iSoaker.net :: Soaking the world!

As long as you have a direct hit I really don't care whether it's a squirt pistol or Monster XL. I count a hit as a hit. But more importantly than that, I think the point of a soakfest is to get the other team/people as wet as possible while staying as dry as possible. I think the easiest thing to do is to just stop temporarily at a specific time and check how wet everyone is. You can eye gauge and everyone knows who is drenched and who isn't.

isoaker wrote:I agree that the fist-sized hit favors larger blasters over small ones, but I also don't like the necessity of a direct hit for a soakfest-based game. While a direct hit requirement makes more sense for OHK and OHS games, if we're talking about a soakfest, the end objective is to soak other players, thus even indirect hits should be worthy, but there must be a minimum volume that most would find acceptable. The importance of splash damage became all too apparent to me the past few weeks playing with my son and water balloons. While he tended to throw balloons at the ground, were I too close to the impact zone, the amount of water that I got hit by would vary from negligible to rather extensive.

If it's significant splash damage, then I agree that it should count. For most soakers, splash damage is usually not much more than a mist, in which case I stand by my point. As you said in your example, the amount of water you're hit by can vary quite a bit, if it's extensive then I see no reason for not counting it.

Would it make sense to combine the two hit systems? i.e. a direct hit from a soaker or a fist-sized splotch of splash damage could result in a hit? Larger blasters will be favoured anyway, I don't want smaller blasters to be discouraged by the rules (if a player isn't discouraged by the gap in soaker class, that player deserves to be commended). That being said, I agree with the output minimum.

Side-question: would members be upset if only hits in the upper-body area were counted? This would mean hits on the hips, legs, and feet (anything waist and below) would not be considered a hit.

This relates to how readily someone may feel whether they've been hit; lesser amounts on feet and legs are not as noticeable compared to the same amount of water hitting one's arms and torso. Limiting area also makes it easier to decide when someone has been mostly soaked or not.

@mr. dude- that is what DX used in his wars

@isoaker- that sounds fine. Makes more sense than some of the things we've seen, and it also helps to avoid certain problems. There should be an execption made for water balloons, because of their different nature. If you have a peice of rubber on your foot, good luck arguing the point that you weren't hit. Perhaps splashes from close hits would count too.

isoaker wrote:Side-question: would members be upset if only hits in the upper-body area were counted? This would mean hits on the hips, legs, and feet (anything waist and below) would not be considered a hit.

This relates to how readily someone may feel whether they've been hit; lesser amounts on feet and legs are not as noticeable compared to the same amount of water hitting one's arms and torso. Limiting area also makes it easier to decide when someone has been mostly soaked or not.

My friends and I have always played that a hit is a hit, no matter where, as long as it's direct. I do not understand why we are trivializing the obvious. If you get hit, you're hit. It's really that simple.

marauder_4 wrote:My friends and I have always played that a hit is a hit, no matter where, as long as it's direct. I do not understand why we are trivializing the obvious. If you get hit, you're hit. It's really that simple.

Not about trivializing, but rather a matter of dealing with situations when someone truthfully may have not felt a hit and continues playing. Unlike video games or paintball where hits are obvious, getting hit by water is not always noticed by the recipient, especially in the heat of battle. For a hit to be, it must be observed by someone somehow. This is where hit-devices have their strength since they can observe a hit more objectively, but as we are trying to avoid the need for tags/devices, various situations need to be dealt with.

For those who participate in Nerf/foam wars, what happens if a player does not feel when they are hit?

isoaker wrote:Side-question: would members be upset if only hits in the upper-body area were counted? This would mean hits on the hips, legs, and feet (anything waist and below) would not be considered a hit.

This relates to how readily someone may feel whether they've been hit; lesser amounts on feet and legs are not as noticeable compared to the same amount of water hitting one's arms and torso. Limiting area also makes it easier to decide when someone has been mostly soaked or not.

