Steve Jackson's OGRE Vs. Battletech
Вставка
- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
- I’m honored to be a part of your gaming life, and I hope my content and tactica have given you some new ideas for your next game. Support for my continued UA-cam and blog content can be directed here: ko-fi.com/warg...
See you on the tabletop!
I’m honored to be a part of your gaming life, and I hope my content and tactica have given you some new ideas for your next game. Support for my continued UA-cam and blog content can be directed here: ko-fi.com/wargamerfritz
OGRE was one of the first places I could reliably find infantry units that were appropriately sized for Battletech scale withhaving to order from smaller international gaming companies. You can also convert the tank units in OGRE to Battletech units too. Now there are way more local-U.S. options online to buy from.
how do the OGREs themself scale to battletech? looking for some combined arms units and this looks promising.
@@asimplenobody7797 too large even for those 100 ton battle tanks. The OGREs are closer to small buildings/terrain to have a scale-sized equivalent in-game. Maybe you can run it in a more narrative game as some kind of los-tech equipment objective you and your opponent are trying to capture/re-start?
Before the Terminator, there was "Death Probe," the Six-Million Dollar Man's greatest nemesis in the late 1970's. It was the scariest thing I ever saw on TV, because it was just so fast, tough, and relentless. If I were to guess, Steve Jackson probably took the inspiration for the OGRE from that Death Probe, because the Death Probe was just so cool and scary, and visually, it looked like a mini-OGRE. Like the Death Probe, the OGRE is invulnerable to most anything, fully cybernetic, and will not rest until its mission is completed. It certainly looked like the future of war.
Why don't we see anything like this in BattleTech? Good question. My guess is that when you have access to orbital bombardment, you've got weapons far more terrifying than OGREs for indiscriminate killing. What you lack with these OGREs is tactical judgment and nuance, things which officers are trained to practice. OGREs don't seem to care too much about collateral damage, civilian casualties, repair bills, getting home alive, or looking after one another on the battlefield. The Great houses and the mercenary companies are interested in those kind of concerns. And the way you make sure the machines of war also respond to those kind of concerns is to make sure they are piloted by officers who are able to make nuanced judgments.
OGREs are intelligent, but they aren't very nuanced thinkers. They just want to see the command post burn. OGREs are really good at that, but they're not so good at...say...letting the Command Post live, because a column ten miles away is coming under heavy fire, and it needs to reassess the tactical objectives in light of the strategic whole.
What does an OGRE care about the greater questions of war? The cost/benefit analysis? The PR concerns when some journalist takes photos of the school and the old folks home that got demolished? The way history will remember it? The lead tech's bad back and bad attitude when he has to spend weeks fixing all the broken treads and stuff? An OGRE cares not for these things. But politicians in New Avalon, social climbers in Lyran high society, ComStar journalists, accountants in fledgling mercenary front offices, and promotion boards in the Draconis Combine care about these things. That's why they'd prefer someone who is accountable behind the sticks, and under the neurohelmet.
I think a better inspiration for the Ogres was Keith Laumer's 'Bolo' stories, with the Bolos evolving from the Mark I, a 150-ton tank with limited automation to ease crew load, gradually gaining more automation to controlled by self-aware computer systems, culminating in the 32,000-ton Mark XXXIII, capable of operating indefinitely without support. The self-aware Bolos, beginning with the Mark XX, usually controlled firepower measured in megaton per second; in comparison, the Ogres are scaled down to make a defense by individual units a viable game - but the original Ogre game shows how lopsided the unit ratio needs to be, with one side having only a solitary Ogre.
Ah yes... Ogre and Battletech... Games of my youth, my Dad got me into Ogre through his original edition of GEV when I turned about 12 or 13 in the mid 90's, and shortly after that I got into Battletech with the 4th Edition Intro box. Ogre/GEV was a great starter, and still an enjoyable game, due to the simplicity of even the more advanced Shockwave and miniature supplements. I learned combined arms with Ogre, and how to manage a control sheet for a complex unit (which is the heart of Battletech's mechanics). I recall on the SJ Games site, a fan created rules set for Ogres versus Mecha, albeit the artwork someone created had a Zaku (or Zaku like) from Gundam fighting an Ogre MK V in close combat for the miniatures game. At the time, getting Ogre miniatures was tough, as were anything that wasn't popular; without going through mail order (I'm not even sure there was Internet commerce when I saw that, if there was it was in it's infancy). Ogre Vs. Battlemechs certainly is a great concept, but one to be explored as divergent military evolution. My money is on the tanks from Ogre over Battlemechs, sorry to say, but that those actuators in the knees and feet are deleicate; and standing 10 meters tall would make a Battlemect a juicy target for just advanced conventional tanks... Kinda like why Ogres make no sense. Something that big and important is just too easy of a target, and too expensive. Practical considerations aside, giant self aware cyber tanks clashing with giant stompy robots; getting interrupted by giant radioactive prehistoric creatures is just too fun to pass up. Pass out the beer and pretzels with the gobs of D6, record sheets, and combat results tables! Time to have some fun.
