Midseason Review & Planning

Development of the WaterWar.net League.
Post Reply
scottthewaterwarrior
Posts: 941
Joined: Wed Jun 02, 2010 4:21 pm
Location: Bethesda, MD/North West DC
WWN League Team: Catskill Mountain SEALs
Contact:

Soakemore 2013: SEAL's Full War Story

Post by scottthewaterwarrior » Sat Jun 08, 2013 1:42 pm

the oncoming storm wrote:The number of long posts in this thread is too high :goofy: I always enjoy reading war story's and Seal did a top notch job on this one. I would like to see a classic only round at a war (only one 300 per team)
What would "classic only" mean, SS 50/SS 100?

For next year, I am going to insist that we play at least one BBT/air pressure only round. During the day, we did almost only anything goes OHS rounds, these are the best type of game, but I still would like to try and have more verity next year.

On another note, I have thought further on the attack defend round involving the tree house. Next year we should make it so that the defenders can only use non-300/gorgon air pressure guns. That way the attackers would have a pretty fair chance against them. In most wars I thing we have really missed the point of hold the line. If the defenders aren't defeated within the time limit, then we are doing something wrong. The goal is which team can hold out the longest, not will both teams survive! In future wars I think we need to balance it out so that the attackers have a weapons advantage over the defenders since they have the more defensible position. We could do it by having the attackers outnumber the defense, but I think this would mess things up because it wouldn't work when we switch sides. Also I think we should not keep track of individual stats for HTL rounds.

Oh and SEAL: sorry we are using your war story as a discussion thread for how this war went. Can one of the admins, maybe move these last few posts to the official Soakemore thread so we can continue this there?
"If you are wet at the end of a water war, you are doing it wrong"
Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"

User avatar
SEAL
Posts: 2537
Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2010 11:37 am
Location: Charlotte, NC
WWN League Team: Catskill Mountain SEALs
Contact:

Re: Soakemore 2013: SEAL's Full War Story

Post by SEAL » Mon Jun 10, 2013 8:54 am

I don't care if you use my war story thread for discussion. This is actually the first time that one of my war stories has actually generated a decent amount of discussion, haha. Just keep it on-topic.

Scott, I'm sorry for not helping more (in fact, I don't even remember you asking advice), but I really needed to know the battlefields a little better to actually come up with game ideas. Despite that though, I found out that this event actually had more rounds than any other war so far, not counting soakfests. (Downpour '11 had 7, Hydropocalypse had 10, Downpour '12 had 8, Frozen Fury had 8, MOAB had 12, and this war had 13.) And I think we had more "good" rounds than any other war as well (and it actually didn't rain!). So it was definitely worth the trip.

I don't think a classic-only round would work out that well because a lot of us don't have classic guns. I only have two SS 50s and an SS 300, and I don't remember anyone else having many. I definitely want to have an XP-only round though, and I've worked two into the Downpour schedule, as well as a few other specialty rounds. I'm not a huge fan of them, but Scott is right; a little variety is good. One of the things I'm shooting for is to have every round be exciting and fresh; no two rounds will be alike (except for two HTL rounds).

As the one who originally came up with HTL, I never intended the goal to be which team could hold out the longest. Either the offense wins or the defense wins; the former by eliminating all defenders (who have only one life in my original version of the game), and the latter by having at least one person still in play. I never visualized it as being an "attack the hill" situation either; rather, as a situation like in the games we played at this war.

the oncoming storm: Thank you! Glad you liked it.
~Hotel Oscar Golf~

We probably won't be back, but the legacy lives on.

marauder
Posts: 3975
Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2004 9:29 pm
Location: Charleston
WWN League Team: Havoc
Contact:

Re: Soakemore 2013: SEAL's Full War Story

Post by marauder » Mon Jun 10, 2013 10:15 am

The discussion generated here brings up a good point. Do we use war stories threads as the place for after the battle discussion? Or do we use the original topic? When we were in the planning phases for this season I envisioned using the original topics for planning only, then starting a new topic for what we learned from the war, etc. Or, we could always just use the war stories. What does everyone think?

Either way, I want to have some type of a review following all community wars. The purpose of the review would be to analyze what worked and what didn't. Kind of like we did at the end of last season where we said that we spend too much time traveling from place to place. I intended to fix that problem by having us camp out on the battlefield. That didn't end up working out and once again we still ended up spending too much time in transit from one place to another. So - to everyone who attended Soakermore... what worked? What didn't? What would you like to see again? What would you not like to see again? We can either keep this discussion here or move the posts to the original Soakermore topic, depending on how y'all feel.

