NAME
Ogre - a game of tank warfare in the 21st century.
SYNOPSIS
ogre [ogre type (3 or 5)]
DESCRIPTION
Ogre is a game of tank warfare in the 21st century. You
command a force of infantry, armor, and howitzers pitted
against a giant cybernetic tank, the Ogre. Your mission is
to destroy the Ogre, or at least render it immobile, before
it reaches and destroys your command post.
A more complete reference on how to play can be found in the
Ogre rule book for the Metagaming MicroGame, now distributed
by Steve Jackson's company. Here's some very sketchy and
incomplete documentation for Ogre players:
The game has the following phases:
1) Initialization. The player's armor units, infantry, and
command post are placed on the map. Nothing can be placed
on the leftmost 7 columns of hexes, or on craters (*'s), or
on any unit already placed. Valid commands are:
w e
a d (hex movement keys)
z x
place a:
H howitzer
T heavy tank
M missile tank
G GEV
I Infantry unit (attack strength 3)
C Command Post
on the space currently pointed at by the cursor. Note that
these are capital letters.
Units are displayed as these characters, except infantry,
which appear as '1', '2', or '3' depending on their attack
strength.
2) The Ogre (an O) now appears.
3) You are given the opportunity to move all your vehicles
and infantry that can move. The cursor motion keys are used
to move the unit indicated by the cursor. Additionally, 's'
or ' ' can be used to let a vehicle stay motionless. No
vehicle can move through a crater hex, or into a hex occu-
pied by another friendly unit on its last turn, although it
can move through a friendly hex on its way elsewhere. Mov-
ing through the hex occupied by the Ogre is an attempt to
ram the Ogre. This reduces the Ogre's treads by some
amount, and destroys the unit.
4) You now fire all your vehicles in range at designated
targets on the Ogre. The following commands are used:
m fire at missiles
b fire at main batteries
s fire at secondary batteries
a fire at anti-personnel guns
t fire at treads
The odds of destroying the target are displayed, but no
action is taken until 'r' is used, or until you run out of
attack points. (except for attacks on treads - see below.)
(in the odds display, '+' means a sure thing.)
p Pass. The unit is passed over, and given the opportun-
ity to fire later.
r resolve all allocations so far, and display the
results. This is implied by 't', as tread attacks can-
not be grouped. A resolve is done automatically when
you run out of attacking units.
5) Second movement phase for GEVs. Just like step 3, except
that only GEVs can move.
6) The Ogre moves. If it runs over any of your units, they
are damaged or destroyed.
7) The Ogre fires at all units in range. Destroyed units
are removed from the map. Disabled units are displayed in
lower case, and may not move or fire until the end of the
NEXT Ogre attack.
Steps 3 through 7 are repeated until either a) the Ogre has
no movement points left, in which case you win, or b) your
command post is destroyed, in which case the Ogre wins.
MISCELLANEOUS
The display "a/r Dd Mm" means the unit concerned attacks at
a, at range r, defends at d, and moves m hexes per turn.
The Ogre by default is a Mark III. An argument of '5' on
the command line makes it a Mark V, and gives you more armor
points.
The game can be interrupted at any point with a control-C.
There's now no way to restart.
The paper game is copyright (c) 1977 by Steve Jackson. This
computer implementation is copyright (c) 1986 by Michael
Jenkin.
AUTHOR
Michael Jenkin, University of Toronto (jenkin@utcsri.UUCP),
from an almost identical computer implementation for UNIX by
Michael Caplinger, Rice University (mike@rice.ARPA), from a
Microgame of the same name published by Metagaming of Aus-
tin, Texas, and written by Steve Jackson. This implementa-
tion is not authorized in any way by Mr. Jackson, and should
not be sold for profit.
BUGS
The Ogre sometimes gets confused and doesn't know where to
go, so it oscillates from one hex to another, and then back.