What do you guys think of mag fed?

[SlamSlayer]

"http://s564.photobucket.com/user/SlamSlayer/media/Paintball/1980454_10203925480477917_2704175893047056319_o_zp selzk7v7x.jpg.html"
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What you guys are looking at are .68 caliber mag fed paintball guns. The same caliber the hopper fed guns, I'm sure you guys think of when you hear paintball, shoot. Mag fed has recently blown up in the past few years in paintball. More and more companies are dip their toes into it, giving it legitimate company backing. And more and more people are joining in this cheaper way to play.

While shooting normal paint still has the same roughly 50 yard range your used to, this can be extended with the use of an Apex tip to closer to 80 yards if not more. Which works exactly like a hop up except it goes on the tip of your barrel and looks like a silencer.
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Meanwhile First Strike paintballs, which can only be used in a mag fed marker, extend your range to close to TWO HUNDRED YARDS. With their effective range hovering around 100 yards, but we have recorded shots around 150 yards. It takes a bit of skill and luck at that range.*

Heres some videos

First off this video will let you see the difference between normal paint (in a smoothbore barrel) vs First Strike (in both a smoothbore AND rifled barrel) at about 135 feet. Approaching the maximum range for normal paint. This particular rifled barrel (the last test) he's using is actually one of the worth for first strike lol. Its too much of a tight bore.

Lapco FSR First Strike Rifled Barrel Review - Increase range & accuracy on your paintball gun! - YouTube

Here is the ORIGINAL product demo video from the company. This was before rifled barrels were even known as a thing for these rounds lol. He's using a T4.0 which wasn't released yet at the time, and comes with a smooth bore barrel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zOSozQNURI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjPx...lucd3b6Hmcxn6Q
More companies are also coming out with their own versions of this "Shaped Projectile" ammo.



We also have more brands of the shaped rounds coming out.




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Another more recent bit of tech, which is actually a revival of old tech, mechanical full auto. This is becoming a staple in the bullet point features on future mag fed markers. Select fire, semi and full auto, all mechanical with zero batteries. *The M17 is the first to make use of this. This is not a bouncing "response trigger", this is true full auto.
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Whats everyones honest opinion?

[siggypoo]

Been around for rather a long time now. Good for woodsballers, I guess, but I'm into airsoft. Hence, my membership at this fine site and not on a paintball site.


Location: YYZ VOR 062 radial, 17.5 DME FL5280

[ThunderCactus]

I still don't see anyone in paintball using gen 3 night vision

[Red Dot]

I think it's pretty cool but costs wise it is very expensive for the gear and especially if you get into shaped rounds.

Plus it still suffers from misfeeding leading to internal breaks which would fuck up all your other shots and the mess of paintball in general.

I would enjoy this version of paintball much more than speedball but with how much cheaper it is to get into airsoft and the dependability of a 6mm BB to the 68 calibre paintball with no gooey paint to clean up made airsoft a clear winner in my opinion for me.

[SlamSlayer]

Misfeeding isn't as bad as you think. I mean it still can still happen, but it depends on the ammo and marker. For example, while those shaped rounds can occasionally jam (realistic? Yeah. But annoying haha), they won't pop because they did. They're hard than normal paint.

The Rap4 468 rifle (The first picture with the box magazine) has what they call a lok-bolt. Its an anti chop feature that prevents the marker from firing unless the round is fully seated. Basically you have to clear the jam like real steel, without the mess of paintball.

They also have the PTR coming out (Professional Training Rifle) which is designed to operate with those shaped rounds over paintballs. Like real steel, it will function with a closed bolt, function forward assist to clear the jams, the works.

Airsoft will ALWAYS have paintball beat when it comes to cost of entry lol. But paintball mag fed has definitely dropped the cost of play down and its still coming down. Aside from ammo, the gear cost about the same. Most of the guns pictured are in the Three to Four hundred dollar range stock.

[lurkingknight]

on the day you sign up to an airsoft site, your first and only post, you ask what our opinion is of paintball kit?



I suppose it's the next evolution in paintball, but you'd have to get a large playerbase to jump into it to make it viable.