Mecha for Ogre appeared in Issue 12 of Mecha Press magazine.
Great video. Ogre, G.E.V, and the Shockwave expansion were my first set of games. I still have copies of them all, with all of the counters, but have not played the game in at least 35 years. The Ogre video game is a bit clunky and hard to play, unfortunately, but I did try it.
I think the trick to an Ogre/Battletech crossover would be to introduced irradiated battlefields. Or have rules to reflect how "zombie" an A.I controlled super tank would be. Like in "Tex Talks" mentions in "Amaris Civil war" video. Battletech does have Drone defense ships surrounding Terra. Robots would have the advantage of having potentially higher heat tolerances because they don't have to worry about cooking it's processors as much as a human pilot.
Looking at the tech manual and supplemental books I have, I think I could design an OGRE. Perhaps you could have them come in as the major threat of a new era. A lost colony from really far out that, in the intervening centuries, developed into a superpower with completely divergent tech. Like the clan invasion, but different.
Standard issue light battle armor, a Tauran grade nuke fetish, and a love of combined arms nicely rounds them out. Universal use of coilguns and railguns would also help with their faction flavor, as would reduceing the prevalence of energy weapons. They could easily have missed the innovations needed to make compact gamma ray lasers for large lasers, leaving them with medium lasers as their heaviest vehicle mount lasers, and then skipping all the way to capitol and subcapital lasers for ship mounted lasers. Additionally, they could have completely missed th PPC, leaving them with only Primative NPPCs.
Personally speaking, I'd switch out the fully autonomous cybertank flavor of the OGRE for the single piloted flavor of the Bolo, but that's just my preference.
As you go through the later core books many of the rules for things like "land trains" and "mobile structures" give a good basis for something you could modify, just a bit or three, to give the basis of an Ogre. Warship construction includes rules for a basic IA drone system for large craft. Use steerage crew's quarters multiplied by the needed crew size to represent automation, etc... Just add some storage space for automated tanks with drone systems similar to those listed for mechs to represent the AI control and mount a pile of big weapons to give it threat value.
The OGRE vehicles look like remarkably good stand-ins for savanna masters, LRM/SRM carriers, and manticores
Drone ships. In the narrative, yes, the Terran Hegemony could build Ogres, but hey, human pilots are cheap. You put fancy AI in the more expensive weapons systems. Like warships.
Also, keep in mind that an ogre receives modest booms from being fully automated. Like radiation resistance and extreme field longevity. A warship, on the other hand, becomes as maneuverable as a missile with no humans onboard, and gains back much more internal space from life support than a large tank.
On the other hand … Vulcan Ogres would be worth their weight in gold in any setting. A unit that can lay railway on a battlefield timescale is insane. So logically, every single one of them would have been lost to the Succession Wars. God bless you Inner Sphere, never change.
Other crossovers: I've seen at least a couple of versions of Martian Tripods converted to Battletech stats.
Future crossover: 40k knights v Battletech. Knights as medium or heavies? (Let's face it, Knights were invented fir Epic 40k because of how popular Battletech was at the time)
A knight is roughly equivalent to a heavier medium (i.e. Shadow Hawk/Wolverine/Griffin), but slower and often less heavily armed. Void shields and psyker bullshit aside, 40K loses to BT once you get to the regimental scale.
Could you possibly do a video covering the battletech tech manual and the process of building a mech on paper? That would he a huge help for me.
If you armored a Demolisher tank with fero fiberous armor and, gave it a pair of gauss rifles, you would have something vaugly similar to a one of OGRE's Supperheavy tanks
Just to answer part question on AI in BattleTech: Look up Caspar drones and Space Defense Systems. (Both Amaris time and Word of Blake time. )
So, basically there were two peaks in the BT timeline, where this tech was valid. Any other time, either the technology level or some other factors prohibit it. (E.g. the whole feudal system. )
Are not Ogres tossing nukes around? That might be a bit much. But the AI in battle tech is limited. Funny that they seem to go rouge. Mobile Structures exist and are scaled about right. Try a rattler.
The main issue with more then 100 ton mech in Batle tech is... Convicing Com Star to to build a Jumpship just for you... They have the tech especly in the ilclan/star league eras they have the resorces as they are small interstaller empires... The issue is Jump ships are hard to make at the best of times and Comstar owns the vast majority of them and FTL commucations... So If they don't want you to have massive tanks or even mech then no massive tank for you... Though you could have them in defense of home worlds and such.
How about Steve Jackson’s Ogre vs Warhammer 40000?
Space Marines against the Ogre.
