My suggestions for gun control...

[PaintballChannel]

Originally posted by RoryM If a munufacturer creates cheat units under the guise of the sealed units - manufacturers markers are barred for the reamaining season.

And what do you do if said manufacturer is a major sponsor of the event? For example, the cheater boards made for Smartparts teams are made BY Smartparts, and Smartparts is a major sponsor of the PSP events, where Smartparts sponsored teams play in most, if not all, divisions.

The promoter doesnt want to piss off it's major sponsor, so they're in a bit of a quandry there.

Again, were at a pass where the industry doesnt want to do anything about it because they are the ones doing it.

And, do you think paint manufacturers want players to shoot fewer paitnballs? No. The more you shoot, the more they make.

We're almost getting back into the debate that went on about 10 years ago when semi-auto markers hit the market.

Personally, I think it should be one shot per trigger pull, period. But that's not very profitable, is it?

 

[manike]

Originally posted by John C
Whilst this would change the state of many peoples markers it isnt going to reduce the amount of 'help' players get from their guns.

True, it won't reduce the amount of help people get from the guns. But it will mean all players get the same help.... so it's fair again.

Originally posted by John C
It doesnt do anything to combat the legal issues we have to face either.

True... but if the judge can't catch it, and the robot can't catch it, then how will the police catch it?...

Originally posted by John C
People will stop using bounce as an excuse to get a higher ROF but only because you have provided them with a better alternative.

PERFECT! Bounce is dangerous and only cheaters use it. If you get rid of that you make it safer and now everyone is on the same level.

Originally posted by John C
All they will do is find a level which can be attained by walking the trigger (say 12bps) and when you are hitting this level or above the gun just jumps up to its max rate of fire, either the imposed 20bps cap or the feed rate of the hopper.

True if we don't try and maintain the 'semi only rule' at time when we have no hope in hell of testing for it.

We have to make a choice, maintain strictly semi only, and have a higher allowable cap, or allow modes and have a lower allowable cap. The actual resultant rof will be pretty much the same. The difference is how you control the stack of queued shots and the gun's firing.

If you set a cap of 15bps and maintain stricly semi, with no more than one shot storage' you will never get anywhere near an average of 15bps in terms of rof. If you set the cap at 20 and maintain semi then you will see around 15-17 on someone with a quick finger.Someone with a slow finger will get 12ish. Setting a cap of 15bps will need a quick gun and a quick loader, but you will have a slower resultant rof. It will set rof back into the dark ages if you maintain strict semi. Setting a 15bps cap and allowing modes, will give us a rof like the NXL, which isn't that fast. It's quite acceptable rof really, but the hold the trigger thing is lame and illegal in many places and insurance is a skecthy point...

Originally posted by John C
This level will be used in exactly the same way as debouce is currently. Make the level adjustabe, give it a fancy name and you have an extra feature on your gun!

True, but you won't have the inherent safety issues of a light or bouncy gun. And everyone will be on a level playing field.

Originally posted by John C
The refs cant be expected to find extra shots at these speeds but just saying "anything goes" isnt a good solution.

If refs can't find it how can you enforce it or make a rule to cover it? you can't. So make it equal for all.

Originally posted by John C
Also I dont really se the point of limiting the ROF, since most hoppers dont feed more than 20 or so.

I agree COMPLETELY if you are keeping the 'strict semi auto' rule.

But if you are going to allow modes or 'help' then you need a limit. I think 20 is a realistic limit in comparison to what guns are doing now. Whatever the limit it would need to be under 30bps (start opening other safety issues then).

With modes, 15bps is an acceptable limit, without them it is too slow. 20bps is a better limit on a strict semi gun if we want to maintain a similar but fair status to what we have now.

Originally posted by John C
But I do applaud you for creating the first realistically enforcable marker rules.

I spent a lot of time at World Cup watching a lot of guns I know to be illegal and watching as the judges tried in vain to catch them. I then also hung out with one of the best and nicest teams that exists and felt it amazingly unfair that (in my opinion) everyone but them was using 'helping' boards.

I know pretty much everyone in this industry that is making gun boards. I know you will never stop the cheater boards, and now, you will never catch them.

With that said. How do we make it:-

A) safe
B) fair for all.

Answers on a postcard...

p.s. Lane also promised me a hotel room and two girls if I came up with the solution...

 

[manike]

Originally posted by PaintballChannel
Personally, I think it should be one shot per trigger pull, period. But that's not very profitable, is it?

It's very profitable, but it's impossible to enforce now...

 

[manike]

Originally posted by Wadidiz
I agree with Simon but feel this must be added:

5) Cap the ROF to 15 and enforce it with a ball-count instrument. (just like NXL)

This is the way it is likely to in European PB next season; maybe elsewhere.

When I observed an NXL game up close after reffing about 30 Division X Ball games it was clear that NXL was obviously slower. In fact I never saw a player using the allowable FA. The game didn't seem to suffer for the slower guns. And players told me they are glad to get a level playing field concerning guns.

