[OT] Paintball

Randall said:

I beg to differ here.  Having played paintball for years now, with well 
over 200 days of playing, training, tactics, and etc make a _huge_ 
difference.  They are not necessarily the same tactics you'll find on a 
modern battle field, but that doesn't make them any less.
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Tomb:

Practice and experience are the key. When I played (about 10 years ago
or so), our team (8 guys) played fairly regularly for a few years
(probably 100 games or so, not counting team training days). We were
there in the early days of the pump, into the early days of the
semi-auto and auto. We saw the arrival of SMGs, semi-autos (though they
mostly sheared balls), and silencers, long barrels, chronos, and masks.
I played in most of the early days without any body armour, with a pair
of raquetball/squash goggles (form fitting, didn't fog to much and
stopped a pellet no problem). Laterly, as I have played, I use a mask.
Head kills counted on our fields and so we decided semi-autos required a
mask. But I hate the mask - it DOES impede hearing and vision. I had
much more SA (situational awareness) in my raquetball goggles. Being hit
in the head once didn't bother me enough to do anything about - that
happened about once a day. But the idea of taking 6 in the head
bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam said "get a mask". The semi-auto also
changes some other equations (once they got them to work reliably) --
crossing open spaces became _much_ more dangerous and suppression became
less of an art and more of a science. Instead of firing 80-120 pellets a
day, fire escalated to 300-600 rounds per day per player. Of course,
field geography plays a big part. I used to play on mile long fields
covered with junniper and low evergreen bushes and lots of trees running
hour long games. The semi-auto age moved this to 200-300m long fields
with 30 or 20 minute games. Less brush. Encouraged less hide and seek
and more conflict (which means you sell more paint and make more money
as an owner).
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What you may be confusing here, if you haven't played enough to
understand 
it, is that normal infantry tactics and training are less effective than

they are on a real battlefield.  I've personally handed a group of
rangers 
their ego's for several runs until they adapted and started using the
same 
tactics I did.	They returned my ego to me, bruised as it was, by the
end 
of the day.

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Tomb:

I'm not sure I entirely agree. Small unit combat isn't all that
different. Ranges are shorter, some tactics that will kill you dead in
real life are viable in paintball (thin trees as cover, moving around
visibly at 100m, etc). But a lot of the things till apply. Keep in mind
a lot of what infantry trains in (battle-drill wise) often gets thrown
away in battle. An example would be the Royal Marines at Goose Green.
They found standard A2C procedures too damn slow and discarded them in
favour of a more or less consistent rush. Tactics modify to suit the
situation - soldiers learn or die. 
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Small groups, not large.  Fire and move, cover fire, volume fire, all
work 
well, but one good charge has made or broke a team before.  Position is 
key.  Stealth is a beautiful thing for the old codgers.

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Tomb:

Same in real life. Charges have broken real units. Charging my team dug
in in a fort with semi-autos has broken many another team too in
paintball.... ;) And stealth is key! :) (Yes, I am, in a paintball
sense, an old codger -- fond memory: first day with the newtech pump
gun, everyone else using Nelson spotting pistols - at the end of the
day, we played "Everyone on both teams versus the two cannon-men" which
was all the other players against me and my teammate Doug with our Brass
Eagle Nightmares - it was just about a fair fight....)
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As to accuracy...  No, you don't hit at a 1000 yards, or with any sort
of 
wind.  But a good friend of mine has a...  How do you spell the camo
that 
snipers use, geelie?  Guile?
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Ghillie
-----------
  anyway, he made one, and it works _very_ 
well.  The problem there is that most games only last 15-30 minutes,
which 
isn't enough time to truly move in that thingand properly use it.  The 
silencer was very helpful as well, until they outlawed them.  :(
(bloody 
bastitches who converted them for real firearms use...)  However, when
we 
play the occasional 24-48 hour game, he and a few others have been named

MVP's for good reason.
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Tomb:

I liked the original pumps with the 16-24 round verticle grav feeds. We
maintained one shot should be one kill in those days, and if you gave me
time to setup, it often was. There have been times me and a buddy have
(using Stug IV tactics) emptied an entire enemy fortification through
holes in the walls using accuracy and stealth (the latter to get firing
positions the former to hit through small holes). Rolling your balls
helped a _lot_. 
-----------

Paintball, on the other hand, has the most important biological
stupidity 
penalty next to death... Pain.	Those things _HURT_ at close range, and 
they don't feel like a love tap from any other range.

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Tomb:

I've seen it drive women away and some guys. But I took head hits and
never noticed. My only serious injuries: Speargrass through the shins (3
stitches), cactus through the shoes (no surgery), a shot to the eardrum
at 2' or less (deaf for a day, removal of wax fragments from the ear
tissue with tweezers and a bit of blood mopping), a nasty welt from a
_hardened_ paint ball (!#$%%$!! use FRESH PAINT!), and 16 welts one day
from a botched ambush, some pagewire, and a 12-gram betrayal. 

But I've seen stale paint shatter goggles and people overchrono their
guns, go let off some pressure in the CA, rechrono, then go reload with
a fresh CA tank (so shooting higher than the approved FPS!). I've also
heard of people using nail polish to rigidify (?) the paintball - better
but more painful break. So my advice: Play at a good field and use good
protective equipment. 
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>But physical fitness (and the ability to move quietly in the woods) is 
>pretty key.

Harumph.  Size means more than physical fitness.  12 year old kids are
the 
bane of my existence.  Good 12 year olds, who have played for a while,
will 
kill you dead.	It's the smaller target, the ability to fit into cover
that 
would block my left foot, and the ability to be standing behind a bunker

that I have to crouch down behind allowing them to move easier and
quicker 
(they don't have to get their fat behinds up off the dirt).
-----------
Fat behind != fit. 
Mobility problems != fit. 
-----------
  True, they're 
usually quicker, more agile, more energy, more in shape, etc.  But those

only make it hurt worse when they laugh at you in the kill box.  Still, 
brains and sneaky beat youth and fitness, even in this game.
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Tomb:

On this we concur. ;) 

The worst wounds are the ones inflicted back at the base over a drink...
;)
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Silent movement is a relative concept...  The masks pretty much cover
the 
ears (for good reason, having had califower ear from a close range shot 
THROUGH the mask) and impair your hearing.
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Tomb:

VERY much so. In the old days, this was never an issue and audible
activity was a key warning but much less so since masking became
necessary.
-----------
  The masks also hamper your 
sight, impairing or blocking peripheral, and fogging (Invest in an 
anti-fog, double layer lens mask.  And still expect fogging.).
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Tomb:

My mask is good, but I have another complaint: It destroys camo. I'm
good at hiding. But with a huge bubble on my head, it is a lot harder,
and scrim doesn't help a lot, nor does paint. It's just too big. I used
to wear an aussie bush hat and some netting (and lots of grease paint).
Not much point once you don the mask.... your head is much larger and
you make a lot of noise crashing through bush....

Still, beats losing an eye or eardrum. Still, I liked the days when you
didn't need them. 
-----------
  I've been 
in the middle of a patch of leaves, in white jeans, in the fall, prone,
and 
blew away three good players before the ever knew I was there.
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Tomb:

And I've lain in the middle of a clearing 6 feet from a passing enemy
team (caught between cover at either end as I crawled forward). Not one
of them saw me. Movement is what draws the eye. But so does contrast.
I've seen people spot enemies by virtue of the contrast between their
white faces and their dark green protective goggles. 

Paintball is fun. It might be nice to see if Lancaster has a field and
arrange Sunday as a paintball game some year.