Ogre Minis Revision Issue: Mark VII

[Steve Jackson]

A hypothetical unit for a future in which the Last War went on longer . . .
These stats come from GURPS Ogre. The Mk. VII has not been sufficiently tested on a miniatures table to assign a point value – it must be at least 350, despite its slow speed.

Ogre Mark VII
Points: unknown!
When the Mark VI was in early production, Combine engineers becan working on plans for the Mark VII. Many thought the VII would be a waste of funds; it was clearly big enough and expensive enough that the enemy could use a strategic nuclear missile on it (or several) and justify the expense. Similar arguments had been made about the Mark VI, and this fear was rarely realized . . . but the huge Mk. VII was both a bigger and a slower target.
Plans were completed for the Mk. VII and templates created. However, the Manila Accord ended the Last War before any had been produced.
The Ogre Mark VII would have had four main batteries, 12 secondary batteries, 24 antipersonnel batteries, four missile racks, and 32 missiles carried internally.
Top speed would only have been about 60 mph (4”), with 96 tread units.

[Tickled to Death]

Nevermind the points cost I'll take a dozen (well, at least 3 then)!

I think though that Ogres look better with an odd number of mains, so it might be better with 5 Main Batteries rather than only 4 ;)

[rozumcrans]

Sounds a lot like the hypothetical Klingon A11 of SFB fame. This thing is worth 60 armor units, I'm well-justified sending 20 armor units' worth of Cruise Missiles at it to kill it. harry it first with LGEV's to wear down the armamanet, then salvo fire the missiles!

[piningforthefjords]

Weighs in at 254 points according to CP Gamma. See http://tank.osaurus.us/yacd-mini.html

The slow movement means it will always be at a huge disadvantage vs a Mk VI or Dopp. Let's take a Dopp for example. The Dopp will get in the first shot - 6 missiles. Odds are you'll lose 2 racks (6 1-1 attacks). The VII moves up and fires off 4 mains and 2 missiles. Scratch 2 racks on the Dopp (again 6 attacks at 1-1). The slow movement means that the 12 secondaries on the VII will not be in range.

The Dopp then moves up a hex and fires off 2 mains, 4 missiles, and 8 secondaries. The mains and the missiles (6 more 1-1 attacks) kill off the last racks on the VII. The 8 secondaries will fire on 8 secondaries on the VII, odds are they'll get 3 secondaries.

The VII now has 4 mains, 9 secondaries (!), and no racks. An overrun is out of the question (13 guns vs 14 guns) so the VII unleashes it's broadside.

The 4 mains wipe out 2 racks on the Dopp, and 9 secondaries destroy the last 2 racks.

Now the Dopp has 2 mains and 8 secondaries vs 4 mains and 9 secondaries. The tide of the battle is turning against it. Depending on how you combine attacks, you might get 2 mains.

On the next turn, the Dopp will likely lose it's mains. The Dopp is down to 8 secondaries, the VII has 2 mains and 9 secondaries.

The Dopp will have a hard time getting 2 mains on it's turn, while odds are the VII will kill off 3 secondares on it's next turn.

The Dopp is down to 5 secondaries, while the VII might have a main left, and 9 secondaries. The VII can now dispatch the Dopp in a few more turns, but there won't be alot left of it when all is said and done.

This was a longer post than I intended - sorry! Also there may be other ways to combine attacks that are theoretically better.

[Glenn Jupp]

For what it's worth, the Cobb Formula put the Mark VII at 334 points. Definitely strat-nuke bait. What kind of situation would be needed for a MkVII to actually pay for itself?

[Apache]

It's too slow.

Waaaay to slow.

For what it costs (334 pts according to the Cobb Formula, which works out to approximately 57 armor units.....), you can take 50 GEV's (IRL, that's about 2 battalions worth of combat vehicles) and kill it with minimal losses (once the missile racks die...) using the now-infamous Fuzzy Wuzzy tactic.

Definitely worth a ICBM, if you can get one to hit....it's effectively immune to cruise missiles, due to its firepower (altho attacking this thing with 20 cruise missiles would be an interesting math exercise....anyone up for it?)


Probably only the large cyberships (navy Ogres....I propose that naval cyberships were referred to as Krakens....) were as heavily armed as a Mark 7, and given they were ships/subs, were probably much faster.

[FireHorse]

32 missiles are a useless waste of weight if you never get the chance to fire them; so I'd be willing to sacrifice quite a few of them in exchange for more launchers. Give it, say, 24 missiles, but with 6 launchers instead of 4?

[CrazyJoeHarshman]

It would seem to me that it would be both more cost-effective (points-wise) and strategically-effective to use two Mk V's over a Mk VII. You get the same firepower, faster moving, and multiple targets, for less. The only difference is you have independent missiles instead of missile racks.

Sure it sounds awesome to have great big behemoth coming at you but in practical application, like has been said before, either take it out with a strat-nuke or you can harass it with armor because of it's slow speed.

How can you argue that logic?

[Steve Jackson]

We'll never know, because they never really built one :-) Maybe they would have come to the same conclusion and found a way to crank up the speed. But the cube-square law begins to come into effect - mass cubes, treads on the ground scale up linearly.

I will point out that while a head-to-head combat simulation is interesting, it doesn't tell the whole story about unit effectiveness, any more than some kid who puts two spiders in a jar and shakes it until they fight is learning anything about biology.

But Ogre has always been a small-scale tactical game, so other considerations are best left to fiction and wild arm-waving. Both of which are fun.

[clansittingducks]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

We'll never know, because they never really built one :-) Maybe they would have come to the same conclusion and found a way to crank up the speed. But the cube-square law begins to come into effect - mass cubes, treads on the ground scale up linearly.

I will point out that while a head-to-head combat simulation is interesting, it doesn't tell the whole story about unit effectiveness, any more than some kid who puts two spiders in a jar and shakes it until they fight is learning anything about biology.

But Ogre has always been a small-scale tactical game, so other considerations are best left to fiction and wild arm-waving. Both of which are fun.

Wow, if a mini was made of that, I'd have to contract out a new space on my table just to get it built and painted.

Points wise you could make it top off around 100 treads or so and hit the 300+ points mark. Still keep the speed down as mass and momentum can only go so far regardless of how light the armor is.