In regards to the classics only rounds, what SEAL said is true. The only classic gun I have is a broken 100 that may not be able to fixed, and I don't have the money or space right now to get another one. I really enjoyed the BBT only rounds at MOAB and wouldn't have a problem with seeing those again though. XP only rounds sound fun too.
https://hydrowar.wordpress.com/
SEAL wrote:If you ain't bloody and muddy by the end of the day, you went to a Nerf war.

HBWW
Posts: 4110
Joined: Tue Jul 11, 2006 7:12 pm
Location: MI
WWN League Team: Havoc

Re: Soakemore 2013: SEAL's Full War Story

Post by HBWW » Mon Jun 10, 2013 6:47 pm

The trouble with ???-blasters-only games is that everyone's arsenal is suited differently. Not everyone has a good APH, 300, or Gorgon for AP-only, and not everyone has a Vindicator/Blazer/Gorgon for BBT-only. We need to tread this ground with more forethought, because if we did...

SC-only: I'd run in with 3 Splashzookas and a 400.
XP-only: I'd be dual wielding a pair of XP 270's.
Classic-only: I'd be unarmed.

To handle these rounds, we need to agree on blaster lending provisions that everyone's okay with, including blaster lending to rivals. Perhaps we may want to keep blaster-restricted games away from the core rivalry games.

That said, these types of games are generally unheard of in other communities. "Springers-only" for Airsoft is typically only done when people can't afford AEG's/gas, and paintball is very well locked into many fundamental conventions and rules that don't ever really change.

My take on what could've worked better at Soakemore:

- Equipment planning for Sycamore: We really did not have enough people to take things in and out. This was my fault, insisting on using homemades for naval wars, CPS's for ground, and a Douchenator, then forgetting parts like the pump. However, it would be ideal if we still had some way of carrying in lots of equipment from long walks. I noticed that the SEALs had this problem at St John's woods @ MOAB. Conclusion is, we need to tighten down plans enough so that we all know which equipment is being brought in, where and when and from whom. Large hauls need to be done by everyone at the same time, for those who aren't just bringing their CPS 2000 to the field and nothing else. That said, I'm glad that everyone helped out and did their part here.

- Standard 1HS games. Same problem at MOAB, but on a smaller scale. I was okay with the wandering times, but the game always ends before anyone can do anything interesting. Lots of encounters in 1HS at Soakemore happened when one team had a considerable position and terrain advantage, but the other team would never get a chance to try to counter it. Two examples are 1HS at Carderock (the one that was going to be CTF at first) and the very last game (1HS at Westland Middle School), where there wasn't enough time for things to play out during the encounters. I think we should simply extend the time limit here, and in addition, maybe setting a time limit on the searching period. (Where, after that time expires, both teams must reveal their locations.) However, having two time limits does no good for keeping the game simple.
HydroBrawl Water Warfare

Discord: m0useCat

scottthewaterwarrior
Posts: 941
Joined: Wed Jun 02, 2010 4:21 pm
Location: Bethesda, MD/North West DC
WWN League Team: Catskill Mountain SEALs
Contact:

Re: Soakemore 2013: SEAL's Full War Story

Post by scottthewaterwarrior » Tue Jun 11, 2013 12:11 pm

For the hold the line games, the main reason I want to change it so that the teams are unbalanced is that it will (hopefully) prevent stalemates. For a change I would really like to see the defense loose, as far as I can remember this has only ever happened once in a HTL game. Not keeping track of stats in HTL, combined with giving the defense inferior weaponry, would encourage the attackers to try stuff like suicide charges. The best hold the line game I think we've had so far was at Hydropocalips. People were constantly trying to rush the hill despite heavy fire from above. Now we stay out of range until we see an opening and the second something goes wrong we abort.

I'm really not sure what happens with the time limits in this war. I had originally planned on having most round be an hour or more. The first round on Sunday was actually supposed to be two hours where we would have to eat lunch midway. We always talk about doing all these things, but in the moment no one actually wants to do it. To be honest, I think DX was the only one to even voice his opinion on most things, every one else just stayed quite most the time. I am kind of a pushover and despite the fact that we have now killed him a few times, I think most of us still see him is somewhat of a soaking god. This is why for next year I am going to try and be a little more pushy when it comes to doing things. As I have said though, I am pretty easily swayed by others so I wouldn't complain if people argued less too.

As far as carrying stuff to the field, if we can't make it in one trip then we have too much stuff. Next year I plan on laying out everything I want to bring for a days battle the night before including who will carry what. So long as they are not filled, I can carry two primaries and at least one small CPS/air pressure to the battlefield, I am probably one of the weakest players having to make one trip really shouldn't limit us too much. The other advantage of laying it out the night before is that we can see what others are bringing. If one person is just bringing a XP 150, then someone else could ask them to help carry their 8 CPS 2000s.

