[Ogre] Re: Ogre-list Digest, Vol 13, Issue 13

[White Rat]

I can't buy an OGRE expending itself to protect a friendly infantry squad 
unless for some reason the crux of the battle hung on that single squad's 
survival. Nor can I buy an OGRE deciding not to expend a missile on an 
enemy heavy tank concentration because there was a friendly infantry squad 
pinned down within the blast radius.

A human general would make the choice based on the necessary outcome of 
the battle, not the survival of the individual units. Human officers make 
that decision every single time they commit troops. Despite the best 
efforts of training and the best technological dichotomy we can muster, 
the rule is 'It's a combat operation, troops will be lost.' A general 
unwilling to lose a single man will invariably lose it all when he's 
forced to shift his schwerepunkt to defend whoever is getting hammered 
hardest, rather than sacrificing that unit to carry on with the main 
battle objective.

An OGRE is, purportedly, programmed with every bit of battlefield 
knowledge available to it. That goes beyond such polite texts as 
Clausewitz and Sun-Tzu and includes events (and the decisions leading 
up to the events) like the Dodecanese disaster and Dog Beach Omaha.

If a technician is working on an active, 'live' OGRE when an enemy strike 
hits the locale, the OGRE has a decision to make, and every fraction of a 
second it spends debating that decision means the enemy has more time. 
Engineers may or may not be more easily replaceable than OGREs in the 
current campaign context, but on the immediate battlefield, the engineer 
cannot defend the OGRE as well as vice-versa, and if the local repair and 
support base falls, the life of a single engineer isn't going to matter a 
fig.