Sea Ogre

[Corbeau]

Scenarios? Time for me to get "kraken," I guess.

;)

Okay, that was bad. But I'll get to thinking about scenarios.

[dylango]

Originally Posted by Corbeau

Time for me to get "kraken," I guess.

What the !? Horrible HOOOOOORIBLE.

Happy Secession Day to all my yankee friends :P

-D

[dylango]

Oh BTW, Corb, Tristan, if'n you're willing I'd like to get some files of the ship counters to stick em in Vassal.

-D

[Bowser]

OK, guys. I'm in for playtesting.

I've been interested in Ogre for almost 30 years, but have had surprisingly little playtime due to lack of opponents. I consider myself a "knowlegeable novice".

Of course, that may be good and I'll probably stumble into the holes that advanced players _know_ aren't there!

Now all we need is a scenario!

-- Doug Pearson

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Bowser

Now all we need is a scenario!

http://www.io.com/~hcobb/gev/2001/gevfeb23.txt
"A new Combine carrier deploys from the gulf of mexico, right into a
Paneuropean ambush."

[piningforthefjords]

Just reading over Henry's stuff, I note he opted for structure points instead of hull units. I'm thinking that might be a good system for "middle sized" ships. The small ships are destroyed just like regular units, the bigger ones use structure points. Cyberships could still have hull units.

Thoughts??

[Corbeau]

Honestly, I don't see that much need to do large non-ogre sea vessels to act in any way different from the Chinese imitation Ogres. Basically, they act like Ogres but are affected by D results.

Oh, and I'm 99% of the way to a first scenario. I'll post it tonight sometime.

[mmaestro]

Hi, coming late to the party here.

Looking at your numbers, I think my biggest issue is with the short range of the cyberships. Bear in mind that the WWII US Iowa class had a range of 24 miles or 38km (that's 16 hexes!) lobbing shells the size of small cars, and it would be not unreasonable to assume that range would have increased by the last war. Of course, giving the cyberships that sort of range could turn out to be horribly unbalanced, but if some sort of mechanic to include shallow water that the cyberships and subs could not enter were included, it might start to balance things out.
I'm also rather surprised at the fact that the subs have only 1 cruise missile. My suspicion is that you'd have either small hunter/killer subs, who're difficult to hit but do the overrun thing, and the larger strategic subs would have maybe 20 or more cruise missiles, and their role would be to get close to shore undetected, fire them all at their targets, and run like hell. Torpedoes for them would really be only a last ditch defense if they were detected. Unbalanced in some ways, but these would be slow, and IMO once they'd revealed themselves in a naval battle, they'd be taken out very quickly.
Both these ideas would likely not be very helpful in a "kill or be killed" game, but in a scenario where, say, specific targets inland needed to be taken out, they could be useful. The sub, especially, if there were an easy way for it to be hidden 'til it started firing, could be interesting as the basis for a scenario.

Interesting stuff, here.

Mmaestro

[Bowser]

Originally Posted by mmaestro

Bear in mind that the WWII US Iowa class had a range of 24 miles or 38km (that's 16 hexes!) lobbing shells the size of small cars, and it would be not unreasonable to assume that range would have increased by the last war.

No, that's 24 hexes. 1 hex = 1 mile = 2 inches for Ogre Minis.

Also, SJ has stated (somewhere??) that the problem is not the range, but the problem is targeting. There's a lot of electronic measures and countermeasures going on. So, to extrapolate from the WWII battleships probably isn't valid, seeing as how they used "dumb" projectiles.

It's interesting that, postulating an advanced technology (both on offence and defense), this moves game mechanics BACK to mechanics that mimic a LESS advanced technology!

-- Doug Pearson

[mmaestro]

Must've hit the wrong key on my calculator - I was basing that off what my Ogre rules say, which is 1500 meters = 1 hex.

I think the range probably is valid, depending on where you're doing the fighting. Looks like the maps for this are all inland, so maybe - you're talking about shooting over land masses where you don't have a direct line of sight. However, once you take land out of the equation, all the electronic countermeasures in the world won't help you if you can just see the other ship, and where your shells land. Now that is a retro way of doing things.
It's interesting, because there are a number of countries working on including "stealth" technology on their vessels (smaller stuff like corvettes, mostly) which would likely make guided missiles tougher to have hit the mark, but navies do still train at targeting their guns by sight, so we could take a step back towards that sort of combat.

Mmaestro