Soakemore! 2013 DC area water war

[marauder]

Wow, this sounds like one of the most intense wars yet despite not being as "hardcore." I really hope y'all get to do this again and I can come.

[the oncoming storm]

CA99 how did those homemades work for you did they work as well as you Ecspectated ?

[SEAL]

We did three rounds today. 20-minute OHS, which my team won by taking a hill. It wasn't that great a position, but the enemy didn't have a good approach and we creamed them. The next round was also OHS, but it was half an hour long, and more hardcore. We circled around the battlefield for half the battle, and once again took a hill. Once again, we destroyed the enemy, simply because, like last time, they didn't make a great approach. The last round, we decided to try something different; we realized that people have been fighting more defensively and not taking close hits due to us keeping personal stats. While they are cool, stats simply affect the way we fight, in a negative way. For the last round, we decided to screw individual stats and just keep track of total points to get which team won. It was much like the first Thunder Gulch rounds we ever did. The result was awesome, and I actually did a lot better than I did in previous rounds (only got hit once and got quite a few kills). As a matter of fact, in the first night rounds at this war, we didn't keep track of stats and I did really good there too! But yeah, the last round was a lot of fun. I actually dropped my car keys during the fight, and I might've had a heart attack if Scott didn't find them. I can't thank him enough for that.

We didn't get to have a night war last night, but we'd better do it tonight. We want to do CTF, which should be the most epic round yet if it turns out well. If we don't do it I'll seriously consider this trip a waste, haha.

the oncoming storm: I don't think the homemades worked that well. We asked how they were working, and CA99 and his friend said something like, "Well, they work..."

[HBWW]

They worked but need tweaking. The dip tubes worked, but the main trouble was padding while shooting or pumping.

[SEAL]

Last night was awesome. We had three night battles, which were almost all epic. We did CTF with so-called "medium" primaries (CPS 1000, 1200, 2100, Zook). My team won the first round because I managed to make a flag capture. It was actually really intense; I had CA99's friend distract the defense while I snuck in and nabbed the flag. They noticed me, and Scott took off in hot pursuit. I had a bit of a headache and wasn't running very fast, so Scott was gaining. I kept looking back until he was close enough, then I emptied like half of the PC of my CPS 1021 and shot him while running. When I made it back to our base, I found it under fire by the enemy attackers. DX charged right at me from the side, and I blasted the rest of my PC in his direction. We weren't sure if either of us hit one another, but I didn't feel anything so I ran over and dropped the flag in our base, winning the round.

We switched sides for the next battle. Unfortunately we let victory slip through our fingers in this battle. We were under a lot of pressure from the attackers, so I kept most of our troops at the base (though I sent CA99's friend out). Somehow they were able to break through our defenses (I'm still mad at myself because there was no good reason that should have happened) and DX swiped our flag. I quickly respawned and dashed over to the enemy base, hoping to get DX before he got there, and at the same time help CA99's friend eliminate the defense so I could grab the flag. What happened at the base was so chaotic that I don't really remember what happened, but all I know is that my plan didn't work and we lost the second round.

Lastly we did OHS around the school, but that wasn't quite as exciting. We camped out on a hill for most of the round, and when the enemy tried to attack, we made a kill on one of them, which was the only kill made in the round. It was still fun, but nothing compared to the CTF rounds.

Overall a fun war, with the best night rounds I've ever fought in. We will be leaving in a little while, and I will see about writing a war story and posting pictures once I get back.

[DX]

I'm leaving Scott's soon, had to transfer 19 gigs worth of footage. I'll try and tally up the stats later tonight if I still have enough energy left from the drive home. I do know that Scott got over 20 kills and that I got hit once, although Scott did get me twice in the team-stats-only round. Also got a flag capture, pure adrenaline!

[SEAL]

Got back about a half hour ago. Mostly an uneventful drive. Unfortunately I left too early to say goodbye to anyone except Scott and his parents, because everyone else was still asleep, haha. I would've liked to have gotten some footage as well; I even brought my USB drive.

I took exactly 51 pictures, though not all of them turned out well, so I have to weed through them. I also have two long (like 10 minutes) videos from the treehouse HTL round, if anyone wants to see them.

[scottthewaterwarrior]

This war was awesome! Still though, I doubt I would be up for hosting more then one of these a year, it was a lot more work then I thought it would be. It turned out better then I expected (most my local wars turn into soakfest after only a few rounds, let alone 3 days), but it could have gone better. Though for next year, I think I know how to make it work:
*Load all guns in car the night before - I took us way to long to get ready
*Fill guns before we leave on the day(s) we fight at Carderock - the only places to fill are nowhere near the good battle spots.
*Build a weather machine - it was too windy at the island.
*Go to bed earlier - I don't know about everyone else, but I really didn't get enough sleep for most of this.

