Ogre Transport Ships - Deployment at Sea?

[HeatDeath]

We know that Ogres are perfectly capable of crossing significant distances underwater, and that while they are not typically armed with weapons that function underwater, they are very resilient to a token marine attack, and are almost the perfect vehicles to storm a beach with.

We know Ogres were transported across the Atlantic via large ships. We also know that on at least one occasion a transport ship was sunk quite a distance off the European coast, and at least one or two of the Ogres managed to make it ashore. It's easy to assume the Ogre or Ogres shot themselves out of the hold, but I propose a cooler solution:

I believe and propose that one of the typical and possibly the primary means of delivering Ogres to continental Europe was via special ships that could intentionally and safely deploy their Ogre cargo to the sea bottom 50-150 miles off the coast. These ships would have been structured like enormous catamarans, with up to 3 Ogres slung between the hulls. The Ogres are dropped vertically between the hulls directly into the water, and immediately deploy parachute-like inflatable floats to slow their descent through the water to minimize or eliminate falling damage when they hit the sea floor. This configuration would also facilitate the Ogres separating themselves from the wreck if the transport was destroyed. [The transporting ship can be expected to be equipped with high resolution active sonar, and to have a very clear idea of the roughness of the sea-floor, allowing it to choose the best deployment point.

In a situation like this, having made it safely to the bottom, Ogres would be most vulnerable to attack submarines and patrols of marine power armor. If the trip to land is expected to be contested I can see some or all of the Ogre's missiles being exchanged for torpedoes (identical stats but only work against units in or on the water, can only be launched if the Ogre is submerged, and require there to be a path of water hexes from the Ogre to the target) and underwater AP-guns (identical stats but only work against units in or on the water). I can also totally see an Ogre being equipped with a towed active/passive sonar array to facilitate the use of torpedoes against stealthed attack submarines - 1 hex per turn is more than fast enough to keep a modern towed array deployed and functional.

[If anyone's curious I can reread the sonar rules in Harpoon and synthesize them into a quick and dirty set of rules for Ogres detecting subs and subs detecting Ogres. I suspect that Ogres would be at the noisy end of the spectrum. This might make subs able to detect them from farther away than they can detect the subs. OTOH, Ogres would typically want to run in underwater formations so they can triangulate with their sonars, which might mitigate this effect (modern subs typically operate individually, and so can't readily do this. A lone Ogre might be at a significant disadvantage to a sub. Also, if I remember correctly, typical detection and engagement range between modern attack subs with torpedoes may be well under the 5 mile range of an Ogre missile.]

[Buzzardo]

A ship built along the lines of an LSD (Landing Ship, Dock) might work, too. An Ogre weighs enough that the ship might be too unbalanced when the Ogre drives off the end. However, good design of the ballast tanks and high-capacity pumps could probably make it work.

As for combating submarines, I'd be surprised if the faction delivering the Ogres sent the transport ships without submarine escort, which could then escort the Ogres to the beach. The submarines would be great candidates for machine intelligence, too.

Ogreverse submarines would be far more efficient without all that space dedicated to crew and could probably dive far deeper, given much less space dedicated to non-structural elements (all that open space for the crew).

A game depicting battles between Ogreverse subs would be very interesting to me. :)

[Tim Kauffman]

Very cool idea. :)

Compliments the official story and also opens up some cool scenario ideas.

I'd like to see an official rule update stating that OGREs underwater can attack with their missiles. Surely they would be able to launch these like a submarine that carries nukes for example. No need to change missile munitions, just make it that they can do this as is. However, reduce the missiles range and make each water hex the missile moves through while underwater cost 1.5, for a total underwater move of 3. Once the missile is above water, movement is normal. So, an OGRE underwater, lets say at a 1 hex water depth fires a missile. It would cost 1.5 movement to move through the water hex to the surface. Then use normal movement. Thus, the missile would then have 2 clear hexes it could move over like normal.
If the OGRE missile exits the water in an adjacent hex to the target, no attempt to shoot it down can be made because it took the target by surprise without enough time to detect/track and attack it in defense.
This would create cool situations when an OGRE is lurking underwater in a river looking for targets of opportunity to surprise attack with it's missiles.

I would say no other weapons systems can fire while underwater. I have a problem with anything but a missile being able to do this. If anything, a OGRE missile should be able to be fired like a submarine missile Imho. It would give them a nice added touch.