One things for sure though, we all need to go to bed earlier at these things. I know I have trouble playing when I stay up real late and I have even more problems with thinking straight. Not even counting the fact that we could have gotten an earlier start, if we hadn't stayed up so darn late we probably would have been more organized as our brains would have had more rest.
"If you are wet at the end of a water war, you are doing it wrong"
Van: "What happened?" SEAL: "Scott Happened"
Alex: "But the stream is cold." Me: "It's fine, my feet really hurt, now they're numb!"

User avatar
SEAL
Posts: 2537
Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2010 11:37 am
Location: Charlotte, NC
WWN League Team: Catskill Mountain SEALs
Contact:

Re: Soakemore 2013: SEAL's Full War Story

Post by SEAL » Tue Jun 11, 2013 2:11 pm

CA99: I actually don't really want to do restrictive rounds for the rivalry games. In my opinion, all rivalry rounds should be anything-goes, have no boundaries, and long time limits (like 2 or 3 hours). Of course, we probably won't be doing them at Downpour, so we won't have to worry about it for a while yet. As I said, I don't really like doing restrictive rounds, but others do, and they do keep things fresh. As for your comment on standard OHS games, I agree with you that time limits should be longer (unless the teams start within sight of each other), but I don't really like the idea of putting a time limit on searching. Maybe some of you don't feel this way, but I think it's kind of fun searching for the enemy, trying to predict what they're going to do and figuring out how to ambush them.

Scott: Like I said before somewhere, to run a war, you have to have a strict schedule of events, and run things like a drill sergeant. If people are being slow, just get in the car and act like you're going to leave them behind if they don't hurry up. It might even be necessary to oversee what everyone's doing and make sure that they will be ready in time (for example, make sure everyone eats at a certain time, make sure that everyone's blasters are filled, etc.). And yes, getting to sleep earlier is definitely recommended. It doesn't make much of a difference for me (I'd get the same amount of sleep anyway), but it may help others wake up earlier in the morning. At Downpour this should be easier because we'll be camping and there will be no distractions (*cough*videogames*cough*) to keep us awake.

marauder: I'm fine with using war story threads for after-war discussion. I mean, the war story itself is basically a long review.
~Hotel Oscar Golf~

We probably won't be back, but the legacy lives on.

HBWW
Posts: 4110
Joined: Tue Jul 11, 2006 7:12 pm
Location: MI
WWN League Team: Havoc

Re: Soakemore 2013: SEAL's Full War Story

Post by HBWW » Tue Jun 11, 2013 2:44 pm

The time limit is a necessity, as the AP-only round at MOAB demonstrated. We never even defined one, but had our team never decided to reveal our position and fight, we would've searched forever and not have found each other. Keep in mind that this was without the "casuals" (my friend, Scott's friends) too.

Running things like a drill sarge is still not going to be as effective as getting things planned out and ready in the first place. Best way is to check that everyone's onboard with things and ready to roll. Games that involve restricted water weaponry will only serve to complicate this, as do equipment like WBL's, so that needs to be accounted for. Of course, with this all taken care of, then you can rush everyone who isn't picking up the slack and moving at a reasonable pace.

One trip max is easy. Carrying several empty primaries (or two filled primaries) is easy. What gets messy is when you throw WBL's into the mix and have to make long hikes to haul the equipment around. A WBL requires the launcher itself, a box full of sabots, a pump, and equipment for carrying filled balloon caches around. If you use pouches instead of buckets for carrying balloons, this is barely do-able with one person, but that one person also has a primary or two to also carry. (As well as a backpack containing water balloon fillers and other equipment.) Now that I know how the spigots are setup, I can plan a bit better for this, but no one should be pretending that there isn't a lot to carry around or that it'll be easy to manage. Next time, I will have to simply get bags/backpacks for everything, such as a duffel bag for the launcher and pump, if I can find one long enough.

In the meantime, trying to rush someone when you know they have all that equipment to arrange/carry gets us nowhere. I didn't even know that the ferry setup was hand-powered and that getting back and forth was that much of a hassle. Had I gotten more information on that ahead of time (i.e. walkthrough video), the hassle could've been avoided.

For the curfew, we need to be much, much more strict on distractions. Lights must be off, everyone must be reasonably quiet. If you can't sleep, fine, get on a laptop or smartphone, take a walk, or something else. But don't leave lights on or make sounds. I will do my part to enforce the curfew for the next war I go to, depending on how tired I am. If I'm indeed quite tired, I will stop anything that prevents me from sleeping. We all need to agree on this ahead of time though.

