subject: Strategic Ogre > From: "Chris French" >>From: David Morse >>Because of the rules for disabled armor, we already know how well >>autonomous non-ai units fight: no ranged attack, no movement, and half >>attack strength in overrun relative to human-crewed. > > That's the AI used when the tank has to accomodate a human > crew; replace even half the crew space with [more|better] pro- > cessors.... (How does a _Battlesuit_ Attack Drone work?) Point taken. >>Well, we can quibble about whether or not there's been a end to the >>exponential tech improvements in this-or-that field, > > True. But I *don't* see _O_ postulating a limit to Moore's Law. Cyberbrains are expensive and only put on the largest units in 2050. By 2090 they're still expensive, and still only put on the largest units. If anything, the units are getting bigger and bigger. I recall reading that this is to amortize the cost of the cyberbrain, but don't remember where. If computers were doubling every 18 monoths, and given that in 2071 its cost effective to buy a cyberbrain for a Mark III, by 2081 it should be cost effective to put in a LGEV, and by 2087 it should be cost effective to build terminators instead of battlesuits. Since that does not happen, Steve is saying computing hits the brick wall right after self-awareness. To get all philosophical, I'm bitter I'm not a super-genius, and who isn't? I wonder if evolution has hit an intelligence brick wall? That is to say, intelligence doesn't help you reproduce. And whose's high school experience doesn't make that fact painfully clear? ;) > Not "stacked" -- in adjacent hexes. And we're not talking about > GEVs here -- it's straight OGRE v. OGRE. But last issue you just got done saying it paid to examine these guys against various strawman armor forces. By the same token, all the official rules sets should be examined too. (there are 3 rules sets: Ogre, GEV, and even Ogre-minis). The topic at hand is the VP cost of the Ogre Mark VI. Its instructive to examine III+V versus VI in BOTH Ogre and GEV. In Ogre, there's a consensus that the group's extra treads are countered by the extra ramming ferocity of the VI. Fine, 250 VP seems right. On the flip side of the coin, in GEV the extra ramming ferocity counts for nothing, since ramming an armed ogre is fairly suicidal, and the group can simply stack at no penalty, ensuring it is always armed. In that particular situation, 250 VP seems a bit high. That's all I'm saying. I think there will be plenty of eager buyers for the VI, no matter its cost. They've dreamed up a cool enough design for it. (er, it just occurs to me that we've been assuming the book value of 100 VP for the Mark III, while literally every player I've talked to believes its more like 90-96. I'm not sure what people think about the Mark V's value) > [You need to paste in the errata. > http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/errata/reinforcement-pack.html Drat, the twin-secondary battery one. I thought that Paul had adopted your cool fencer terminology: Fencer - 2 secondaries 125 VP Fencer-B - 2 mains 150 VP Fencer-A - 4 secondaries 150 VP Alas, the quad-Fencer must continue to wage a guerilla war for its return to canon. Its weapon: close in firepower and/// Its two weapons: close in firepower and out-of-print rules, and/// Its weapons include: close in firepower, out-of-print rules, an almost fanatatical devotion from the fan base, and/// Among its weapons are such DIVERSE ELEMENTS as: close in firepower, out-of-print rules, an almost fanatical devotion from the fan base, and the challenge of a cool kit-bash... > No infantry? Just as in PanzerBlitz, no one will buy INF unless they have > to. Which compeletly ignores the INF's non combat roll of holding the place > when the armor rolls of somewhere else... I've been saying for ages that a squad of infantry should be somewhere between 1 and 1.5 VP. Perhaps 1 VP on the orange map and 1.5 VP on the green ones? End Stevie-subsidised infantry today! Let market forces decide the frequency of infantry! ===== [The reference I think you are thinking of is older than some of the folks on this list. Goto http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/articles/notes.html and search for "expected to carry as much armor and weaponry as it could". -HJC] ============================== From: "Chris French" Subject: Re: MK VI scenarios > From: AvaheilDotter@aol.com > No infantry? Just as in PanzerBlitz, no one will buy INF unless they have > to. Which compeletly ignores the INF's non combat roll of holding the place > when the armor rolls of somewhere else... If only INF didn't suck quite so badly in most games.... Or, more to the point, if scenario designers had Clue One about how warfare works.... Misuse of armor is almost as annoying as seeing WW2 games where the Germans never have to worry about the 8th f***ing Air Force forever bombing the hell out of their construction facilities and transport grids. According to the publishers of every WW2 combat game I've ever played, we should be typing all this in German, and all my non-white non-Aryan associates should be *dead*. (Including my own mudblood self. :) ) The Germans win *every* bloody game. > [Can't we just assume that a few battalions of infantry show up and are > blown away by the Mark VI before doing anything so we can skip moving the > counters