Rule Qs: Turrets, ENG OVR, Battlesuits

[offsides]

Originally Posted by GranitePenguin

LOS for lasers in Ogre is a little fiddly. It's one of my least-favorite things in the game, in fact, because it's a later edition that doesn't mesh well. The important thing to remember is the context defined by the rest of the game (hence my original comment about effects entering vs leaving a hex). Ogre does not typically define things based on where you are or where you are coming from, but rather where you are going. Ogre is definitely a case of "don't overthink it."

While I agree with you about LLOS, I haven't been able to figure out a better way of doing them that both works and makes sense. The core issue is that prior to lasers LOS was explicitly mooted by the rules due to things like smart ammo and heavily networked units/weapons, and lasers are explicitly a straight line from the point of firing. Make it any more realistic and lasers will only work when fired from, through and into clear terrain, and any less realistic and lasers are going to look like the TV effect of a packet traveling from one computer to another over a twisty network cable... :)

The one thing I've considered is the use of mirror drones to redirect the laser around obstacles, but that would probably only explain how it fires out of a non-clear hex as I don't expect there to be optical mirrors floating all over the battlefield. Definitely a case where Bellisario's Maxim applies...

[GranitePenguin]

Originally Posted by offsides

The one thing I've considered is the use of mirror drones to redirect the laser around obstacles, but that would probably only explain how it fires out of a non-clear hex as I don't expect there to be optical mirrors floating all over the battlefield. Definitely a case where Bellisario's Maxim applies...

Yeah, we won't even get started on the height needed to accommodate the range due to earth curvature...

They are a game mechanic; it's not a direct real-world model.

[offsides]

Originally Posted by GranitePenguin

Yeah, we won't even get started on the height needed to accommodate the range due to earth curvature...

They are a game mechanic; it's not a direct real-world model.

Totally. I suppose that the real solution would have been to eliminate the ability for lasers to fire at anything other than to intercept missiles, but I'm sure that would have led to gamers asking why can't they fire their big, expensive laser at anything else, etc., etc., etc. </Yul Brynner>

[alsteel]

Originally Posted by GranitePenguin

Yeah, we won't even get started on the height needed to accommodate the range due to earth curvature...

They are a game mechanic; it's not a direct real-world model.

Yeah, that would be WAAY outside the scope of Ogre's relatively simple game mechanics.

A laser TURRET placed in a town hex makes no logical sense anyway. By definition they are relatively low to the ground and its general purpose, to shoot down flying things, would be negated by proximity to buildings, trees, etc. Like putting an AA gun in the center of a town. It's limited to attacking things that fly directly overhead. Why would you limit yourself?

I'd say a laser turret placed in any obstructed view terrain (town, forest, swamp) cannot fire outside of that hex, except at a cruise/Ogre missile that travels directly over that hex. Essentially, it would only be useful in an Overrun.

To say that it can fire out of that hex into any unobstructed hex implies that it's installed on the outside edge of the obstructing terrain, in the clear, and loses any defensive bonus... yeah.. starting to get complicated and making assumptions.

Now we could over complicate things and say that any laser Turret placed in a town hex is assumed to be installed in a tall building and therefore is treated as a laser Tower for targeting purposes but with reduced structure points. For example, SP10 but for the same acquisition cost as a SP20 turret to reflect that it's installed on top of a relatively fragile building. But that might be just a "home rule".

[lokke]

The quick rule of thumb for the distance to the horizon is the square root of the eye level multiplied by 1.22 - this gives the distance in miles (approximately).

At 6 foot the horizon is 3 miles. At 60 foot, 6.5 miles.

Generally speaking, you're not shooting at the horizon but at at something man (or machine) made. Perform the same calculation for the target's height and add the two distances together.

A marine shooting at another marine has LOS at 6 miles. Assuming they're both standing.

If it's a 60 foot laser tower shooting at a marine it's 9.5 miles.

(This assumes that they're both at the same level. If one is on top of a hill, or a building or a crate or something, you need to add that to their height.)

When it comes to lasers, adding in atmospheric refraction, now that's where it gets complicated...

I think the Ogre rule is quite accurate really.

[alsteel]

Originally Posted by offsides

12.02: To determine Laser line of sight, place a straightedge between the centers of the Laser hex and the target hex. If the line enters or crosses any forbidden terrain outside the laser turret's hex, or runs along a line between two hexes of forbidden terrain, the Laser cannot fire.

The bold section is my addition, and both answers your question and eliminates a silly case of 'That will never work!'...

hmmmm.... No sir, I don't like it. but if that's the official determination then to have it mesh with any possible reality I'd have to say it's placed atop a tall building and when in a forest or swamp hex, on some elevated platform or cleared area.

[offsides]

Originally Posted by alsteel

hmmmm.... No sir, I don't like it. but if that's the official determination then to have it mesh with any possible reality I'd have to say it's placed atop a tall building and when in a forest or swamp hex, on some elevated platform or cleared area.

Here's my thought. A laser turret IS semi-elevated, as in it's somewhere that' not directly at ground level, just not very high. My guess is that a laser turret ultimately is somewhere between 20-40 feet off the ground, as it needs to be elevated enough to be enclosed in an armored, swiveling turret. Now, that still isn't very high, but it's high enough to fire over some ground clutter, and I expect that these would be strategically placed to get the best sightlines possible given their location.

Towers, OTOH, are tall - VERY tall, as in a few hundred feet tall. Perhaps not as tall as the Space Needle or the Eiffel Tower, but certainly as tall as, e.g., high-tension powerline poles. That gives them their ability to fire over things that would block a laser turret.

However, the more I think about it, and especially with some quick & dirty curvature calculations (60 hexes @ 1.5mi/hex (minimum) =) 75 miles of max range for a laser tower would require a height of approximately 1400 feet, give or take, and that's just ridiculous. This leads me to consider the throwaway comment I made earlier about using mirror drones for targeting around/over obstacles. And maybe that's exactly what they do - have a single (or maybe a couple) high-precision mirror drones the allow the laser to fire more or less "up" out of the ground cover and angle the beam out over the nearby terrain so that it can be more useful than it logically should be. And the reason for being blocked by terrain further down is that a) the drone has to stay close by to permit any sort of precision in the aiming and b) "soft" obstacles like trees and vegetation, as well as many buildings, don't provide the same kind of sensor returns that hard military targets do, and so they're much harder to avoid with the level of precision needed for a laser beam (as opposed to a tacnuke). Laser towers have better sight lines to begin with, allowing for more precision targeting even when drones are needed to ensure unobstructed LLOS.

But all of that is still irrelevant when it comes to the actual game mechanics, whose sole purposes is to make Lasers workable and relevant when they're used (since the alternative is to junk them altogether). :P

[Mack_JB]

According to an artwork in Ogre Miniatures 2nd Edition, a Laser Tower is 70 feet tall. Range is 60 hexes, which is 90 kilometers.

[lokke]

Ah. H=(D/1.22)^2. Um.

Well, if it's firing at the horizon, it'll need to be a bit taller than that.

2,031 feet more. Obviously, they stick them on top of hills.

Really tall hills.

Either that or they got the height of the tower wrong.

There may be an errata soon.

Either that, or they'll tell us to stop mucking about...

On the other hand, it is possible to cause laser beams to bend, so maybe the height is correct:

https://physicsworld.com/a/light-ben...round-corners/

[Mack_JB]

Originally Posted by lokke

If it's a 60 foot laser tower shooting at a marine it's 9.5 miles.

By quick seat-of-the pants math, 9.5 miles is 15 km -- so ten hexes range.