80yard range isn't insignificant, but well tuned airsoft rifles can already achieve that, it seems that paintball is trying to catchup in that respect. The problem with paintball is the paint. A soft projectile breaking at the wrong time can be disastrous for gear. Cleanup is filthy. I'm not a fan of any paintball aside from the shooting people aspect, and that I get in spades with airsoft, without the mess.

[SlamSlayer]

I ask only because a lot of mag fed players show their equipment to airsoft players at the local hybrid fields, and get a surprised response. The airsoft players had no idea this kind of paintball exists. So I thought I'd take to the forum, globally and nationally, and see how true this is. So far of all the forums I've posted this on, the general response is total surprise.

The best conversation I got out of it was on the airsoft sniper forums, where people were shocked that first strike could out shoot their airsoft sniper set ups, and they were very interested in the bullet shaped rounds. Other forums gave me generally positive oh cool responses. Plenty of yeah but its not airsoft. And of course plenty of wtf is this crap. But overall, most airsofters didn't know this existed.

So I'm not here to poach players or start things. Just to generally ask opinions from the og milsim guys more or less and have a conversation on shooting sports. What to you think?

Paint will always be part of the game, thats why its paintball lol. Its not as bad as you think though. I know plenty of people, myself included, who's gear still looks pretty new because we take care of it properly. Wash the bdus correctly and take care of our markers. Of course if you don't, you gear is gonna get fudged pretty fast from paint build up.

[MultipleParadox]

My first reaction was "why this thread"? You answered that already, but I still ask myself, why this thread? I mean, it's ok your question is legitimate but it doesn't quite belong here in my opinion, but that's all it is, an opinion

That said, Yeah lots of us knew about mag fed PB guns. Others didn't, but it doesn't really matters I think

It solves only one problem of PB. My biggest turn off of PB over Airsoft: community and type of player you see at games is nowhere close the same, Airsoft players being a much more tightly knitted group

No run and gun in Airsoft while I saw plenty in PB

More maturity in general

Paint screwing Potentially expensive gear

Paint emptying the wallet faster than pretty much everything

And so on

So in the end, nope, not impressed

Keep in mind these are just my opinions based on my experience and observations

[Wilkie]

It's been years since I played with first strike rounds. I loved it back in the day, but I will never go back to paintball. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with the game, but airsoft is a better game

[ThunderCactus]

I've known about the mag-fed markers for about 6 years, I didn't think it was so "new"

For the record, most airsoft "snipers" are complete idiots. It's actually quite rare to come across one that actually knows how to take advantage of the physics in airsoft.
IE: if they're running a long barrel with the excuse of it getting better range and accuracy, they are an idiot.

As for the shaped rounds, they are completely useless in airsoft. I'm amazed you actually use them in paintball.
Rifling is specifically meant to stabilize high velocity projectiles, and although it does have a limited effect on accuracy in slow velocity projectiles, it doesn't outperform hopup by a REALLY wide margin. A few people have tried the shaped rounds, despite the fact they work very poorly in theory, they're even worse in practice.
Due to the softness of the paintballs you wouldn't be able to use a standard hopup, but you might be able to get away with a long ER-hop type setup. I'd also be amazed if that technology hasn't be transferred over to paintball yet.

If I DID play paintball, this is definitely what I would use. But that being said, how often do you guys do night games or play in winter?
Not that paintball is inferior, I just find it less flexible.

[SlamSlayer]

Rifling in paintball was always questionable. You had people who swore by it, and people like myself who knew better lol. Companies came out with "straight" rifling. Which were basically channels in the barrels designed to create an even airflow runway around the ball. You know, marketing and hype. Hammerhead is more or less the only big company left that does and swears rifling works. The problem is for it to even have ANY affect on the ball, you need paint of a very specific size. So its kind of largely useless.

When first strikes first came out, people were pretty skeptical. "Sniper" rounds had been attempted before. Football shaped paintballs, plastic fins (like the back of a nerf football) that you glued to your paint. They came and went because they didn't work or weren't practical. First Strikes came out in 08 and are now largely accepted at fields all over (though it was an uphill battle). There are very few fields that don't allow them, and even those are now coming around. They're here to stay, they work. With a max travel distance of 177 yards and a max effective useful accurate range of 150 yards, they definitely work (all at 300fps of course).

