2012 Community War

[scottthewaterwarrior]

atvan: That is correct. We'll probably have a few casual battles on the 27th, but nothing really serious.

Scott: Belisaurius told me that he'd be in NYC for his job on those dates, and he'll try to make it, but no promises. I don't think you guys are going through NYC, are you? I don't really think he would need a ride anyway.

We didn't last time, and from what I have heard about the traffic there I'd rather not if I can help it.
I hope I can get my 2500 camo'd before the event, I need to buy some camo cloth first though. Painting my Crickets are my main concern though, during they day I am more a run in and dodge fire kind of guy, but at night it would be nice to have black guns.

Last word was Bela can come, but it looks like my dad will have to stay in our second tent since that was the only way to convince his mom.

By the way, how level is the area? Is there a lot of uneven ground and rocks/sticks to trip on? I learned at Hydropocalypse that it is a bad idea to have night wars in an area with anything to trip on. I had a little 1 on 1 with Keith at the campsite and nearly sprained my ankle on day 2! If we are going to have night wars, we need to find a spot with out stuff to trip on because in the dark, you can't see those bumps from little rocks under the leaves

[SEAL]

The traffic can be a nightmare in the city, especially when you have these jerks who like to come within a few inches of hitting your car when they merge, just so you'll back off and let them on (because you often can't.). I personally don't think he'll be coming anyway, so you won't have to worry.
Black guns are probably more noticable at night than blasters that match the terrain. They're better than unpainted, but they still look different than the background, and that's what the human eye looks for. It's not really a huge difference, but if you use camo paint/cloth, it will also work in the daytime.

It's great that your friend can come. Hopefully your dad won't mind tent life too much, haha. In my opinion, it's not that much more uncomfortable than a regular bed, as long as you have good air mattresses.

The area is pretty level near the parking area, but in other places....less so. The first night we will probably camp near the parking area anyway, but if we do that all-night round that we were talking about, we would have to worry about tripping on stuff. I've been thinking about this for some time, and I'm still not sure how we can do this, unless we simply have the all-night battle near the parking area, which is a much smaller playing field. We should probably discuss the matter. I'd love to have an all-night war, but some of the areas are pretty dangerous at night. People can opt out of fighting in it, and just camp out near the main parking area, but that would leave us with less people. I'm willing to do it as long as there are enough people to make two decent-sized teams. Actually, I don't even think there'll be enough for that. None of the people I'm inviting will stick around for the battle, at least I'd imagine not (heck, they might not even be able to show up until Sunday.). We'd probably have enough for a 3 on 3, unless Scott and his friend decide not to do it, in which case I probably won't want to do it either, since we'll only be able to have a 2 on 2.

Thoughts?

[scottthewaterwarrior]

All night round? I have talked about doing something like that, but never seriously. Is that where you have to sleep in shifts or something? I'd personally not like to do an all night round, I doubt I could battle at all the next day. Maybe a battle till 2 in the morning though, that might be fun.

I want to know more about this before I make up my mind one way or the other.

Any ideas on how to paint guns? Segestion thread. What kind of paint, how to not jam the pumps? etc.
I kind of have my heart set on black, the paint is really just meant to be cosmetic, the fact that what I have in mind is better then their current state for night wars is just kind of a bonus.

[SEAL]

We discussed having an all-night round somewhere near the beginning of this thread. I know DX wants to do it, and so do I, but only if we have more than 4 people, because I can't see an all-night battle being worth it if we don't have more than that. We could do shifts, but once again, that would probably require more people. The way we'd do it is, set up two bases (with all our tents.) in different parts of the woods, preferrably so that each team doesn't know where the other's base is. Then we'd go at it. The gametype will most likely be OHS (OHK would be over too fast.), although CTF would be cool too (with glowsticks!). Each person would be equipped with a flashlight, just in case. I guess the game would be over when the sun starts to come up. We could do a compromise, and just do OHK, therefore it would be over quicker and we could sleep longer. That's the one thing I'm a bit worried about, that I'll be too tired to fight the next day.

Ultimately though, we should probably just talk it over when the time comes.

