The Ultimate "Marks" Topic

[DX]

Recently, I catalogued every water gun I have for the purpose of selling many of them (still waiting for a big box of guns to come in before it's ready). The toughest part and one that remains ongoing for some guns is figuring out what marks I have. Same goes for the Ebay Marketwatch project, which is now running. Determining some of those marks has been frustrating because the ones that aren't immediately obvious usually lack data or have uncertain data.

I think that it's time for us to come together as a community and decide, once and for all, what should constitute a separate "mark" for a water gun, and to write a list of all the marks that the community considers "canon", along with their attributes. It would be really nice to have all this information in one place, so if someone asks what version they have, we can point them to one topic that has all the information, updated regularly that anyone may contribute to.

Before listing any models though, the fundamental question is, what is required to split a model into multiple marks and when should it matter? Right now, these are some of the common differences between guns with examples of each:

Re-release - SS 300 vs XP 300
Re-color - XP 150 original vs XP 150 classic series
Change of firing system - SS 50's pinch valves vs SS 50 anniversary edition's actual triggers
Sticker placement - screw side CPS 1500s vs clean side 1500s
Sticker text - "air pressure super soaker" vs "constant pressure super soaker" on CPS 2000s
Sticker type - older style vs newer style sticker on CPS 3200s
PC size - rubber bladder larger in CPS 2100 MK1 vs MK2 and 3
PC capacity - CPS 2000 MK1 bladder stretching farther and holding more water than MK2
PC design - CPS 1000 pc cases not always being interchangeable
Screw position - CPS 2100s with different screw port configurations
Soaker height - CPS 2100 MK1s physically taller than other 2100s
Performance - CPS 2100 MK1s shooting farther than other 2100s
HPL - CPS 1200 MK1s taking more balloons than MK2s despite same casing color
Pump caps - CPS 2100 MK1 and MK3 pump caps unglued vs MK2 caps glued
Trigger strength - CPS 4100 MK1 strong triggers vs MK2 weaklings
Nozzle covers - CPS 2100 MK2 cover is fake and part of the casing vs others screw right off
Nozzle markings - CPS 2500 MK1 nozzles unmarked vs MK2 marked
Reservoirs - CPS 2100 reservoir backs consistently different
Glued internals - Different XP 310 marks have some weird shit going on inside

Obviously, we don't have to create a new mark for every little detail that differs in a single model. Thus, I think we should ditch the ones that don't matter and keep the ones that do. By "mattering" or not, I usually mean differences that impact performance, ability to mod, durability, etc. These are the guns where you notice the differences and there are usually several major ones.

So what do you think? What should qualify as a "mark"?

[Nitro123PG]

I think that performance differences are seperate marks, and aesthetic differences should be counted as the same mark.

[atvan]

On larami blasters, the aestetics usually signalled some internal change. Then MD3ks and 2ks arived. However, there are some differences that are purely aestetic that are worthy of note as seperate marks. Also, there are probably multiple marks of current blasters, but none of us bother to buy more than one.

[DX]

What an enthusiastic response, guys

[atvan]

We think of you as the person who would know the most about it; we trust your judgement better than our own.

[marauder]

I think of a mark as a physical variant. So, I say count all the options except stickers. Stickers are applied afterward and aren't as in your face as the actual colors of the plastic.

Colors don't, in and of themselves, change performance, but they are very noticeable. Take the SC 500 and 600 for instance. We know that there is a performance difference between mks 1 and 2 with mk2 being superior in both instances. There are also, rarer (2000 edition?) 500s and 600s which were made in completely different color schemes. We do not have the stats on these recolored versions to determine how they compare. It's just a lot easier to call these rare brightly colored versions mk3.


But then... I'm thinking about the rereleased XP 70s, 270s, 310s, Max D 5000s, 6000s, XP 20s, etc. who all got recolored. And now I'm not so sure colors should count in and of themselves. The purple/blue/green XP 70 has internal differences from the original, it's not just colors. The rereleased XP 20s are the same on the inside as the originals. I am not sure about the other guns. Do we make each additional coloring a mk? I am not sure. It makes sense when there are only a few color schemes (see SC 500, SC 600), but what about when there's 5 different color variations like with the MD 6000? Something Wetmonkey told me at the war stuck with me, "we probably only know 60% of all the color variations out there."

Ultimately, we need to find out more. We need to open up the different versions, we need to check performances. I tested out 6 SC 600s to determine performance differences between mks 1 and 2. It will be difficult to do this with all the guns out there, but it's something we should try for.


Here's how I handle mk variation at Hydrowar: http://hydrowar.com/cps2100.html
http://hydrowar.com/cps1000.html
http://hydrowar.com/cps1200.html

I did A LOT of testing.