That's a good question which will get you a variety of answers
When I started paintball I would play to the money in my pocket
As a punter I worked out the optimum price was to spend about £50 for 1000 paintballs. So would start the day with every 2 people buying 1000 then later in the day deciding whether we needed more at some point in the day. So the days budget (including entry) could be £30 to £60
Then with walkon paintball I could get a case for that (or less) but with green fees would pay around £50 and something similar for scenarios
I would switch around the types of game and still pay the same money, but get more or less paint
Weekend events would confuse matters and different games are played differently
A punter game consist of random people, probably shooting mechanical guns with a cash limit
A walkon game consists of random paintballers with more twitchy trigger fingers with a cash limit
Both of these will play a number of games in the region of 30 minutes per game
Even if there is no cash limit you can estimate a maximum amount of paint carried or that can be shot per cylinder fill for a set number of games per day
Tournament paintball is similar in that you can estimate a number of games to be played
In any game you could get shot out straight away or could be in shootouts all game long
But a reasonable average can be estimated
In a scenario it is a different matter, the game could be all day long or in one or two hour sessions
The objectives are different and you can play in a variety of styles - shootouts, sneaking around and ambushing, searching and performing objectives
In my early scenario days you could enter the field and take about 3 options - central line fire fight, flanking sneaking and skirmishes, objective seeking (scavenging to find props or performing objectives such as capturing or defending an area)
This made it hard to translate walkon paint consumption to the scenario.
Get into a good firefight and a days paint could be used in one or two attacks.
Go on a sneaky scavenger hunt and fire nothing unless you get spotted and have to shoot some to make a 'tactical withdrawal'
Make it a 2 day event and it gets very difficult, the first day could be minor events and shopping / socialising and the second the game day.
I would go for 1000 paintballs for punter play, a case of 2000 for walkons, also find I would reduce the firefights and stick to a case of 2000 for a weekend - but budget for an extra case. Nothing is worse then running out or finding yourself suddenly needing to ration shooting to keep in the game
If I went into the second case I'd tend to find myself taking paint home
Then I went onto pump and pistol play. This considerably reduces the paint shot, so would be taking paint home even if only using one case. But I have no qualms about taking paint home. If I have the pleasure for the money I d spent then I'm much happier taking home half a case then running out of paint and not having the budget for more and stopping early
More recently I've been going for electric guns again - and played a game where for a moment I couldn't work out if the hopper jammed or the gun jammed as the paint wasn't feeding. I had to think twice before realizing the paint was gone in a short blast of paint.
For this years paintfest came the dilemma of 3 potential days of play:
Day 1-Arrival. socialize, mag fed games
Day 2-Setup & run a kill house game, play zombies game
Day 3- Play diamond wars
In advance I planned on 2 cases
On arrival we checked out the paint and prices and opted for the team taking 10 cases, and with them being more trigger happy some wanting more than others I took one case of that and the option to buy back their surplus or take an extra case later at standard price
As it happened:
Day 1 mag fed we collected one case (and some first strike) and shared it out - I probably used somewhere between 100 & 200, perhaps less.
Day 2 - during the kill house I left my water in a bag, went into the kill house photographing and didn't drink. Made myself ill and spent the rest of the day getting handed drinks being watched by the guys
That nights rain was wonderful
Day 3 - opened my case and got into great paint ripping sessions. Not leaving until I'd emptied my air - and getting the paint/air ratio just right
I ended with just a handful of paint left in one bag and dropped out not going back for the last push - chucking what was left in one of the guys hoppers
That one case was pretty much spot on for how I played, had I added I the Saturday afternoon as intended I would have needed another bag or two