Not only was this a great learning experience for how to host a way, I have leaned that I am most effective with a CPS 1000 even in anything goes rounds. I made at least half a dozen kills using it and most were against people using guns like 2000s and 2500s - three of them were even on Duxburian! The extra mobility I got from it far makes up for its lack of punch.

I don't know if I will be able to write up war stories for this war, I remember bits and pieces, but I was running on adrenaline for most of this so I don't remember too much beyond the fact that it was awesome. I have some videos though, mainly of the second night war, but I don't know how good quality they are. Maybe once I read other peoples war stories it will spark my memory. If someone can post the kills for each round that would really help.

One last thing, what did people think of the underbrush? Should I host the war earlier next year so there isn't as much? In some places it was nice, but about half of Carderock was unusable since it was way to overgrown.

This war was epic, I highly recommend anyone who can to come next year as it is bound to be even better!

[HBWW]

You were sleeping before I got to say thanks and goodbye, so heck, here it is. Thanks for hosting, for putting up with my frustrations and lack of preparation/foresight, for having us at your place, for showing us your awesome room, for the pizza, etc. I don't know when I'll be at another community war again, but this has been quite the experience.

After some thought again, my lack of preparation for Sycamore Island was my fault due to not planning the movement of equipment in and out, and not ensuring things were in the best spots to do so. That said, we did have to bring in a ton of equipment, more than two people could reasonably carry. (Two primaries, two homemades for naval assault, backpacks for naval assault, WBL, sabots, balloons/bucket) It took the most time out of everything, but I overpacked in general since I assumed we would play BBT-only and AP-only again. I think if we're not going to play them, we should just drop them from the playlist and exclude from future wars, period. They were great for MOAB, but if people don't want to, then we need to be clear on that because I obviously have very limited car space compared to others. Retrieving some things was simply too frustrating.

War stories and what not will take time. My 12k leaks but I never noticed earlier since I never had to have blasters hold full pressure for long hours at a time. A better solution for me would be to sacrifice an extra water bottle to carry, then deal with the fact that it won't top off the entire PC. This is why I like the Vindicator's design: Full capacity from the get-go without having to hold pressure. (Because it's apparently too much to ask for stock internals to hold a mere 30-40 PSI for a few hours without deterioration of the piping system/valves. Cheap bastards.)

Full war report to come later. For now I'll just throw together a list of the games I participated in:

Day 1 - Sycamore Island:
- Island 1HS
- Island Treehouse HTL (Assault)
- Island Beach Landing (Defense)
- Island Beach Landing (Assault)

Day 2 - Carderock Recreation + Westland Middle School:
- Woods 1HS
- Woods Casual 1HS
- Urban Nighttime 1HS CTF
- Urban Nighttime 1HS CTF (Bases swapped)
- Urban Nighttime 1HS

Edit: Scott, I may have left a 32 GB USB 3.0 flash drive at your house. It's dark-clear and says "Micro Center" on it. It's no big deal, but I'd like to know if you find it. I'll probably just let you keep it since I don't want to have to pay for it to get shipped back.

[marauder]

Sounds like it was amazing. I have one request. Please upload the raw videos for fanatics like myself. I get that we want to use only edited video to advertise, but a lot of us watch the raw videos, and I feel like if you don't upload it right away there is always the chance that it never gets on the internet. Thanks.

Also, were there any weapons restrictions for certain rounds? I'd like to see who was on whose side in each round and what guns they had.

[HBWW]

Urban Nighttime CTF was medium-only, nothing above a 1000/1200/2100 allowed. (Although if I recall correctly, someone tried to push this rule with a 1500 lol.)

[scottthewaterwarrior]

Well, so far, even my edited videos have only gotten 50 or so views. It takes so long to edit them I normally don't have the patience for it. I will see what I can do about uploading them raw, with a title screen being the only edit. Then maybe I'll get edited ones up later.

CA99: Yes, you left your flash drive in my computer since it was transferring my videos to it. Do you need any video files other then the stuff from MOAB? Shipping would be like a dollar so just let me know if you want any files since I'd much rather put them on that then have to transfer them to you via some file sharing site.
And I was awake when you left, I was just upstairs organizing my guns! I thought you knew that, so I was a little surprised when you left without telling me though. No hard feelings though, I have a bad habit of holding grudges, but not over something stupid like that.

SEAL: Did your brother leave a blue hoody here? There was one on a coat hook and I thought I remember Jon having one. If you don't need it now I can bring it at downpour.

[HBWW]

I'd like the MOAB footage, but the flash drive is less important lol. If all the footage I don't have is on it, mail it over I guess... Address will be PM'd. If you have a PayPal account I can easily send a few bucks on your way to cover for shipping and the time/trouble of getting it mailed. I'll also mention what videos I already have in the PM.

As for when I left, I was busy packing things into the car, my head was unclear from lack of sleep, and my buddy Trevor wanted to get going. I ended up just assuming you were sleeping and didn't want to wake. Sorry about that.

