Infantry on an Ogre

[Misplaced Buckeye]

Anyone ever worked with the infantry, marines or engineers riding into battle on the Ogre like we used to do in Panzerblitz. Seems like a given but there's never been any rules for it when stacking is allowed. Seems like there would be enough room. Ogre would have to stay put for a turn allowing them to disembark. A Mark III could do 1 squad while a V could do up to 3. Opinions??

[offsides]

Originally Posted by Misplaced Buckeye

Anyone ever worked with the infantry, marines or engineers riding into battle on the Ogre like we used to do in Panzerblitz. Seems like a given but there's never been any rules for it when stacking is allowed. Seems like there would be enough room. Ogre would have to stay put for a turn allowing them to disembark. A Mark III could do 1 squad while a V could do up to 3. Opinions??

IIRC, it's generally been posited that while infantry could ride on Ogres, as a general rule they really wouldn't be all that inclined to do so. Even if you get over the heebie-jeebies about being that close to an Ogre, you're still riding on top of the biggest target on the battlefield (and remember, attacks on vehicles carrying INF also attack the INF with the same die roll. That 2:1 on an SB is an automatic kill for a single INF, and 50/50 for a 3 INF - not very good odds if you ask the poor grunts :)).

So while it certainly is possible for INF to go riding into combat on the back of an Ogre, it's probably not going to happen very often. You might see INF hitching a ride on a friendly Ogre under non-combat conditions, but even that would probably be rare, and at the first hint of opposition the INF will be bailing out...

As to the numbers, a Mk III is bigger than a SHVY, which can carry 2 squads. IIRC there's a theoretical chart indicating how many INF bigger units can carry, but I don't remember where I saw it. It might have been +1 squad per size level (that would be 4 squads on a Mk III, 5 on a Mk V), or it might have been even more than that (might have been 3 squads on a Size 6 (Mk II), and +3 squads per size level beyond that for 6 on a Mk III and 9 on a Mk V). I want to say it was somewhere in the OGRE Book, but it might have been something here on the forums instead.

[HeatDeath]

Originally Posted by Misplaced Buckeye

Anyone ever worked with the infantry, marines or engineers riding into battle on the Ogre like we used to do in Panzerblitz. Seems like a given but there's never been any rules for it when stacking is allowed. Seems like there would be enough room. Ogre would have to stay put for a turn allowing them to disembark. A Mark III could do 1 squad while a V could do up to 3. Opinions??

Yep. that's in there.

http://www.sjgames.com/ogre/products...e_rulebook.pdf

Page 13, rule 5.11.1. An Ogre can, in principle, carry (it's size rating* - 3) infantry squads, if you can talk the infantry into sitting still on the largest target on the battlefield while kilotons worth of nuclear explosives are flying at it. :)

They would follow standard infantry tank desant rules - page 13, 5.11.3.
Per Wikipedia, carrying infantry into combat on tanks seems to have fallen out of favor nowadays.

* - Size ratings on page 14 of the ODE rulebook, or the reference card.

[Misplaced Buckeye]

Thank you both. While the fact that the INF might be leery on riding I can see a benefit of bringing them up closer to the battle area, depositing them in cities with the additional defense bump but out of range of most weapons except a laser tower or cruise missle. In one scenario I played the Marines were even equipped with the one shot "Ogrefaust" so that brings up a different set of of conditions. And they are great for going after tread units.

[HeatDeath]

An interesting bit in the backstory: Per GURPS: Ogre, the soldiers of the Nihon Empire (present-day Japan) are much more accustomed to working closely with their Ogres than the soldiers of PanEurope or the North American Combine, and would probably be much more likely to willingly ride their Ogres into battle when the tactical situation called for it.

[dwalend]

One of the ogres in the Assault Packs has an INF squad bay that is a bit more survivable.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects.../posts/1271895

[gev]

Perhaps a bit of space INSIDE an OGRE for carrying troops...

[Misplaced Buckeye]

Originally Posted by dwalend

One of the ogres in the Assault Packs has an INF squad bay that is a bit more survivable.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects.../posts/1271895

You do realize that those of use that are not backers can't read that ,,,right?

[Desert Scribe]

There was a story in the Bolo series about one model of cybertank modified to carry a squad of special operations soldiers. I always thought that might be interesting to use in an OGRE/GEV scenario--say, a Mark IV that has its missile racks and ammo switched out to carry a platoon of infantry. That infantry unit must occupy a specified hex for a specified number of turns to complete its objective.

[ianargent]

Originally Posted by Misplaced Buckeye

You do realize that those of use that are not backers can't read that ,,,right?

"The Israeli Golem was unique amongst the cybertanks of the Last War. It was designed and programmed as the ultimate infantry carrier, able to deliver ... battlesuited infantry safely to an objective, and support them afterward"

Then there are rules for how this works.

(I have deliberately dropped the rules and details from the descriptions; as those are behind the Kickstarter wall)