On a side note, I have decided I will be carrying an extra water bottle that I wouldn't otherwise carry, as opposed to overloading blasters. We end up with CPS's pressurized for hours of non-use and that only deteriorates things more quickly. My 12k's pull valve seals have already given way. We need to keep these things running as long as possible before our pipe dreams of 3D printed blasters and easy-to-assemble, effective, and reliable homemade parts are universal and readily accessible by anyone. (This is precisely why the current water blaster market is a problem for us; we're too caught up in having to make sure we all have enough CPS's to play fairly.)
HydroBrawl Water Warfare

Discord: m0useCat

DX
Posts: 3495
Joined: Mon Jul 05, 2004 8:35 am
Contact:

Re: Soakemore 2013: SEAL's Full War Story

Post by DX » Tue Jun 11, 2013 3:48 pm

If you'd prefer not to use a suggestion that I make, just decide not to use it. The host always makes the final decision. My suggestions are intended to help, not to dictate, and usually are voiced because something screwed up the original plan. Maybe the wind was stronger than expected or heavy rain left us only short gaps to use or we just didn't have time to set up. I often end up suggesting these new courses of action because contingency planning is my specialty and nobody else steps up. However, with those personality test results, I can now see why this is the case. Ben and I have absolutely no reservations about voicing exactly what we think should happen, while everyone else holds back.

If you're hosting and have an introverted personality, then you need to assert yourself naturally and nicely, but firmly. You also need to make decisive decisions, ok I want to do this, let's do it. Of, if you really don't like having to control every aspect of the war in real-time, you can have a co-host and they can help give you the various options, you can choose what you want to do, and they can execute that plan for you.

I can also get confused with the rules because I have almost no short term memory capabilities as everything revolves around long term memory. Changing them or making them on-site messes me up. The first set is what sticks since that essentially gets "cached", which is why I was confused about the spawning rules for the CTF rounds. I genuinely thought we were still doing the go back to the flag to complete spawning thing. The Carderock parking lots thing was just a miscommunication. Scott was thinking left and right parking lots like how a local looks at them, oriented south on the entrance road. I was thinking left and right like how a visitor looks at them, oriented north on Google Maps.

The main reason I wanted to keep rounds below 30 minutes was for the camera restrictions. The battery on my gun cam lasts 2-3 hours in 1080p HD. It drains faster in longer rounds when it is in continuous use (and most of that time will be cut out anyway, since it's just us searching for each other). The end result is about 30 min or less of usable footage. Thus, 1 long round drains half my battery or more, while producing the same amount of film as shorter rounds. The tradeoff is film 1-2 long rounds and nothing else that day, or film many short rounds and get them all.

If we want to have longer rounds AND film them, we need more cameras and people need to practice using them. When you have a gun cam, you need to keep your gun pointed at the action whenever possible. Sometimes I get tired and point it down/away for a few seconds, but I try to keep it focused on the enemy as often as I can. You also need to keep the gun steady when not firing, and pan around every now and then to show more of the battle.

I think that filming the rounds is absolutely essential to growing our hobby, so we need the cameras. The problem with just having people switch off on film duty is that you cover all the rounds, but only from one perspective or the other. It's awesome when we're able to show both sides of a battle from the PoV of both teams. In an ideal world, we could just get more camera batteries, but with these compact, portable models, the battery tends to be internal. I'm all for going through with the long rounds, but we need a plan to document them. If one becomes epic, who wouldn't regret not having it filmed? I still regret not trying to film the Theater rounds even though we went back to Long Beach West to fight there again (with less people).

I agree with Scott that we need to carry less equipment. I think classic, XP, even Buzz Bee only rounds are too specific and take more time than necessary. Anything using a WBL, water cannon, water balloons, boats, etc requires additional set up planning. We should have any rounds that use those items all at once so we don't need to keep filling balloons, packing, and repacking stuff. This should be fairly easy since none of that is really used in regular rounds.

I don't care about the sleep since I feel the same way every morning whether I've had 1 hour of sleep or 16. Mornings just suck for me, I always feel terrible and unmotivated with no energy. There has to be a need to be up, beyond just wanting to start fighting sooner and getting more rounds in. At Frozen Fury, the need was to have the place devoid of people so that we could use the abandoned buildings without incident. Without an early start, the whole round might not have worked. At Nerf wars, the need is it takes hours to get there and they start without you if you're late. Unfortunately, our community is kind of too small to do that. Starting without the stragglers is not an effective threat when there may be 4 people ready and 6 not. Maybe give people who are ready an extra life or point or something. Punishing them really doesn't work, so create incentives to get ready in the morning.

