What are the compelling elements?

[Mack_JB]

Originally Posted by dwalend

Hey moderator - at what point should we peel off to separate threads for specific ideas?

One of the great things in Ogre is its compelling opening narrative and background that leads right into the introductory scenario. What are the compelling elements we'd want to use as building blocks for a game?

Took your lead and made a thread.

If you're talking new scenarios and compelling story, we have heard multiple times about the NAC invading Europe -- what about linking that to the littoral elements for a massive invasion scenario?

Entrenched defenders along the coastline, waves of attacker fleets offshore, defending cyber-ships popping in and around the attackers ...

[TheAmishStig]

I'm assuming the conversation is about ogre on the water [or as I've been referring to my own little project thereof, "Cybership"], but...able to get a little more context? Been a lot going on lately, want to make sure I'm barking up the right tree.

[dwalend]

There is an old Sea Ogre thread as well. Might be better (easier to find) to move there.

[Mack_JB]

Which ever direction it heads, I was trying more for a "what sorts of fiction would lead to new game ideas" or vice-versa. Fiction drives the game, game drives the fiction?

For example the Pittsburgh scenario in Ogrezine is good one. Take a known place, overlay a story, then see what the game does there.

[TheAmishStig]

Ok, I'm up to speed now.

For me, the compelling element is explaining why naval combat exists (not just GEVs on the water) in a world where Ogres also exist...and what I keep coming back to is a combination of "Because open water is too deep for Ogres" and "Where the water is shallow enough for Ogres to fight, Because very few Ogres are dumb enough to pick a fight with one". Which also fits in nicely with the economics...if a Mk.V is reaching the limits of being justified financially, how much harder would it be to justify throwing wave after wave of cruiser at a foe?

Story-wise, the bit that's captured my imagination is the pacific theatre. Nihon, Combine, Australia [using Combine equipment], China...a place where land is too small and too far between to mount an effective ground campaign. Island-hopping with powersuited infantry is fairly easy...island-hopping with heavy tanks, on the other hand, notsomuch. A GEV-LC would go a long way, but makes a nice juicy target for a sub just waiting to send a fleet of lightly-defended craft carrying otherwise-defenseless tanks to the bottom.

What I've been focusing most of my time with the 'Cybership' project on is with terrain. Ways to make it look like and play as elegantly as Ogre, while feeling different enough to justify the spinoff's existence. There's a few I'm proud of, a few I'm not and need to rework. And a lot that needs taken from "late night brain dump" and run through the filter of "behind the scenes in Ogre" to clean it up.

Biggest headache I've had so far is the armaments themselves. Think naval combat and most people go to giant battleships, belching fire from multiple turrets with multiple barrels each...but doing something like that while keeping the numbers in check, as well as maintaining that nice rock-paper-scissors effect...has proven difficult.

[dwalend]

Originally Posted by TheAmishStig

Story-wise, the bit that's captured my imagination is the pacific theatre. Nihon, Combine, Australia [using Combine equipment], China...a place where land is too small and too far between to mount an effective ground campaign. Island-hopping with powersuited infantry is fairly easy...island-hopping with heavy tanks, on the other hand, notsomuch. A GEV-LC would go a long way, but makes a nice juicy target for a sub just waiting to send a fleet of lightly-defended craft carrying otherwise-defenseless tanks to the bottom.

I think the Pacific Theater is a great draw - has a lot of enthusiasm. Thirdpower laid down a lot of cash to do a Nihon countersheet. GURPS Ogre gives Nihon an especially deep background and some even-more-advanced weapons. One assault pack has a Chinese dragon.

What I've been focusing most of my time with the 'Cybership' project on is with terrain. Ways to make it look like and play as elegantly as Ogre, while feeling different enough to justify the spinoff's existence. There's a few I'm proud of, a few I'm not and need to rework. And a lot that needs taken from "late night brain dump" and run through the filter of "behind the scenes in Ogre" to clean it up.

What have you been able to do?

For tech from Ogre we get:

• BPC armor
• Clever-enough AI
• Railguns
• TacNukes
• Lasers (which keep everything low)
• GEVs
• Battlesuits

Biggest headache I've had so far is the armaments themselves. Think naval combat and most people go to giant battleships, belching fire from multiple turrets with multiple barrels each...but doing something like that while keeping the numbers in check, as well as maintaining that nice rock-paper-scissors effect...has proven difficult.

Ogre's tech - huge tanks mounting multiple railguns shooting tac nukes at BPC-armored targets - and lasers keeping everything nape-of-earth or lower - is a pretty reasonable step toward WWI-style battleships.

For naval and littoral combat I think we should add

• BPC Hulls
• Plentiful small supercavitating torpedoes
• Supercavitating cannon-fired munitions
• Depth charges (for overruns only)
• Some upper bound on the size of a GEV on water
• BPC Hydrofoils
• Magnetohydrodynamic drives

[Mack_JB]

So the mythical Mk. VII Ogre was deemed too large for land, thus it was re-purposed, given flotation, and made into a weapon on the water ...

[wolf90]

Originally Posted by Mack_JB

Which ever direction it heads, I was trying more for a "what sorts of fiction would lead to new game ideas" or vice-versa. Fiction drives the game, game drives the fiction?

For example the Pittsburgh scenario in Ogrezine is good one. Take a known place, overlay a story, then see what the game does there.

Exactly this.

Good game concepts flounder without a backstory. And good fiction is entertaining, but without game concepts, it doesn't advance the game much. But when you put the two together, something magical can happen!

D.

[TheAmishStig]

Originally Posted by dwalend

I think the Pacific Theater is a great draw - has a lot of enthusiasm. Thirdpower laid down a lot of cash to do a Nihon countersheet. GURPS Ogre gives Nihon an especially deep background and some even-more-advanced weapons. One assault pack has a Chinese dragon.

What have you been able to do?

Not as much as I would like! But it's getting there.

It's not far enough along for me to be proud of it enough to "go public", but I can't participate the thread in earnest if I continue sitting here being cagey. Lemme make a proofreading / editing pass or two, slap the relevant legalese from the Online Policy on there, and I'll hook you two up [Three, if Drew wants in] via PM. I'm hoping it's at least high enough quality to serve as a foundation to work from, but I'm under no illusions that the balance is anything other than 'coarse early pass' and pretty badly out of whack as a result.

What I've got so far is a 3 new movement modes, a pile of new terrain types [and a list that probably needs to be condensed, for elegance's sake...it was a brain dump and I'm not going to pretend it wasn't], a couple new weapons systems to be able to do "Giant Battleship" without resorting to comically huge numbers of batteries that'd grind the game to a halt [something like HMS Hood would have 16 secondaries...that's insane], and the beginnings of a unit list...but with some reading on Littorals tonight [my big weakness in this endeavor, hence the 'Can I show you once it's further along?' from a week or two ago], I'm not as nervous about game scale / in-game turn time / ship speed as I was.

Since it was brought up...does anyone have the Dragon Battle Pack handy? I'm kinda curious how it was handled with regards to D results. As a "cyber"tank it might be immune, but as a crewed vehicle it should be susceptible, but tracking the D status of individual guns vs disabling the entire unit if a single emplacement takes a D...I'm lost for any elegant, non-game-breaking way to handle it. Not to mention "Immune to D" is what could make actual Cyberships unique and meaningful in a scenario where other types of vehicles have multiple emplacements...