No. You even contradict this later on in your post... A breaking ball is basically a dissipation of it's energy. A ball bouncing is a large transferral of energy into the player, hence more painful (like you said).
As far as softer shells breaking easier, this is true, but I think we already agreed that a smaller ball also breaks harder. The end result could be the same.
I respectfully submit that you don't understand physics. Nobody can violate physics, not even Richmond.
If you make the shell break easier, that means LESS energy is spent breaking the ball, and more impacts the player. If you make the shell harder to break, then you spend more energy breaking the shell, so less energy impacts the player, unless the shell has gotten too hard to break, in which case it will bounce and put even MORE energy into the player.
Regardless, there is pretty much nothing you can do with regards to the shell to make it break with less energy on the player, because the only way to do that is spend more of the energy breaking the ball, but if it takes more energy to break the ball, it's going to start bouncing. And who is going to choose to shoot a paintball that doesn't hurt as much if it's bouncing more? Nobody!
Nobody chooses paint based on how much it hurts. People want the most fragile paint that they can still get out of their gun.
You just don't know anything about these balls, Chris. Neither do I. All the reasons why they could be worse are true, as are all the reasons why they could be better. Determining beforehand that it must suck just makes people look like an argumentative fool. Only politicians make up their mind without knowing the full facts.
Like hell I don't! Do I know the details about them? No. Do I know enough about physics and paintballs to know, in advance, what the limits on performance will be? Absolutely. It's no different than if someone issued a press release stating they had invented a perpetual motion machine. I don't need to know anything about it to know that it's not true.
If you make the paintball smaller with the same density, it will perform much worse. If you make it smaller with the same weight, it will impact with a force that increases 4 times the amount that the caliber is reduced. You can't have it both ways - if you're going to have similar performance, it's going to draw blood. And if you're not going to draw blood, it's not going to have similar performance. Anything else is simply not possible - and that's not even factoring in the 'cheaper' claim.
Now, they may be very cool for certain applications - perhaps milsim guys who are playing close-quarters or don't mind bleeding when hit. But if we put cheaper paintballs that either perform worse or hurt more (or both) in the hands of the general rec player, we are going to damage participation. A lot.
If this is meant to be a paintball off-shoot for a particular variety of player, great, no harm, no foul. The existence of .50 cal paintballs doesn't need to be any different than the existence of airsoft. But if .50 cal starts showing up at the rec field, we're in trouble.
And if you believe someone has created a paintball that is smaller, performs just as good or better, doesn't cause more damage on impact, AND is cheaper, well.... I have some press releases to send to you too.
