====== OGRE Digest, May 22nd, 2003 (Last: May 21st) ======== ===== Moore's Law From: stephan beal ===== Moore's Law From: "Chris French" ===== MSL v Inf in the woods From: "Chris French" ============================== From: stephan beal Subject: Moore's Law > I'd put sensors and a smallish robot brain in every AP turret > (CIWS style) so the Ogre swats down missiles and grunts by reflex > action and uses its big computer to handle the overall situation. Another big advantage in this is, once an MB (e.g.) goes out, it's computer is gone and the main brain need not even give it a second thought - it's no longer taking up memory/processor time/filehandles/what-have-you in the core system. This allows the core to be designed primarily as a target information/control center server, and allows the minicomputers to be implemented as "thin clients" which know only about the actual targetting, reloading, etc. Since the server doesn't even have to know about which clients are listening to it, this potentially allows the same control center to be installed in a number of Ogres, assuming that it's core is powerful enough to serve enough targetting info to the various clients (i.e., guns). If it can't, some of the guns simply stay offline until resources are freed up and the server allows more connections. That is, MB1 goes offline MB2 comes online. That might be the basis of at least a single scenario, at least. ===== From: "Chris French" Subject: Moore's Law > From: AvaheilDotter@aol.com > The carbon nanotubes and superconducting nanotubes could deal with that. > Or fiber optics and optical devices which we are only guessing about... Yeah, those were mentioned, too. Thanks for reminding me. (And said tubes, being non-magnetic media, ignore EMP.... >:) ) > [My biggest gripe with the current GO Ogre designs is that they lack > sufficent parallelism. Even in Gurps terms a Mark V simply wouldn't be > able to fire all of its guns at the same time or track more than a handful > of targets. They're nowhere near as bad as the computers from the original _Traveller_ game. :) "What do you mean, we have to shut down the drives to fire the guns!?" > I'd put sensors and a smallish robot brain in every AP turret (CIWS > style) so the Ogre swats down missiles and grunts by reflex action and > uses its big computer to handle the overall situation. -HJC] At this level, it could serve as a "CP From Hell", coordinating the activities of a large force of "cyborg" armor and/or INF. CF ============================== From: "Chris French" Subject: MSL v Inf in the woods > From: "Clayton Springer" > [Every one of these messages is delivered to SJ's mailbox. [sound of CF panicking :) ] > What happens to it from there I have no control over. > > Note that the MSL got two shots at half effect on the INF above, but > that requires favorable terrain and grunts ought to do better when the > landscape falls their way. How often does that happen? > I've been looking at improved infantry defense for years, but I want > something that's simple enough to actually use. > > Here's my current draft. > > Foxholes: > > Prepare a number of counters labeled digging on one side and foxholes > on the other. More counters? Mayday. > An infantry unit of squad to platoon size on the ground may spend a > turn digging without firing or moving. Place a digging counter on the > unit. > > A unit that already has a digging counter on it may discard the counter > or spend another turn digging without firing or moving. If so, flip the > counter over to foxholes. > > An infantry unit in foxholes gets the +1 hard cover bonus to its > defense from all directions and its range is increased to 2 hexes because > of emplaced sensors and established firing lines. All that in 8 minutes? Who's in those suits, Speedy Gonzales? > The foxholes status is only removed if the unit moves or is destroyed. > The foxholes themselves cannot be destoyed otherwise by fire, but new > infantry units moving in cannot take advantage of the defense bonus or > combine with the survivors without spending two turns to dig in themselves. Umm, this doesn't make a lot of sense. The holes are there -- what's preventing another bunch of troopies from hiding there? The only reason I can see for needing to dig in is that the foxholes "aren't facing the right direction", and need to be reconfigured (a common nuisance during WW1). > [example edited] What's to stop the HVY from simply standing off and saturation- bombarding the hex? Drop all those nice heavy trees on top of the INF, and go pottering off on its merry way. (If it's really worried about the INF, call in a few GEVs or LGEVs to level the trees; even with the range increase, the INF will never touch them.) > Note that in most scenarios the grunts have just rushed to the front > lines and so will not start the game in foxholes. -HJC] True. And on this sort of battlefield, any military unit that stops moving dies shortly thereafter. The main problems with INF are their fragility (they take *worse* effects from D results than *any* other unit -- no other unit has to worry about losing bits of itself to a "near-hit") and their inability to keep pace with the vehicles they're supposed to be supporting (even a Lt. Tank will leave INF in the dust). Herewith, my proposal to bring INF into line with other units: 1) INF ignore D results altogether. (18 2-meter-long targets in an area 1,500 meters across are simply not going to be affected by any- thing less than a saturation bombing of that 1,500m area. Does the name "Monte Cassino" ring any bells?) 2) INF get 3 MP, not 2. (That's 67.5 km/h, or a blinding 42 MPH. And according to all previous notes, battlesuits are flight-capable; so it's not as if the INF are actually trying to move their legs that fast.) Assuming that change #1 increases the Cobb Formula DM to 3, that brings a INF squad's value to an even 24 pts., or 2 VP. > [Actually if you read the GO rules, the infantry only have to worry > about whiplash from nuclear near misses because they're so well protected > against blast and shrapnel. See my pyramid article for further details. No have _Pyramid_ sub. No can afford at moment. (Cannot even afford to use proper grammar. :) ) CF ===== [Well, as long as you're broke, I'm sure you don't mind that SJGames is now selling GEVs for $20 each. http://www.sjgames.com/ill/ And scroll down to May 22nd. Now we need 28mm Battlesuit figures for playing Battlesuit... -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