I never count the lower body. My reasoning is that it's difficult to quantify hits on bare skin, therefore only clothed areas should count, and given how people wear shorts of varying lengths to water wars, it wouldn't be possible to have a fixed area to aim for in the rules (is the player who wears cargo shorts at a disadvantage compared to the one in short shorts?). A similar argument could be made for sleeve lengths, so I actually vote 'torso only'.

I always count hits regardless of where. Even if it feels slightly different, most such hits are just as easy to feel. Main trouble comes in when someone carries a backpack which is often essential, but is easy to miss hits with.

Nerf is similarly honor based, and they probably follow closer rules to Airsoft where if you even think you were probably hit, you call it. Obviously, it's much easier to do this than to work with water streams.

Maybe you're having difficulty determining hits because you are playing with that EES Turbine instead of a 2100.

I do not like the idea of hits on clothing counting only. Most people showed up to the Vermin and Dominator Wars wearing long pants and shirts. There is good reason for this. Longer clothing can be used for camo purposes, so you aren't spotted as easily. Longer clothing is also useful when fighting in areas where you might encounter briers, thorns, tree branches, etc.

If hits are only defined as being on clothing then people who wish to wear camo or protective clothing are at a serious disadvantage.

Furthermore, I see just as much room for cheating under these types of rules. People can wear sleeveless shirts, short shorts, rolling their sleeves up, etc. and then that requires further rules to regulate.

marauder_4 wrote:Maybe you're having difficulty determining hits because you are playing with that EES Turbine instead of a 2100.

I do not like the idea of hits on clothing counting only. Most people showed up to the Vermin and Dominator Wars wearing long pants and shirts. There is good reason for this. Longer clothing can be used for camo purposes, so you aren't spotted as easily. Longer clothing is also useful when fighting in areas where you might encounter briers, thorns, tree branches, etc.

If hits are only defined as being on clothing then people who wish to wear camo or protective clothing are at a serious disadvantage.

Furthermore, I see just as much room for cheating under these types of rules. People can wear sleeveless shirts, short shorts, rolling their sleeves up, etc. and then that requires further rules to regulate.

Must we mock those of us who are easily enticed by spinning lights and sound-effects?
Anyway, that's why I said torso only, because that means you can wear whatever you like, unless you go shirtless your torso will be covered.

The Invasion game plan was never solidified nor completely defined. Any flaws in it are more inherit to the group setting up and playing it than in the game itself, as the game does not define how things like hits are counted, time limits are done, etc.

Spread means nothing after a given nozzle size. You have your ideal nozzle which makes the most range possible out of a given amount of power and that soaks the fastest out of all nozzles except for the riot blast which is barely faster. (We're talking about 200-600ms of shot here.) Obviously, the range sacrifice of the riot blast makes it very limited in application. Also, streams are not fired at one spot of a player continuously; the shot always moves as well as the player, and in a short time frame it can easily cover a player.

In the end, all that matters is soakage; water volume. An XP215 cannot output enough to soak nor can a squirt gun, so both are useless for the application. It will take such blasters dozens of seconds of continuous shooting to match the amount of water made by a quick stream shot or distant CPS tap shot, so they shouldn't be used. They can be allowed, but the rules should not be bent for them just because they're designed to annoy/bother/for pranks/concealability instead of for soaking. If you think they're for soaking, you need to go back to 6th grade science and learn about water volumes because they are clearly and obviously not built for that purpose.

So, to make squirt guns useful and able to kill in one hit, you must define a kill as a very, very small volume of water. The slightest bit of CPS droplets from far away also count, as do water balloon splatters that barely make it.

Still not sold on the idea of limiting hits to certain areas of a target. Want to know why Soakertags never worked seriously? Or why Laser Quest CQB sucks? That's right. As for backpacks, they can be balanced out by giving each team the same amount of them, or avoided entirely, but they are not worth restricting where a shot may count.

Lots of thoughts, but I'm seeing a lot more explanations on why some ideas won't work or complaints about limiting things too much without offering solutions to concerns raised about the alternative.

If small arms fire are not considered hits, what is the smallest blaster that should be considered worthy? An XP215 provides ~0.33x shot. Do we set the lower limit to 1x (1 oz/sec or 30mL/sec) shots or would a 0.5x hit count?