[SEAL]

I believe I also forgot to thank Scott for hosting, so... THANKS FOR HOSTING! And thanks again for finding my car keys. Yeah, that hoodie is my brother's. He found out that he'd forgotten it when we were in PA somewhere, haha. I don't know if he wants it right away, but he can PM you if he does.

I actually loved the underbrush at the island. You could actually pull off ambushes in it. What I'm not that fond of are low branches, which Carderock had. For longer rounds, it's not such a big deal, but for a 20-minute battle, I think they end up resulting in standoffs between the teams because neither side wants to try to attack through that stuff (because they will almost certainly end up dead).

As I said, I only have two videos from this war, both of which are from the treehouse HTL game, which wasn't particularly exciting except for the Douchenator shots (most of which I probably didn't get on camera). I didn't think anybody actually watches raw footage, but if enough interest is expressed I can see about uploading my videos. Like Scott, even my edited videos barely got any views. I have another channel for air raid sirens, and the three videos I have on there (2-3 minute clips of sirens going off) all have more views than all my water war videos combined.

As for weaponry restrictions, I didn't even bring anything less powerful than small CPS blasters. My weakest soaker was a CPS 1200 (until Firebird brought DX's Splashzooka), haha. I simply didn't have enough room for any other weapons, even while leaving my 2500 at home. The only restrictive rounds were the first night battles and the CTF rounds (small CPS-only), which were also at night. I ended up with only one primary since my 2000 had a bad pressure leak (I found the source though; turns out I missed a spot when I epoxied up the valve) and the pump handle on my 1500 snapped clean off just from pumping it. I was left with my trusty ol' 2700, which has still not failed me yet. I guess I should've brought my 2500. I wish water gun manufacturers would actually make good blasters so we don't have to rely on ~15-year-old relics all the time.

I'm going to start working on my war story today. When I finish it I will post it along with pictures. Oh, and what was up with Poseidon? He seemed so sure that he was going to come, then when the time came, he disappeared.

[DX]

I am testing a Community Vault, a download directory where I intend to post everything from community wars. I am still trying to cut the footage until only actual fighting remains (there is a LOT of footage). Right now, there is nothing in the vault, but the security and structure is set up. I'm trying to override the default upload limit with php.ini. Ben, Sam, and Brandon have access at the moment, but anyone can be added when it's finished.

I'm almost done compiling the round-by-round stats and double checking hits in the footage. Brandon emerged with the best record (barely) and Scott scored the most hits. Local Sam was hit the most and I was hit the least (barely). Brandon and I captured 1 flag each. 5 players had assists, a new category. If you and a teammate hit the same target at the same time, or it is unclear whose shot landed first, you share the hit as an assist. An assist is worth half a hit for a double kill, 1/3 a hit for a triple kill, etc.

Also, Ben will get a kick out of my footage from the last night round. Sam and Trevor, who were supposed to be watching the rear of our ambush, walked all the way around the school and into the front of the ambush, where I didn't expect teammates and thus attacked them, lol.

[HBWW]

I half expected you to be there, but we never setup a callsign or FoF identification, so I simply yelled "Friendly Fire!" when you ambushed lol.

[scottthewaterwarrior]

I wanted this to go better, but even the day of, was worried it would go much worse.

Just a few notes:
Round 6 - I think Bela was using the 2500 because Sam used the 3200 that round.

As far as naval wars go, ship-ship is actually less fun then beach landings. I tried it last year and for the most part people just made sure to stay out of range of each other. So long as it is not extremely windy (in which case forget it), I have a plan to make the beach landings go much more smoothly. I haven't been on in a while, so still have a lot of threads to catch up on, but after that I plan to make a new thread for naval wars to list my ideas on them.

And we all need to go to bed much earlier at future community wars. I was the host of this one, so I'll take the fall for not enforcing some sort of bedtime, but it really does need to be a group effort.

A lot of the problems I think were related to me/my friends. I am not very good at planning and had a scheduled, but a combination of the elements (wind mostly), lack of battle field scouting, and people (mostly my friends) taking forever to do things, it completely fell apart. The one thing that I am a little disappointed with the community for is that I said multiple times that I really didn't know what I was doing. I even asked advice from others who had hosted wars but they all just looked to me! Then, some of the times I actually knew what I was doing, people would question me! At this point, I think I know what to do for next year, but even so: when I ask for help, don't just stay silent and when I know what I'm doing don't question it unless you actually know what you are talking about.

In general though this event was fantastic, I will definitely do it (hopefully much better) next year. And thinks to Bela for coming up with the awesome event name!
Thanks for coming all!

[HBWW]

@DX: Forgot to mention this, but http has a 2 GB max upload limit. (Then the server conf itself probably has another.) Getting around it will require some other way of implementing that isn't your average upload form. I wonder what YouTube does exactly, or Google Drive. I'll search it up later.

@Scott: As mentioned earlier, you can just wipe the flash drive clean and put all of your footage on it. I forgot to Pm you my address so I'll get to that now.