Battle Ogres Mk2 and 3?

mark13 · November 2, 2000, 14:16

Now, I am relatively new to Alien Crossfire, but, as of yet, I have never seen any of these. Is it just me being paranoid, or are they really so rare as to be virtually useless?

stuntman19 · November 2, 2000, 14:30

I've gotten the 2 ogre before, but I've heard somewhere that the 3 ogre doesn't really exist.

VoodooChild · November 2, 2000, 15:23

I think they will show up if you pop a pod late in the game. I have gotten choppers before, and unfriendly locusts, but no MK3s

Helium Pond · November 2, 2000, 15:23

It seems like this would be easy to test for someone with a lot of time on their hands. It may just be really really really rare, like getting a Unity Chopper--which has happened to me only twice in all my SMAC playing. But I think the game detects the current level of advancement of your faction, and won't give you a mark 2 or mark 3 Ogre unless you're advanced enough to get it. So what I think you'd have to do is make a huge world scattered with Unity Pods, gift all techs to all factions, and then pop all the pods to see what came out. Time-consuming, but if a Mark III exists, I bet you'd get one.

Christantine The Great · November 2, 2000, 19:31

I hate Ogres. They are useless. I once found a Mk2 Ogre and was bringing back to base when it was savagly attacked by mindworms and was down so low in health it wasn't worth keeping.

Googlie · November 2, 2000, 19:42

I've popped a Mark3, but it was about 2455 or so.

(And even 90% damaged ones are worth nursing back to base, for their minerals contribution alone)

G.

Helium Pond · November 2, 2000, 21:24

Wow, Googlie got a Mk III! I hope you got full enjoyment out of that nice 30-12-3 monster! Did it get a good long reign of terror?

Lefty Scaevola · November 2, 2000, 21:41

. Do you think think the battle ogres are a tribute to the old (26 years ago) board and then miniatures game Ogre?

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Gauis Mucius Scaevola
older richer & wiser than you

hroman21 · November 2, 2000, 22:22

Interesting...the fact that you know of that game says a lot about how old you are. I'm almost ashamed to admit it... but I still have one of the original bag versions of it. I did enjoy squashing heavy tanks and hovercrafts...

I do think the ogres of AC are a version of the ogres from that game - my opinion.

hroman21

Black Sunrise · November 2, 2000, 22:51

I keep trying to build a Berserker faction.
About 10 Mark 3 Ogres. Cannot capture bases, must destroy all bases. Goal : Destroy all life. Massive minus on growth, industry, economy, everything.
Massive experience bonus. So they are all elite mark 3 ogres. One of those "try to stay alive against this faction" factions. I'll play vs them when I'm feeling reckless.

Deimos · November 2, 2000, 23:21

I, too, am an old Ogre fan. I have the expansion, G.E.V., in a plastic bag. My college buddies and I played alot more G.E.V. than Ogre. It brought Ogre from the realm of a fun niche game into a more fully fledged, customizeable wargame.

Did you ever get a chance to play Battlesuit? It was a soldier-level infantry combat spinoff from Ogre. The two games were incompatible, but Battlesuit was very interesting, too.

Ah, the days of the pocket wargame...

WhiteElephants · November 3, 2000, 18:31

I've found the ogres to be quite unbalancing. Pop an early pod, get an ogre, and go smash your nearest opponents capital.

Black Sunrise · November 3, 2000, 19:51

Ogres are unbalancing in small small worlds, and against stupid opponents.
Force build a scout patrol every turn, he cannot get into your city. If you have to, have two cities doing this. If you have a mindworm, you can attack with them, and kill it off.
If not, just hold off the attack, the thing will wear down. Try to cut off his support units, though.
Oh well, most of my games are bigger maps, anyway, where Ogres are basically useful only as police/garrison.

RedFred · November 3, 2000, 20:46

WOW! Congrats Googlie! This is the first sighting of the legendary Mark III that I've ever heard about.

Has anyone tracked when MarkIIs appear? My original hypothesis of it being related to reactor type researched doesn't seem right. Is it possible that it is related to MY?

Lefty Scaevola · November 3, 2000, 22:11

[quote Interesting...the fact that you know of that game says a lot about how old you are. quote]

More than 25 centuries (good latin word that) old. Help to kick the Etruscan Kings out of old Rome you know.

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Gauis Mucius Scaevola
older richer & wiser than you

Lefty Scaevola · November 3, 2000, 22:18

. Had some buddies, the B U G S (bloodthirsty unstopable gaming society) that were realy into GEV miniatures, some big battles. Their boardgame favorite was Stellar Conquest. I played it once. wiped 3 of them and their collective 50 games experience right off the star chart. The made the AI like error of being PREDICTABLE in their approach to me, the novice.

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Gauis Mucius Scaevola
older richer & wiser than you

WhiteElephants · November 5, 2000, 12:53

Well Black Sunrise, here's the other side of the coin. Regardless of the size of the world you play there is still as chance that your opponent is going to start near you, although the chance shrinks as the size of the map expands. Also, the only factions able to capture mindworms in the early game are the Gaians and the Cult so that leaves the other 12 faction with their ****'s in the wind. And your defense of building a scout every turn certainly doesn't balance the books in my opinion. The equation would be: I pop a pod (which I would be doing anyway) and in return you are forced to build x amount (5? 10?) of scouts to counter. So, while you would be building scouts, that are dead before they hit the factory floor, I'm happily building colony pods, scouts of my own that won't die right away, or whatever, at your expense. And on top of it all only a "stupid opponent" would attack without any support.

Again, I don't think there is any "real" defense in the early game for Ogres which, in my opinion, makes them a bit unbalancing. Rewarding a player based on pure chance was never my idea of a good "strategy" game. Which in its purest form would also mean random events and the pods would be turned off as well.

Aredhran · November 7, 2000, 16:51

I've had the Caretakers send me *two* Mk2 ogres while all I had to defend was 1-3-1, and my best weapon was Impact (shortly followed by Missile).

Took reconverting the production of all my bases but two to rush defensive units and cheap offensive rovers to wipe the suckers out, I needed something like 25 of them before the last ogre was destroyed (and I lost only one base)

Never seen an Mk3 outside the Scenario Editor though.

Aredhran

Googlie · November 7, 2000, 18:31

The one I popped was on a truly humungous map (600 x 500 or so), late in the game - about 2455 or thereabouts as I remember - when there were still oodles of pods to be popped

G.

XWaste · November 10, 2000, 21:13

I've never found a MKIII, I've only found a MKII once and thought it was a bug when I saw that it was twice the strength it should be - then I realised there was more than one type of ogre.

I really hate that they can't be repaired though, not because I really want to use them heaps, I just find it really untidy - I like all my units to be in tip top condition for the surprise inspections.

Misotu · November 10, 2000, 21:55

Yeah ... getting a battle ogre is only just above getting a fungal bloom in my book. But if you could repair them ...

Qilue · November 18, 2000, 04:07

I have yet to test this (although, I think this post should be in the SMAC creation forum)

Battle Ogre MK1, Infantry, R-Laser, 3-Res, 0,10, 0, Disable, 6, 00010000000000000000000000
Battle Ogre MK2, Infantry, R-Bolt, 8-Res, 0,15, 0, Disable, 6, 10010000000000000000000000
Battle Ogre MK3, Speeder, String, Stasis, 0,20, 0, Disable, 6, 10010000000000000000000000

Byte 4 in the ability flags is unique to ogres. I stopped playing SMAC before I had a chance to test whether that is the repair flag.

MOuse