I'm also all for allowing any area to be considered a viable hit area, but what to do if things like shoes, backpacks, or thick clothing is hit and the Player who is hit honestly doesn't feel the hit? While the honor system is fine when dealing with friends and honorable Players, any thoughts on how to handle not-so-honorable Players and/or acquaintances who may not necessarily agree or truly understand the expectations?

The question is not which blaster is considered worth but what approximate volumes we want to accept to count as hits. Don't see shoes being a problem except with very small water volumes which wouldn't work anyways. The main issue is backpacks; almost all clothing is thin enough to be able to feel the pressure and cold from a water blast.

As for me, I still need to do more wars with backpacks. I already mentioned that balancing via giving both teams the same amount of backpacks is a viable method to counter the advantage of being less likely to notice a hit from the backpack (and thus, not counting it if it's not noticed). There are other ways, such as allow the shooter to call the hit if it was obviously made to the backpack.

Accommodating for players who haven't played before is not always easy, but I've had few problems with mature players and getting them to follow hit rules. There are probably minor differences in how each perceives a different hit and whether or not they count it, but the differences aren't big, and one can always set the standard by sample/test shooting. However, just like in other games, we have to exclude dishonest players and cheaters unless or until someone comes up with a viable device or ruleset to take care of honor issues.

Side thought: Nerf Dart Tag seems to be having some decent level of popularity, but its hit zones are limited to the torso area (maybe upper arms as well based on the T-shirt used for their official competition jersey).

As for needing more objective rules to deal with potentially problematic players, perhaps for now we'll leave that to local needs and may just end up with stricter rules and hit requirements only for tournament level games, but not try to over-complicate these casually organized games.

I don't want to repeat my reasoning for just the torso, if we're only talking about single hits then I would agree that it's easy enough to tell when a player is hit anywhere. However, this particular topic also includes soakfests, and it's not as simple to determine soakage on the lower body for the reasons I stated above.
As for the soakage discussion, that again involves plenty of repeating myself and it's not the priority discussion right now, so I'll drop it for now.

Perhaps a hit could be anywhere, but soakage would be torso only.

There are more agrees for hits counting anywhere than for limiting them, so we can build on that. All my opposition was indeed written with soakage in mind, so atvan's latest suggestion makes a lot of sense to me, hits count anywhere, soaks are only measured on the torso.
Actually, I just caught Marauder's post at the top of this page:

marauder_4 wrote:As long as you have a direct hit I really don't care whether it's a squirt pistol or Monster XL. I count a hit as a hit. But more importantly than that, I think the point of a soakfest is to get the other team/people as wet as possible while staying as dry as possible. I think the easiest thing to do is to just stop temporarily at a specific time and check how wet everyone is. You can eye gauge and everyone knows who is drenched and who isn't.

It's a great bit of common sense that would make life easier (I wouldn't have thought about it beforehand).

Back to defining a hit, the two main themes we have are "if it don't soak, it's a joke" versus "you'll know if you get hit". Both have their merits, discrediting smaller pistols prevents such things as leaks from larger blasters from causing 'suicide'. We know not to expect any pistols at a soakfest anyway, so we're probably not hurting anyone by excluding them. However, this brings rise to what iSoaker has asked, what is the lower limit of output that we are counting? Minimums involve plenty of tracking (say we set the minimum to 1x, pretty much every WW soaker can shoot less than that if desired, that means players who wish to use the smaller nozzles must know that the nozzle is too small to count, as well as notify all nearby opponents that the nozzle doesn't count), can they get too complicated?
The latter method also prevents leaks from counting, if a user can clearly feel (or hear, in case of thick clothing/backpacks preventing the water from getting all the way through the fabrick) a direct hit, then it counts. This does not exclude pistols, though is essentially limits them to point-blank shots. The biggest problem with this is its heavy reliance on an honour code, though even the most popular sports today aren't cheatproof (try finding a professional soccer game where players don't overreact to tackles just to get a foul).

So, let's continue the discussions.