Team stats only rounds definitely work. It would be interesting to try that for HTL. We could also do attack/defend instead of HTL. The gameypes are similar, but in attack/defend, the defense loses if it loses the position or objective. It need not be eliminated or even hit at all. Like, if the objective is to defend a box, the offense wins if it hits the box, regardless of whatever else happens with hit counts.
marauder wrote:You have to explain things in terms that kids will understand, like videogames^ That's how I got Sam to stop using piston pumpers

HBWW
Posts: 4110
Joined: Tue Jul 11, 2006 7:12 pm
Location: MI
WWN League Team: Havoc

Re: Soakemore 2013: SEAL's Full War Story

Post by HBWW » Tue Jun 11, 2013 6:36 pm

We had several objective game ideas floating around, but I didn't know the area well enough to set them up, and no one else wanted to place them around. (I don't know if we even had any equipment for them [i.e. container targets], considering how much other stuff that had to be carried.) HTL needs adjustments to spawning since we had that problem on the beach landing round; it was too difficult to land, but once ashore, impossible to hold back the attackers since they can respawn almost instantly.

Also, we must completely agree whether to drop BBT/AP/whatever only rounds ahead of time, before the event and not during. Needless to say, packing those items not only wasted my car space, but also made things take longer to go through when grabbing equipment to get started on a game.

Host responsibilities:
- Setup all gametypes and objective locations ahead of time. Have positions for starting/spawn points, flags, control points/outposts, boundaries, etc. in mind before the the event. (They can be moved later if they don't work out, but put some thought into them first.) Publish a map of the playing areas, game objective positions, etc.
- Special equipment requirements must be made known to all guests and must be agreed upon.

Guest responsibilities:
- Have all equipment needed ready before event.
- Review each location, know how everything will play out from driving there to arrival, to getting equipment out. (i.e. We know we need X and Y for games A, B, and C on Day 1, so we prepare these items accordingly.)

Use a notes app, write things down on a phone, or use pencil and paper. This goes for everyone. Rules, locations of items, etc. all known ahead of time so we can get games rolling.

Regarding time limits, we will have to make some changes. Either don't start the camera until the opposing team is found, or reduce the time it takes to find the other team even further by battlefield boundaries or by placing the teams even closer to each other when starting.

Regardless of what others do or whether I make Downpour, I will be taking this approach whenever I can host. Every game must be nailed down ahead of time, any objections or requests of modification to games must be voiced with viable alternatives (do not simply say "this game seems boring" because that gets us nowhere), and the games list must be followed. We don't necessarily have to follow them strictly (i.e. "game 3 must be CTF as indicated on the list and must be played at exactly 3:30pm") but we need a list of these games detailed out. For example, what we did right was knowing what games we would play at Sycamore island ahead of time. What we did wrong was not planning boundaries, spawn rules, etc. in final detail ahead of time. I attempted to throw out some ideas, but some things didn't quite make it. All hosts or co-hosts need to be constantly active and working on the games.

Of course, there were other unforeseeable issues. The time I spent searching for prescription contacts/glasses (most pharmacies lack any semblance of an optical department, and the non-prescription/reading glasses shelf is a complete joke) caused problems because I expected to head right back to Scott's house instead of directly to Carderock, so I had to leave the GoPro behind. I was also not told that the exact area we were playing in for the night war was so well lit that cameras would actually be usable, since the only night wars I've ever played were too dark for non-specialty cameras to be of any use. On the other hand, if I did bring the camera and it was too dark, I would have to deal with another liability if it were to get lost, which would've been a huge problem. (Even if it wasn't a GoPro, I still do not have $100 to spend on a camera anymore.) I will definitely take care to plan for this in the future, packing additional contacts/glasses in my car ahead of time. The one universal rule I forgot to follow for Soakemore was that shit happens. The one time you don't prepare for something bad is the one time it will happen. I now know I definitely would've lost the GoPro had I taken it out on the canoes. Naval wars need lots of preparation.

Anyway, that's my take on it. At least now I have a better grip on the worse-case scenarios and how to get a grip on them, although these sorts of nasty incidents will never be completely eliminated. There's simply too much stuff to worry about at any given water war event (I lost $20 of stuff at MOAB, which I ironically brought to avoid loosing even more things), and being hundreds of miles from home doesn't help either.
HydroBrawl Water Warfare

Discord: m0useCat

DX
Posts: 3495
Joined: Mon Jul 05, 2004 8:35 am
Contact:

Re: Soakemore 2013: SEAL's Full War Story

Post by DX » Tue Jun 11, 2013 9:05 pm

Speaking of stuff that we've lost, has anyone found a StormTech brand, black rain jacket/windbreaker? I can't find it and might have left it at Scott's house. It's made by a Canadian company for the type of people who backpack in the Pacific NW and thus is my best jacket.
marauder wrote:You have to explain things in terms that kids will understand, like videogames^ That's how I got Sam to stop using piston pumpers

marauder
Posts: 3975
Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2004 9:29 pm
Location: Charleston
WWN League Team: Havoc
Contact:

Midseason Review & Planning

Post by marauder » Wed Jun 12, 2013 10:50 am

Topic split and moved to League Planning 2013. I will add my own comments once I'm done making some delicious cinnamon buns.
https://hydrowar.wordpress.com/
SEAL wrote:If you ain't bloody and muddy by the end of the day, you went to a Nerf war.