Steve

NXL guns are definitely slower than open play guns now.

I think we could allow slightly faster guns as long as people have to put some effort into working the trigger.

It's not anywhere near as easy to run and walk the trigger at any rof as it is to run and hold the trigger down.

No holding the trigger down ever!

15bps cap is a little slow, but acceptable especially if we just want to steal the technology to check them directly from the NXL.

 

[manike]

So how about this?...

Originally posted by manike
My suggestion is:-

1) No accidental multiple shots. So anything a judge can do to get a multiple shot accidentally and obviously (not when firing a string because he can't realy tell) is allowed. This will stop bouncy triggers and stupid light triggers. NO FA at any point where you can hold the trigger and it keeps firing.

2) as long as someone is pulling the trigger and balls don't continue to obviously fly after they have stopped then this is ok within a string. You have to keep walking the trigger. (balls have to stop being fired within 0.1 seconds of releasing the trigger?) (0.1 second because that is human perception level)

3) use radar guns to watch velocity.

4) Use robby the robot to pick up bouncy guns which may be dangerous. He won't catch intentional cheater code so expect that to become the norm very rapidly (what you think it isn't?) Cheater code needs to turn itself off in the time it takes a judge to take the gun from me and test it. get caught, pay the penalty.

5) Cap the ROF to 15 and enforce it with a ball-count instrument. (just like NXL)

If we do this, I have a concept of a piece of technology which will ensure no players can ever break the gun rules again...

 

[manike]

p.s. I would personally like to see the rof limit a little higher, I like the look and sound of the guns in the open play better than the guns in the NXL.

 

[Wadidiz]

Originally posted by manike
p.s. I would personally like to see the rof limit a little higher, I like the look and sound of the guns in the open play better than the guns in the NXL.

I think you've made a pretty good case for 20 BPS and true semi. I think that's the only way it could work in Europe.

PS. Please send me an e-mail about your device. I'm DEFINITELY interested. steviewonder@telia.com

SM

 

[Duncster]

good stuff...

Manike, this is an excellent proposal. The only one that makes sense so far at least. I think an earlier post by me agrees with you on some parts here (about half way down the page).

Other suggestions:

Maybe something help to enforce the whole "keep-your-fingers-moving" rule would be to introduce a mandatory limit on the minimum amount of trigger travel (I'm sure this could be measured easily enough and one of you clever techy types could come up with something to test this automatically), to prevent excuses such as very slight trigger finger movement to explain why a judge didn't see them "working" for their ROF...

Also, when training judges for a league/event, ensure that all judges pass a test where they have to get a high percentage of ROF estimates on a variety of markers correct to within a certain margin (perhaps just a video/audio tape would do)...

Another thing which I suggested ages ago, (someone silenced me pretty quickly at the time, but I can't let go of it yet as I havent had a decent explanation)... Once upon a time, a friend of mine showed me a really cool bit of kit which plugged into the cartridge slot of the standard Nintendo Entertainment System which allowed you to take a complete ROM dump of the cartridge directly onto a floppy disk. You then effectively have a byte-for-byte facsimile of the ROM cartridge...

...now, I realise technology has moved along quite a way since then, but there MUST be some kind of way to take a byte-for-byte dump of the EPROM (or whatever they're called these days) chips which control the interface between the user and the marker... you wouldn't need to be able to decompile it, read it or even decrypt it, just take a snapshot, which should be pretty much unique to that version of that boards software, and stick the image into a database. This then could be used for comparative purposes when spot checking individual markers software... if a board has a "tweaked" version of the standard software, then the EPROM (or whatever) dump would not match anything currently in the database of "Tournament Legal" boards. Sorted.

Can someone please explain why this can't be done? If it would need to be a seperate feature, maybe something like this could be phased in and encouraged in manufacturers of boards to include as a feature. Sell a board as an "NPPL Compliant Interface" or something...


Dunc.

 

[Duncster]

I'm not as original as I thought - just found this on the same sort of vain, but obviously written by somebody far more knowledgable on the subject...

http://67.19.5.132/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31971&perpage=15&pagenumber=11 (See AScutt's post about half way down the page...)

 

[manike]

Originally posted by Wadidiz
I think you've made a pretty good case for 20 BPS and true semi. I think that's the only way it could work in Europe.

Problem is Steve, is that there is no way in hell we are going to get a 'true semi' at high rates of fire and be able to enforce it. Not saying who it was but I saw you personally checking guns I know to be illegal. You couldn't catch it, and by the time it's on a robot it will be too late to catch it. By the time you took the gun to test it, it was too late.

If you can enforce true semi at any human detectable rof, that's the best you can hope for.

If you still want 'true semi' then my device won't work either. I'm keeping that under my hat for the moment until we can work out what we do actually want to enforce.

Duncster if we are checking as per the rules I set out then the code and what the gun has on it becomes irrelevant. That's one thing which makes this enforceable. You can't read the number of bytes on a board and tell if it's legal or not.