As for painting, when I did my 2700, I just covered the nozzles with spare water balloons, and sprayed the whole thing down. First I gave it a coat of brown, since I couldn't find olive drab paint for plastic. Then once the brown paint had dried, I sprayed green in random places to make a crude camo pattern. I hoped that the green paint would stick to the brown, but some chips have already appeared. I guess that can only be expected given the abuse that my blasters tend to go through.

Edit: atvan, if you're going to ask your parents whether or not you can come, you'd better do it soon. Letting them know at the last second doesn't usually work that well. Tell them that you'll have a great time, and not to worry about anything, since we do this all the time, and everyone always has a blast.

[atvan]

They know about it and all, but this month s unusually busy and they would probably just stress out if I brought it up at the wrong time. Let's just say it's a delicate process.

[DX]

I wouldn't want to do the all-nighter with less than 6v6. You need to have enough people to send out on attack and defend your base. Where it takes place depends on how dark it gets at the park. As long as there is enough light, the cliffs/logs/rocks are less of an issue. But, if it's as dark as Camp Wilson was, that could be a problem. It looks like we will be lucky to get 4v4 in serious players.

DC traffic blows New York traffic out of the water. NYC is not really that bad. Because it's so large, you have a lot of route options and can avoid the worst of the rush if you plan ahead. If Nick wants to come, I can pick him up in the city wherever.

Tents are comfortable, even without a sleeping pad if you set up on something soft. If it weren't for bears and bugs, I'd do open air camping, which is more fun than being in a tent.

[scottthewaterwarrior]

I am not willing to do an all night battle, mainly because I would be too tired to fight the next day. I'm not even sure if you guys could do it ether. In past wars, after a day of battling, every one seems pretty wiped, and even after a good nights sleep are no longer performing 100% the next day. Heck, on Saturday night at Hydropocalypse I tried to get every one to night war but every one but one of SEAL's brothers said they were too tired.

I have given it some thought though and came up with an idea, we could set up our tents in different locations (defiantly make sure we don't know where the others are), we set alarms to get us up at 3:00am, then we battle till the sun comes up. I would say 2:00am, but I really don't think that any of us are going to be able to battle for more then a couple hours at a time. I think OHS sounds good, though I do want to make one more rule that you can't shoot people in there tents! If we really want, we can have SEAL's Electro storm and a few squirt guns at each teams base for if we need to ambush sleeping people, but I don't want my tent all wet (Though I'm not sure why any one would be asleep in a tent in the middle of a battle).

Also, are there bears where we are going? Because if their are then we need to make sure we have a way of putting food up in trees, I'm not about to wake up at 3 in the morning and battle on an empty stomach. When I don't eat for about two hours I get pretty hard to be around and might club someone with my gun if they make me mad! (Only half joking, I have a short fuse when hungry.)

[DX]

There are definitely bears, which is why I plan to keep my food in the car.

The way to do an all night battle is to eat like you're me during the height of Spring Track. 6,000+ calories will keep you up all night, no problem. Knowing this community though, we will probably just have a night battle at normal hours between the tents, which I'm fine with.

[SEAL]

Alright, so I guess the all-night war is off. I don't really think it'll be that much fun with so few people anyway. We can of course do something similar, which we can discuss when the time rolls around. If the moon isn't full (haven't checked.), then it probably will be pretty dark, although the lights of Kingston might help a bit.

There are black bears around here. I've seen a mother with 3 cubs at Wilson. Generally though, they usually avoid people; they're not like grizzlies. I would strongly advise storing food in the cars.

atvan: That may be the case, but we've got less than a week before this. It's much worse to spring it upon them at the last minute. Wait until they're in a good mood, then bring it up!

[SEAL]

Update/Bump:

Right, so it looks like a friend of mine will be coming, so that means I'll be bringing at least 3 people instead of 2. I have yet to hear back from another friend, and my cousin said he'd ask his parents; I haven't heard back from them either.

we've got less than a week before this.

Meant to say less than two weeks, haha. Now we have just over a week to go. atvan, I hope you have an answer soon. It would be nice to get an attendance list so we know how much food to get. My parents will buy everyone pizza again for Saturday night, and bagels/sandwiches for Sat. and Sunday morning. For all other meals, it's up to you to bring food.

Attendance list so far:
DX
Scott+1
Me (SEAL)+3

Although hopefully I'll be able to get a few more people, even if just on one of the days. We can get more people than last year, but we need a little more enthusiasam.