User avatar
SEAL
Posts: 2537
Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2010 11:37 am
Location: Charlotte, NC
WWN League Team: Catskill Mountain SEALs
Contact:

Re: Midseason Review & Planning

Post by SEAL » Wed Jun 12, 2013 11:51 am

At this point it's pretty obvious; come up with a good schedule, figure out all the rounds ahead of time, make sure everyone else knows what's up, and when the event comes, make sure everything is running smoothly and according to plan. I don't understand why it's so hard. The only complications are when something happens like heavy rain or other crap, in which case it's good to have a backup plan. As for waking up in the morning, have you guys ever considered alarm clocks?

DX: I remember seeing that jacket draped on a chair in the dining room. I would guess that Scott has it.
~Hotel Oscar Golf~

We probably won't be back, but the legacy lives on.

DX
Posts: 3495
Joined: Mon Jul 05, 2004 8:35 am
Contact:

Re: Midseason Review & Planning

Post by DX » Wed Jun 12, 2013 12:55 pm

Every schedule needs a Plan B, just in case things don't go as planned. One thing I've learned is that you need to build in more reset time than you think we'll use. If you think it will take 10 minutes to reset between certain rounds, make it 20, because it will take 20. While some of us are capable of getting ready quickly, the pace is restricted by the "weakest link". That, and refilling opportunities - at Downpour if we're using the Valley of Death stream or the Thunder Gulch pond, more people can refill at the same time. Using the spigot at the pavilion is a slow one-at-a-time process.

An alarm clock won't work at a campground. At least, not an A/C powered one with enough volume. It's also a horrible way to get up, going from 0 to 100 in a second. For Nerf wars, I set the alarm an hour before I'd need to get up, to allow for a transition and prevent any headaches. After a night full of stressful dreaming ("school" dreams can last more than a week of perceived time and be tougher than the real thing), it's nice to just lie there relaxed. You'd understand if you sometimes spent more than 24 hours in a 24 hour day "awake" in some manner, despite getting 8 hours of sleep. Sleeping is supposed to be a refreshing, peaceful activity, but it's become more like an entire 2nd life because I've spent more time in dreams than I've spent living. I think my brain is addicted to the experiences and purposely makes it difficult to fall asleep early, thus placing the REM stage of sleep squarely in the morning, when the quality of dreaming is extremely high.

I will try my best to follow other peoples' sleep schedules in future wars. Again, I stay up very late because there is no apparent disadvantage to doing so. I feel the same way when I wake up (shitty), regardless of how much sleep I've had. The only way I fall asleep "early" (my early is like midnight), is to have used a ton of energy, so the rounds should do the trick if they are intense enough. Any need, like a gun repair, will take priority over sleep, so I need to have those things set before the war. The weather will also have an impact for camping. Hot, very humid air like 2012 Downpour is difficult for me to breathe and thus sleeping is virtually impossible. At that war, I fell asleep only because I was awake so long that my brain just stopped caring. A cool, dry night will do the opposite - I will be asleep in as little as 45 seconds.
marauder wrote:You have to explain things in terms that kids will understand, like videogames^ That's how I got Sam to stop using piston pumpers

HBWW
Posts: 4110
Joined: Tue Jul 11, 2006 7:12 pm
Location: MI
WWN League Team: Havoc

Re: Midseason Review & Planning

Post by HBWW » Wed Jun 12, 2013 1:31 pm

For me, the effects of sleep (or lack thereof) are more subtle and causes are not easily identified. If I had a week of very good sleep, and one night of poor sleep, I can still carry on the next day fine. After a series of less than ideal nights however, it does take a toll on how I think and operate. I was also affected by the long drive and the presence of having a friend along (having to ensure he's equipped, etc.), even if it wasn't apparent to me. As for temperatures, I have to adjust; always have trouble going from sudden cold to sudden warmth or vice versa.
HydroBrawl Water Warfare

Discord: m0useCat

marauder
Posts: 3975
Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2004 9:29 pm
Location: Charleston
WWN League Team: Havoc
Contact:

Re: Soakemore 2013: SEAL's Full War Story

Post by marauder » Wed Jun 12, 2013 1:37 pm

I think we need some kind of list of rules or an official gameplay agreement like Ridgewood and Waterbridge had. The rules should concern ONLY things that can be enforced. Perhaps we can start another topic on this if there's enough interest. Anyway, here's my opinion on some subjects that have been brought up...