I'd like to see more about subs and seagoing vessels in the OGREverse too.

[dwalend]

Originally Posted by Tim Kauffman

I'd like to see an official rule update stating that OGREs underwater can attack with their missiles.

I think that - before ODE - Ogres could attack underwater targets with their missiles. Might be worth your going back to the (massive) ODE rule review thread to see if/why that changed. (And I think howitzers could not until ODE. Don't have the whole works handy at the moment.)

These ideas mix well with a new wet map discussed in the "New Map" thread Steve started. I think it could make for a really interesting expansion, and could fit into a diplomacy-style strategic game. (We've got land/land. We'd need land/sea and sea/sea.)

[GranitePenguin]

Originally Posted by Tim Kauffman

I'd like to see an official rule update stating that OGREs underwater can attack with their missiles.

Originally Posted by dwalend

I think that - before ODE - Ogres could attack underwater targets with their missiles. Might be worth your going back to the (massive) ODE rule review thread to see if/why that changed. (And I think howitzers could not until ODE. Don't have the whole works handy at the moment.)

Ogres have never been able to attack while submerged; this is not new.

1st Ed G.E.V. 6.113:"... An Ogre submerged in a water hex may not attack. It may not be attacked except by Howitzers, Mobile Howitzers, and Ogre missiles. Furthermore, all attacks made against the Ogre are at half strength."

[brettd]

1) what about the mid-atlantic ridge? Probably impassable. You could give the Ogre disposable compressed air tanks and disposable inflatables to allow it to "hop" I guess, but you'd need a lot of compressed air at that depth.

2) why trundle along the bottom at all? Why not just provide cheap, disposable ballast tanks and let the ogre swim along just off the bottom? Certainly wouldn't be hard to attach a propeller drive unit of some kind. The slower it moves, the harder it will be to detect. Clanking your tracks along the bottom would be way loud.

3) guided torpedoes have a maximum speed limit due to the noise/disruption they make while ripping through the water. The USSR actually built rocket powered torpedoes to deliver nukes underwater but they are unguided (except inertially) due to the "blackout" caused by the turbulence.

[dwalend]

Originally Posted by brettd

1) what about the mid-atlantic ridge? Probably impassable. You could give the Ogre disposable compressed air tanks and disposable inflatables to allow it to "hop" I guess, but you'd need a lot of compressed air at that depth.

Ogres already have to be close to neutrally buoyant to keep from getting stuck in the muck at the bottom. (BPC floats. I guess fusion reactors sink.)

2) why trundle along the bottom at all? Why not just provide cheap, disposable ballast tanks and let the ogre swim along just off the bottom?

The game already has ogre components (that can be targeted). This sounds like another component.

3) guided torpedoes have a maximum speed limit due to the noise/disruption they make while ripping through the water. The USSR actually built rocket powered torpedoes to deliver nukes underwater but they are unguided (except inertially) due to the "blackout" caused by the turbulence.

Radar and sig int could work fine on a supercavitating torpedo. Looks like they're working on it, possibly moving from scifi to fiction. Popular Science from 2009.

[brettd]

hate it when the people I criticize turn out to be smarter and better informed than I am... You'd be surprised how often that seems to happen to me...

:(

PS: I hadn't thought of BPC as floating, but it almost certainly would - makes sense (It also means any naval units in the future probably wouldn't sink easily unless there was a lot of really heavy stuff onboard). If all this is true, then given that metal tracks are the lowest part of the Ogre, and assuming the fusion plant is down low (for protection) and most armor is on top, an Ogre almost certainly would sink "upright" without external help. Would be more true for "taller" Mk III/V/VI types than for "flatter" Fencer/Dop types, I'd think.

[HeatDeath]

The first and foremost reason the Ogres are trundling along on the bottom is because that imagery is an ancient and traditional part of the Ogre universe, dating back at least to the Icepick scenario. The Mk3 and Mk2s in that scenario would have been deployed from a ship like this.

Top down:

/---------------\
\---------------/
  Mk2  Mk3  Mk2
/---------------\
\---------------/

I wouldn't conceptualize Ogres as trying to cross the Atlantic on the sea floor. I see them starting no more than, as I said in the initial post, 50-150 miles out. Trundling in from the Azores would be an epic journey with a huge chance of failure. crossing the Atlantic would be something else again.

That said, AFAIK, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a low mountain range. While most of it would be impassable, I could certainly see there being spots where it might be possible to drive over it, especially if the Combine decided it was really important and dropped a few dozen Vulcans (and Mk1s with bulldozer blades) to spend a year or 5 building switchback roads over the rough bits. It might not be much more difficult to cross than unimproved sections of the Pennsylvania ridges. (Seriously, check the link out. That's a cool piece of geology.)

I tend not to think of BPC as less dense than water, and I don't think their sea-bottom capabilities depend on being neutrally buoyant. Ogres already have absurdly low ground pressure, even on land. I'm prepared to accept that part as a handwave.

Designing an underwater float/parachute to give the Ogre a relatively slow terminal velocity when sinking is one thing. (If the Ogre only takes 1D6 tread damage when it lands, that would be this system working well.) I tend to think that by the time you wrap enough ballast tanks and thrusters around the Ogre to make it capable of swimming, what you've got there is an extremely slow, noisy Los Angeles class attack submarine. It's another order of magnitude of engineering challenge.

Per the Harpoon stats, the Russian rocket-torpedo, the "Skvall", moves at 195 knots, has a range of 5.4 nm, and a yield of 20 kt, giving it a submerged guaranteed kill radius (against modern conventional subs and ships) of half a mile. Shock resistant ships reduce the kill radius by 1/3 (but still take 1D6 x 10% of their original hull strength damage points). Also, detonating one of these things underwater blinds all sonars in a 30 nm radius for 2 hours. [Can you believe they had this thing deployed in the early 80's? Red October would have carried several. Too cool.]

[I don't think the Skvall was guided - it was fundamentally a defensive weapon: a Russian missile sub under serious attack would fire one of these off in the general direction of the American attack sub (with kill radiuses like that you don't need to be too precise) and then run like hell, using the ensuing blueout to get itself properly hidden again. A Last-War anti-Ogre supercavitating torpedo, OTOH, would probably be guided, as Dwalend points out, using Radar, ESM, or something more exotic.]

I would assume that Ogre torpedoes, as i described above, and the torpedoes of defending subs are broadly similar, and that both units are shock resistant, in modern terms. (The torpedoes would have to be nuclear - conventional torpedoes wouldn't even scratch the paint. While nether side would be obligated to use supercavitating torpedoes, I can't really see why they wouldn't.) These ranges map well to the 5 mile range and 1 mile affected area of the default Ogre scenario. Mapping damage levels is more speculative, but the A6 that Ogre missiles already deliver feels about right. (20kT is a big munition, even by the standards of my headcanon, which tends towards higher yields than GURPS Ogre.)

I'm still working up a study of the detection ranges for submarines vs Ogres, working on the assumption that the sonar performance of a Seawolf attack sub is a reasonable baseline for both sides, that Ogres will be quite noisy, and attack subs will be noticeably stealthier than today. [Something most people don't know about subs - a diesel sub running on batteries can be stupidly quiet compared to a nuclear sub of similar design. Diesel doesn't mean "obsolete" by any stretch of the imagination.]

I agree, the attack subs are almost certainly autonomous BPC-armored cybersubs, and that in a normal operation, the deploying ship would be escorted by similar subs, which will have done their level best to clear the road to the coast for the Ogres. If an Ogre formation comes under attack, the escorts obviously failed.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by HeatDeath

We know Ogres were transported across the Atlantic via large ships. We also know that on at least one occasion a transport ship was sunk quite a distance off the European coast, and at least one or two of the Ogres managed to make it ashore. It's easy to assume the Ogre or Ogres shot themselves out of the hold, but I propose a cooler solution:

I believe and propose that one of the typical and possibly the primary means of delivering Ogres to continental Europe was via special ships that could intentionally and safely deploy their Ogre cargo to the sea bottom 50-150 miles off the coast. These ships would have been structured like enormous catamarans, with up to 3 Ogres slung between the hulls. The Ogres are dropped vertically between the hulls directly into the water, and immediately deploy parachute-like inflatable floats to slow their descent through the water to minimize or eliminate falling damage when they hit the sea floor.

It's easier than that, with current technology. Heavy-lift ships are built to carry really large, heavy objects, like large naval vessels and oil rigs. You could get several Ogres aboard a ship like MV Blue Marlin.

To unload them at sea, you flood down so that the Ogres are underwater, inflate some balloons to make tem neutrally buoyant, and then just drive them off the side.