[atvan]

I won't be able to make it. Sorry guys.

[SEAL]

That sucks. How come? We're down to 3 community members now... We should still get at least 7-8 people, but that ruins the goal of having more people with each successive year. I promise that we'll still have a good time; I have a few ideas for good games that we can play.

The sad thing is, some of the people I invited said that they could've came, but were busy on the planned dates. I made that Doodle calendar for a reason!

[scottthewaterwarrior]

How big is the parking lot? My dad is now thinking about bringing my grandpa's RV so he can be "with us" but not have to stay in a tent. I think he was joking, but my grandpa says he wants to come too! I would still like to stay in a tent though even if we do bring the RV. I really wish I could get more people to come, but Bela is the only one with interest that is going to be in town then. I am almost thinking we should reschedule the whole thing to a different time since so few people can make it. Though unless we get some last minute cancellations I don't want to do that, even 3 vs. 3 is still very fun.

Atvan I am also curios why you can't come, if you are at all on the way we could even pick you up!

[DX]

Another date would be more ideal (I am skipping an important Nerf war and my mother's birthday for Downpour), but I am still a go if Seal does not want to change it. 4v4 is acceptable, but I'm not that enthused about 3v3. Each extra person actually makes a large difference on how the games will play out.

[SEAL]

I'm fine with another date, but the problem is, I already told everyone that we were having it on the 28th-29th. Also, I might not be able to get as many people (namely my cousins.) if we do it on another date, since we'd be sort of combining it with my brothers' birthday party if we do it on the dates we have planned. It's possible to change it though; we just have to come together and make a decision as soon as possible. I guess sometime in August would be favorable, just like last year. We would need to find out how many people would be available on which dates, but that's what I tried with the Doodle calendar, and only 2 or 3 people actually used it.

I'm pretty sure that we'll have at least 8 people, which would be about the same as last year, just with less community members. Like I said, we'll have to think up another date FAST if we want to make a change, and find out whether or not more people actually can come.

Scott: The parking lot isn't that big, but it'll probably fit an RV, as long as it's not one of those gigantic fifth-wheel trailers or bus-based (Class A) campers. I don't know if they allow RVs though (but I don't see why not.).

[atvan]

I made the decision based on various things, but being extremely busy at the end of summer is one of them. Sorry guys, just decided it was too muchto do.

A later date would be worse by far though.

[scottthewaterwarrior]

OK, from what it sounds, I think we should just keep the current date. It seams that even if we chose a different date, the attendance rate doesn't go up and might go down. The 27-29th sounds like our best date.

The camper is 27ft long, so if you think that might be too big, please let me know now. The thing only gets like 7mpg so being an environmentalist I am really happy that my dad has decided to take it to NY. Don't get me wrong, I love going RVing, but to places much closer so I don't feel like we are setting an oil field on fire.

[SEAL]

I think that's probably a good idea. Unless of course, DX feels bad about missing his mom's birthday, in which case we can move it. DX, I guess it's your call. I personally think that we'll get about the same number of people either way.

I don't think 27 feet is too bad. Is it a trailer, or a motorhome?

[Radiodad]

Hey Seal,
This is Scott's Dad... I just wanted to get a little more info about the campsite. I heard that it is basically a dirt parking lot, and then trail(s) into the woods, and we would set up our tent wherever we want. Any source of drinking water? Bring shovels for the late night 'restroom' breaks? Is it possible to have a campfire? I guess that letting me know the name of the park would help, so that I could take an overhead look at it via Google Maps.
Oh - to answer your question, the camper is a 27' motorhome.
Thanks.

[SEAL]

Hi, welcome to WaterWar.net!
You are pretty much correct about the location. There actually aren't really any water sources there, but my parents will supply us with bottled water, Gatorade, etc. Just like last year. I guess you could bring a shovel, haha. If you do bring the camper though, everyone could use that for "No. 2", as long as you don't mind. Lots of people have campfires there, so I don't see why we couldn't have one. The name of the park is Onteora Lake, and information on it can be found here: http://www.waterwar.net/site_wwn/board/topic5552.html On Sunday morning, we will pack our gear and go over to Dug Hill, the same place that we had it last year.

I think a motorhome would be fine. If it was a trailer, you might have trouble manuvering it in the parking lot. If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask.