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Battle practicality of items such mask,laser and vest.

Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 7:09 pm
by LinWarrior
Hey waterwar.net I was just wondering how battle practical are items such as

1. Paintball Mask /Scuba.

* Personal Thoughts and Experience :
Very effective in a soak fest. Allows for trigger happy campers who don't care about getting wet to just charge at you.

2. Laser pointers or Red Dot Sight taped onto the top of a water gun.

* Personal Thoughts and Experience.
This idea was given to me by a friend. At first I thought it was smart however I later thought it was kinda stupid. Water Gun's aren't like Nerf Guns or Regular Guns it's better to aim at a 45 degree angle making it useless in most situations. If your close enough to aim straight you won't really need the laser i suppose. Still looks like a cool mod though.

3.Military/Combat like Vest which can hold 2 - 4 water bottles.

* Personal Thoughts and Experience.
Never done this before however I saw other people do this. The general idea of this is when equally match players are out of shots and need to pump the guy with the military vest will water bottles rush at you and just toss a load of a water at your face.

Re: Battle practicality of items such mask,laser and vest.

Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 7:18 pm
by the oncoming storm
paintball mask would be good for intimidation, but most will just aim for your chest

laser site, won't work well for the reasons you listed

Militarily vest, Useful if you must carry extra gear.

Tower Shield, you didn't list this but it would work, you can block shots from any direction.
I saw one made with pool noodles and plastic wrap once, it's cheap and should work well

Re: Battle practicality of items such mask,laser and vest.

Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 7:18 pm
by marauder
I hate paintball masks, even though I love paintball. I certainly wouldn't wear one for a watergun fight - but I won't knock you if you would. If it doesn't bother you then I can completely understand why you'd want one in a soakfest.

I like laser pointers - but not for aiming. I use them to distract people. It's very effective against n00bs.

I have my own waterballoon pouches made out of US Army ammo pouches. These are highly effective. I don't like to wear a lot of gear but these are amazing. I made some waterballoon coozies out of a foam pool noodle. I put a full balloon in the coozy and then put a few in each pouch. You can run, jump, climb trees, the balloons will not pop.

Re: Battle practicality of items such mask,laser and vest.

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 12:20 am
by soakinader
Yeah I would wear swim goggles maybe, but a paintball mask?

Re: Battle practicality of items such mask,laser and vest.

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 11:21 am
by SEAL
I wouldn't use a facemask because if you get shot in the face, you'd have trouble seeing through the droplets. This isn't a problem in OHK or OHS, because once you get hit you're out of the action anyway, but it would be a hindrance in soakfests. Laser pointers are kind of pointless (pun intended); I guess you could use them to distract people, but it's easy enough to distract someone without one. It'd probably work better at night, but I'd probably prefer a flashlight. Military vests can be very useful, and because of that I brought one, though I don't typically carry much equipment other than my blaster.

marauder: Do you have a guide on how to make such water balloon pouches?

Re: Battle practicality of items such mask,laser and vest.

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 12:56 pm
by HBWW
Anything that can hold water balloons/bottles properly is practical IMO. It's more difficult for balloons, but the solution I found was to use a fanny pack with a large fountain drink cup inside to protect the balloons. Haven't had a single premature balloon rupture in it yet.

No point in paintball masks IMO; they'll just obscure your vision and cause discomfort. I play WW to avoid having to wear those sorts of things.

Haven't used laser pointers yet. It's pretty obvious that they're not very useful for aiming, although I'm not completely sure how effective they are as distractions either. I'd rather take a flashlight.

Re: Battle practicality of items such mask,laser and vest.

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 2:48 pm
by zeda.beta
I actually carry water balloons in my sabots, and those are all sitting in pouches in a tac vest.
Masks take half of the fun out, besides everyone else's points that they obscure vision once you get hit.
Laser pointers are actually hilarious accurate if you make a sight where you can aim the laser pointer separately from the launcher, as it gives you a straight line to where your balloon is going to land. Never tried one on a water gun but at that range it would probably be pointless.

Re: Battle practicality of items such mask,laser and vest.

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 3:06 pm
by marauder
SEAL wrote:marauder: Do you have a guide on how to make such water balloon pouches?
I had all the pictures for the guide on my iphone, but I will take more photos in the future and put together a guide.

Re: Battle practicality of items such mask,laser and vest.

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 9:39 pm
by scottthewaterwarrior
Not even to go into the discomfort, masks are impractical for another reason. If you were the only one wearing one, it might be OK, but if everyone had one then we'd all look the same. One of the main reasons I didn't like airsoft was because I couldn't tell who my teammates were. They had on armbands with the team color, but there was know way to tell my friend I went with from the other 10 guys on our team. You might be able to tell by their cloths, but with that darn mask on it was pretty hard.

If I ever get good at throwing balloons I might consider making some of those holders like M4 has. SEAL, you basically just hollow out a pool noodle and then put the balloon in the middle.

Re: Battle practicality of items such mask,laser and vest.

Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2013 7:19 pm
by HBWW
There's only one way to get good at throwing balloons, which is why I've decided to carry them more often. Don't care enough about my stats to let go of the chance to practice and improve my throwing.

Re: Battle practicality of items such mask,laser and vest.

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2013 7:35 pm
by marauder
CA99 wrote:There's only one way to get good at throwing balloons, which is why I've decided to carry them more often. Don't care enough about my stats to let go of the chance to practice and improve my throwing.
Completely agree with this. I think it's good to practice and have fun!

Re: Battle practicality of items such mask,laser and vest.

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2013 8:25 pm
by DX
My early water wars (1997-2001) were pretty much all water balloons. It's surprising how much fun you can have with those things, for years. The type/quality of balloon you use affects accuracy more than experience, imo. When I had those thick, black balloons at Hydropoc, I almost hit Seal with one in the Valley of Death from Douchenator range. Their strength allowed for better grip and control out to about 120 ft. I ended up ditching the lax stick in favor of hand throwing, because they were flying the same distance, but more accurately by hand. The cheap balloons that came with the mobile fillers are awful, though. I have trouble throwing one of those half the distance of the other types.

The best type of water balloon, imo, is/were the camo-colored stuff sold at Party City in the mid-2000s. I still have an empty bag somewhere so I can try to find the brand. Those things were so strong that they could be launched out of a WBL at 50 PSI with no sabot.

Re: Battle practicality of items such mask,laser and vest.

Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2013 8:41 pm
by HBWW
I will be switching to Kaos brand of balloons. One hunch I have for judging the quality of them (without actually buying a whole bunch of different brands to test, because I can't get rid of them that quickly) is to tell how glossy the material is. I have a hunch that non-glossy balloons tend to perform much better; perhaps glossy ones are impure or have some sort of additive intended for aesthetics, not performance. I don't see any such gloss on CPS bladders, and barely notice some glossyiness on LRT at a cut. Anyway, I need to try out a bag of Ja-Ru balloons I got a while ago, which are non-glossy. The Kaos brand has worked pretty well for me too; I'm fairly sure that none of them ruptured prematurely at Soakemore when shooting from the Douchenator.

Will have to keep an eye out for better balloons. Getting more balloons for less money when they're all junk is only a waste of time. The money saved is not worth it at all considering how many balloons I use per year. (Which, on a good season like this one, may only total up to 300.)

I do understand the dislike of balloons. They are extremely difficult to get kills with alone, and they're extra stuff to carry that could slow you down. Still, it's an extra I like to have most of the time.