Is there an equivalent of the hellbore in Battletech? Don’t Bolo main guns basically produce a little nuclear fusion explosion on the surface of the target? I don’t recall how closely the Ogre lore follows Keith Laumer’s Bolo lore but the Bolo hellbores were rated in megatons TNT per shot weren’t they? Wouldn’t that be one hit one kill?
As for AI didn’t the SLDF have a fully AI driven solar system defense system?
Not super-familiar with Bolo but an Ogre's main and secondary guns did file "small" "clean" tactical nukes. Same is true of the Ogre missiles. The biggest advantage the Ogre's have over Battletech is that Ogre weaponry ranges are measured in kilometers. They're all over-the-horizon weapons.
IIRC, the working principle behind a Hellbore was injecting a frozen slug of a hydrogen-deuterium mix into a magnetic containment chamber and induce fusion in the slug, venting the resultant fusion blast down range as plasma, preceded by a high-powered (not compared to the Hellbore, though) laser bolt to create a vacuum to reduce atmospheric diffusion. A 200-cm Hellbore had a firepower rating of 5MT/sec.
The rules for tanks or so biased against them it wouldn't be worth it to make Ogres to the scale seen in the game. Ages ago I think I made a Mark III Ogre with BT rules and it was more or less just a big tank. If you want something that would actually come close to the Ogres in BT you would need to make a whole different ruleset for it. And just remember regular Ogre tanks fire *nukes*. sm
In roleplay yes ai , in regular BT it would over balance be fun tho need better ECM ruls . Alien's is a tuff nit to crack be to close to Robotec
I totally wouldn't mind their being a noncannon expansion to bring in some aliens. Maybe a crossover with a different franchise or something unique to the setting. What if when they release the next Era they release two. The real one and an alternate where the events of the real are interrupted by alien forces from beyond the abysal depths of the periphery.
Humanity has become too violent, and it refuses to snuff itself out, so now the glipglops have to step in to save the universe from our poisonous attitudes. It would be a technological Renaissance and could ignite a new star league while introducing a new tech level as we fight against biological mech sized creatures.
I want my Atlas to fight godzilla
No.
But the Ogre use cruise missiles. ps I love these vlogs, thank you for doing them.
No.
@JeffersonJohnson & @@tommymclaughlin-artist okay i get it. Battletech is about how humanity can be and it doesn't need to be spoiled like that. im not looking for an entire faction, or rules for 'building bioweapons' i'd be happy with like a small set of like 3-5 creatures based on kaiju with just a small set of weapons or abilities to play against the mechs with.
honestly i'd be more for scenery/experiance than competitive army stuff.
it could be marketed as an in universe sci-fi game (kind of like how the Battletech Cartoon is from in universe) i don't want the lore broken either, but toy manufacturerers exist in universe and i'd love to see that kind of bleed through into our (or at least my own) collections.
@@abucket14 I mean Bolt Action a historical did it with KONFLIKT '47 it's alt history stand alone expantion where both games models are useable in both games and beyond that Bolt action has tanks that saw limited action if any in WW2... So if a historical can do it why not a distant Sci-fi real robot game?
Where is the Super AI?
Nicholas Kerensky went to great lengths to destroy it in the Amris Civil War
Since we are talking stompy robots. Not sure if you touched titanticus yet
Thanks for all the inspiration, Fritz. I'm glad I could inspire you in a very small way.
Might be fun to join in the OGRE models, but Battletech is the future of the 1980s, they don't have technology like that.
Don't need 'Mechs. Air support would crump an OGRE.
problem is in the OGRE universe, laser based air defense basically makes air support non-existent. Like the powerguns in Hammer's Slammers.
Someone who knows a lot about OGRE; Where can i find more about it? The website for it is a confusing mess...
Please no aliens lol. But... what do you think of the ilclan era... not gonna lie I'm disappointed our falcons didn't win out
Battletech needs a Siege gun or something like that. Something close to a Demolisher cannon from 40K.
I thought that would be an ac 20
Thunderbolt Missiles and Cruise Missiles are a thing for heavy long-range firepower. Plus the variety of other artillery platforms (Long Tom, Sniper, Thumper, Arrow-IV ...)
Up close, the various types of AC20 and PPC and Gauss Rifle serve pretty well.
@@cracklingvoice The Demolisher cannon is a short range bombard so im looking for something like that. And it has to be ballistic.
as a big fan of Steve Jackson games, I really liked car wars and ogre. wasn't really interested in GURPs. I ran palladium books rules instead.
I think it's also a question of era. www.sarna.net/wiki/File:Destrier_and_Ballista_TRO3145FS.jpg Seen here is the Destrier Super Heavy Combat Vehicle with a Ballista Artillery Trailer with a combined weight of 300 tons.and it is absolutlely *dwarved* by the multi thousand ton Rattler www.sarna.net/wiki/File:Rattler_Mobile_Fortress.jpg (Yes, that IS an Awesome nect to it)