Bringing Stuff In
scottthewaterwarrior wrote: As far as carrying stuff to the field, if we can't make it in one trip then we have too much stuff. Next year I plan on laying out everything I want to bring for a days battle the night before including who will carry what.
This issue is battlefield-dependent in my opinion. I hope you all agree. If we are camping at the battlefield this will not be an issue. If the battlefield is like Dug Hill and you have a parking lot and a pavilion reasonably close to the action I don't think it's much of an issue. Where we get in trouble is when we hike in a long ways to a battlefield, or when we have to drive to multiple battlefields during a war. In those situations I completely agree that we need to only bring as much as we can carry in at one time. That requires 2 things. First, the games list needs to be centered around the use of only 1 or 2 primaries. Second, everyone needs to layout their equipment the night before, as Scott suggested, and make sure they can carry it all at once.

Bed Time and Wake Up
scottthewaterwarrior wrote:7One things for sure though, we all need to go to bed earlier at these things. I know I have trouble playing when I stay up real late and I have even more problems with thinking straight. Not even counting the fact that we could have gotten an earlier start, if we hadn't stayed up so darn late we probably would have been more organized as our brains would have had more rest.
This varies from person to person. I could go all night if I had to. In fact, I like fighting, scouting, and hanging out late in to the night. But, everyone like me needs to respect people like Scott and make sure we are being active far away from people who are sleeping. That brings me to the second part of this issue - waking up. Not getting enough sleep the night before is NOT an excuse for showing up more than just a little late. DX and I were at Legend Park for about an hour before Scott arrived one day. I don't know if this was because of miscommunication, lack of sleep, or something out, but this is not acceptable. I'm not pointing the finger at Scott or anyone else, who's to blame doesn't matter as it's over now, but this should not happen again. In the future I think teams should be held responsible for this in rivalry games. If your player is late you must suffer a handicap. The later you are the more severe the handicap and it should be a team handicap because there is no reason that 4,5,6+ people can't get their teammate to the right place at the right time for anything other than a medical emergency. The same handicap should apply to non rivalry games, but the handicap should only apply to the player who is late. The handicap rule shouldn't apply to people who have said ahead of time that they hope to arrive at the war at a certain time and are driving from out of state, it would only apply to people who are already there and are late in getting to the next battlefield or late getting to the battlefield on time in the morning.

Time Limits
SEAL wrote:As for your comment on standard OHS games, I agree with you that time limits should be longer (unless the teams start within sight of each other), but I don't really like the idea of putting a time limit on searching. Maybe some of you don't feel this way, but I think it's kind of fun searching for the enemy, trying to predict what they're going to do and figuring out how to ambush them.
Yeah, I'm not too keen on placing time limits on searching. Sometime it's ok to ask everyone if they are cool with extending the time of a game. Just whatever is best for the fighting. I am all for longer OHS games as well, but this is again, battlefield dependent. Some battlefields, eg Saint John's Woods are better suited to this than other battlefields. I am more concerned about the over all time spent fighting, the amount of time spent on each round is important to me, but less so than decreasing the amount of time getting from one place to another.

Weapon Restrictive Games

I think these games do a lot to mix things up, but they HAVE to fit the battlefield. If you have to hike in to the battlefield then it's not a good idea unless everyone can carry 2 guns each, eg 1 anything primary and 1 BBT. Restrictive rounds are also ok if the host can cache the weapons on site the day before, eg MOAB. Which brings us to the next subject. I also agree that the best HTL and or attack/defend rounds are ones in which the defense has either less people or less powerful blasters.

Hosting and Decision Making

Reread everything DX just said. Ultimately I think it's best that the host has final say in what rounds we are playing. It helps us make decisions quicker. If a host wants a cohost to decide this than that is fine too, but people need to be able to not only make quick decisions but to get everyone together and ready to fight instead of standing around the water faucet talking and throwing out ideas for 15 minutes. I think there should be a handicap on any player who takes longer than x amount of time to get ready between rounds. Something reasonable, not like 5 minutes for everyone to fill up, but maybe 10 or 15.
https://hydrowar.wordpress.com/
SEAL wrote:If you ain't bloody and muddy by the end of the day, you went to a Nerf war.

HBWW
Posts: 4110
Joined: Tue Jul 11, 2006 7:12 pm
Location: MI
WWN League Team: Havoc

Re: Midseason Review & Planning

Post by HBWW » Wed Jun 12, 2013 1:58 pm

The times needed to prepare need to be set out ahead of time too. Filling a bucket of water balloons for a Douchenator station is not a quick task; these are specialized cases where additional preparation is needed. As for searching for the enemy team, I'm okay with it as long as it doesn't take one or two hours and end up cannibalizing actual game time. This also means that those using cameras need to hold off with filming until the teams encounter each other, or they need to swap/charge batteries more often (I guess $100 is not going to get you a removable battery in a waterproof camera?), potentially wasting more time and missing footage.