around? -HJC] Oh, hell -- just have the INF sit on the Mk. VI. That puts it over its weight limit, and the suspension snaps like a twig. :) ============================== From: "Chris French" Subject: Mk VI cost > From: David Morse > However, now it occurs to me you're perhaps talking about secondary > batteries as well? No, Secondaries are anti-armor. I am in fact talking about APs only. (SBs are best used in pairs. Or in followup attacks, if one is using Nihon units.) > A pair of Ogres is much better equipped to deal with hover swarms than a > single big Ogre. They can dash in two directions at once, and thus kill > more GEVs before they lose their mains and drop to M2, at which point > the GEVs become immortal. Plus they have many more treads, before M2 I reiterate: IN AN OGRE VS. OGRE FIGHT (WHICH IS WHAT WAS BEING TALKED ABOUT IN THE FIRST PLACE), AP guns ONLY are not relevant. MBs and SBs are relevant. > Its pretty clear that a V and III are close enough to a VI that it comes > down to first shot. However your point that they need to be evaluated > against other forces, say hybrid-armor-ogre-force-X or GEV-force-Y or > whatever, I think lends a little support to the argument that the VI is > perhaps 10% overpriced. That wasn't my point. My point was that an OGRE v. OGRE test isn't accurate because both sides are carrying weapons that cannot be used. If it's a mixed armor/INF force, then all weapons are usable, and the full point value can be used. The fight being discussed, tho', was OGRE-only. ============================== From: "Chris French" Subject: History of PanEuropean Missile Tanks > From: David Morse > 5 hexes. Inches are for barbarians! Amen. Real gamers see hexagonal bathroom tile, and start plot- ting Arctic warfare games. :) > Man, I played Exercise T yesterday and took the Fencer-B. What are the > oddds of a Mark V coming in right behind me, and hitting with 5 of 6 > missiles and thus stripping me of all my racks and a main battery. Grrrrr! Try reading the CRT. :) > [How about the Great Patriotic War, > http://66.93.230.14/~dm/ogre/great-patriotic-war.html > > I think that one deserves to be in the GEV scenario book. -HJC] With a title like that, it has to be a meat-grinder. :) ============================== From: "Chris French" Subject: rules-lawyerly Ogre ramming questions > From: David Morse > Question #1: can an Ogre ram a 0-tread enemy ogre just to lose some of > its own treads (okay, perhaps the scenario should be changed so that > players will stop wanting to do this :P ) Why in Cthulhu's name would anyone *want* to lose treads? Or anything else? CF ===== [There are some multiplayer scenarios where you gain points by blasting other Ogres, but don't lose any points for getting blasted yourself. Therefore if you can inflict a lot of damage and then destroy your own Ogre you win. -HJC] ===== From: reaper28i Subject: rules-lawyerly Ogre ramming questions > Hi Henry, My two pence worth on this question:- > From: David Morse > Question #2: Suppose an Ogre rams a missile tank, but only manages to > disable it. That was its last movement point. Then here comes > /another/ Ogre, that also wants to move into that hex. Does the > newcomer hit (a) the MSL, (b) the other Ogre, (c) both? Does it make > any difference what the rammer wants? Please answer for MSL aligned > with each of the Ogres, or with neither of them. I would think that the rammer should be able to decide what target in the hex to ram. After all the hex is 1.5 km across. This idea changes if the initial ramming Ogre is actually sat on top of the other vehicle, but that opens up another can of worms doesn't it? ===== [My Ogre is so big than when it sits around the house it really sits around the house? -HJC] ============================== From: David Morse Subject: Ogre rules in just 34 sentences I'm toying with the idea of running Excercise-T as a pick up game this year at Gen Con. To make the game as accessible as possible I'm working on a teeenie weenie rule book rewrite of Ogre. The goal is to to take a total newbie and have them read it and understand it in 180 seconds. In this system, newbies won't have to worry about whether to take two 1-1 attacks or one 2-1 attack. I give them just one option, in the form of a table. It replaces the CRT, and as a result I don't need attack strength or defense strength. In fact armor units boil down to just two stats: move and range. I also got rid of infantry, since they would cost ~6 sentances and aren't in the scenario anyway. Please take a look and let me know what you think. I still plan to spell check it, illustrate it, and test it on my unsuspecting girlfriend. http://66.93.230.14/~dm/ogre/nutshell.html ===== [I'd drop the Ninja because it is more complicated and it's very powerful when you cannot combine fire on it. -HJC] ============================== Send all submissions or mailing list changes or problems to ogre@sjgames.com Archives for this mailing list may be found at http://www.io.com/~hcobb/ General online support for the OGRE game is at http://www.sjgames.com/ogre Ogre, G.E.V., Shockwave and other products mentioned here are trademarks or registered trademarks of Steve Jackson Games. All rights are reserved by SJ Games. This material is used here in accordance with the SJ Games online policy at http://www.sjgames.com/general/online_policy.html