Weapon restricted games need to be very well planned. Although it was not an issue, we should've all 100% knew that they would not be an option for any Sycamore Island wars due to the walk and all the other equipment carried. Though at that point, we should've known well before that we were never going to play any BBT-only or AP-only games at all that weekend. That's the main purpose behind planning, so we don't get "oh, I don't want to play this game, that's boring" or "I don't have the equipment for that" all of a sudden when the game comes. So, as an example for Downpour 2013, we know most of us don't mind or even enjoy BBT-only games, but DX finds them boring. We all need to agree ahead of time whether to play them or not. In my case, I couldn't quite participate in the planning stages for Soakemore because I didn't even know if I could attend or not until less than a week before. Needless to say, I do not like planning or dictating wars that I have a low possibility of attending, even to the slightest.

I think at this point, all of us have had issues with being late sometime or another. I caused some delays at Soakemore from the lack of preparation (equipment was not packed into my car in an ideal layout to ease carrying, which I should've taken care of in MI because it didn't occur at all to me once I was there to do so), and it was the first time I brought a WBL onto the field. We need some sort of way to quickly reattach bike pumps to launchers to save space and carrying hands. I may need to buy some of those drawstring bags that my friend brought for carrying balloons for WBL stations. A WBL filler nozzle mod for the CPS 2000 (and improving the 2500's nozzles for this) would also help things out so I don't have to carry specialized balloon fillers in case there's no faucet access.

So the takeaway for me is this: prep all equipment, all in the right spots and setup before even leaving home. Get all water balloons where they belong, memorize where everything is. The Douchenator should have teflon tape pre-cut and ready to thread right into the valve as soon as you reach the field. The tubes for the homemades should've been cut already, but I wanted to check out the place first. My biggest mistake was the assumption that there would actually be time before the games to get these things taken care of, but at least now I know.

With a better grip on both host and guest responsibilities, and with better foresight on how to pack things, we should be able to avoid many of these sorts of issues in the future.
HydroBrawl Water Warfare

Discord: m0useCat

User avatar
SEAL
Posts: 2537
Joined: Thu Apr 29, 2010 11:37 am
Location: Charlotte, NC
WWN League Team: Catskill Mountain SEALs
Contact:

Re: Midseason Review & Planning

Post by SEAL » Thu Jun 13, 2013 10:04 am

Another thing that would help is if people actually posted their thoughts in the war planning threads. :P Seriously, if I don't get any feedback for Downpour, I am going to run it completely on my terms (though yes, I am picking up ideas from this thread). If that ends up being the case, I better not get any complaining at the war.

Anyhoo, I think we are pretty much beating a dead horse at this point. As long as everybody can follow the schedule, we should be good. The only thing I am a little concerned about is getting everyone up; M4's idea of handicapping people who are late sounds okay (easy for me to say), but it's the type of thing that might discourage people from coming. I would love to have enough people where we can just get going with the games without needing everybody (like at Nerf wars), but somehow I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. When I said alarm clocks, I was referring more to like watch or phone alarms, not the kind that need to be plugged in. We used the phone on our cross-country trip back in '11 to wake us up early whenever we had a long day of travel ahead of us, and it worked pretty well. As for getting guns ready and everything, if people aren't filling their guns, my brothers and I will do it for them. We already agreed to this. I don't think we will be using water balloons and/or launchers at Downpour, simply because they take too much time to prepare. Of course, if anyone wants to bring that stuff with them into battle, they may, but if they're still filling stuff when the round starts, they will be subject to attack, whether they're ready or not. Chatting can wait until eating time and the campfire.

Oh yeah, about time limit constraints on cameras, I second what CA99 said; don't turn on the camera until the teams encounter. That's what I did in the long round at Frozen Fury when DX gave me the "gun-cam" to mount on my 1200. I didn't turn it on until a few seconds before we prepared to ambush the enemy team.
~Hotel Oscar Golf~

We probably won't be back, but the legacy lives on.

marauder
Posts: 3975
Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2004 9:29 pm
Location: Charleston
WWN League Team: Havoc
Contact:

Re: Midseason Review & Planning

Post by marauder » Thu Jun 13, 2013 10:32 am

If we are doing rivalry rounds team leaders need to know what room # or campsite their team members are staying at. They need to make sure everyone on their team gets up on time. In non rivalry rounds I guess it falls on all of us. If I'm there I am going to make sure I know where everyone is staying that night and what everyone's # is that way I can call or drop in to make sure people get up and get to the battlefield on time.

I would have a lot of ideas for Downpour but unfortunately I can't make it.
https://hydrowar.wordpress.com/
SEAL wrote:If you ain't bloody and muddy by the end of the day, you went to a Nerf war.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 32 guests