They weren't designed for rifled barrels though. Thats why they have fins, they spin themselves. Some people decided to try it anyway. Turns out it increases their performance in every way by quite a lot. This is well documented and factual at this point. You can see it in the videos I posted Rifled barrels are now standard for first strike.

As far as night games go. Yeah we have 3 day events that last all weekend and often ONE of those nights are a designated play time. I don't know how many people are utilizing the expensive military grade stuff. But night vision is most definitely used. Funny enough, a lot of people take that CoD special edition NVG and mod that to work with their goggles. I personally don't do night games, no NVG type set up lol. So I can't offer too much commentary on it. Except Ive seen pictures of expensive set ups from games in the past. I think scopes on the markers are a bit more popular the helmet mounts and what not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn8l...ature=youtu.be






And as far as winter goes, ALL THE TIME. I LOVE snow games.

[Dynamo]

Originally Posted by ThunderCactus

I've known about the mag-fed markers for about 6 years, I didn't think it was so "new"

For the record, most airsoft "snipers" are complete idiots. It's actually quite rare to come across one that actually knows how to take advantage of the physics in airsoft.
IE: if they're running a long barrel with the excuse of it getting better range and accuracy, they are an idiot.

As for the shaped rounds, they are completely useless in airsoft. I'm amazed you actually use them in paintball.
Rifling is specifically meant to stabilize high velocity projectiles, and although it does have a limited effect on accuracy in slow velocity projectiles, it doesn't outperform hopup by a REALLY wide margin. A few people have tried the shaped rounds, despite the fact they work very poorly in theory, they're even worse in practice.
Due to the softness of the paintballs you wouldn't be able to use a standard hopup, but you might be able to get away with a long ER-hop type setup. I'd also be amazed if that technology hasn't be transferred over to paintball yet.

If I DID play paintball, this is definitely what I would use. But that being said, how often do you guys do night games or play in winter?
Not that paintball is inferior, I just find it less flexible.

you can't spin a projectile that has a liquid center. the shaped paintballs are simply "fin stabilized" there is no rifling.

[SlamSlayer]

Originally Posted by MultipleParadox

My first reaction was "why this thread"? You answered that already, but I still ask myself, why this thread? I mean, it's ok your question is legitimate but it doesn't quite belong here in my opinion, but that's all it is, an opinion

That said, Yeah lots of us knew about mag fed PB guns. Others didn't, but it doesn't really matters I think

It solves only one problem of PB. My biggest turn off of PB over Airsoft: community and type of player you see at games is nowhere close the same, Airsoft players being a much more tightly knitted group

No run and gun in Airsoft while I saw plenty in PB

More maturity in general

Paint screwing Potentially expensive gear

Paint emptying the wallet faster than pretty much everything

And so on

So in the end, nope, not impressed

Keep in mind these are just my opinions based on my experience and observations

Thats the funny thing. Both sides always have EXACTLY the same things to say about each other when it comes to the negative lol.

[SlamSlayer]

Originally Posted by Dynamo

you can't spin a projectile that has a liquid center. the shaped paintballs are simply "fin stabilized" there is no rifling.

Well yeah, rifling on normal paint = useless.
Rifling on First Strike (even though they already have kind of rifled fins to stabilize them) work amazing. They weren't designed with rifled barrels in mind. Its just a happy accident I guess.

I'll post it again (its in the original post). Ive even started the video at the correct spot lol. First, you'll see a grouping of First Strike through a normal smoothbore barrel at 135 feed. Much better than normal paint (which he shows right before this if you want to rewind a bit), but could be better. Then he throws on a lapco rifled first strike barrel (which is a TERRIBLE barrel btw) and watch how tight the grouping gets. A better barrel would get even tighter results.

And yes they ARE spinning. The fins are SPIRALED. Basically after tests it was discovered that in a smooth bore barrel, first strikes won't spin until AFTER they exit the barrel and catch the wind essentially. The rifled barrel pre spins them so to speak. Which tightens up accuracy as they aren't "winding up" mid flight and wobbling off course. Thats why there is such a drastic difference between the rifled and smootbore barrel grouping.

And furthermore, the macyworks shaped projectile pictured above in the original post has NO fins as you can see. That compression band in the middle helps it grip the riffling in the barrels for maximum spin.

http://youtu.be/Ky2gRvlXyts?t=5m10s

[ThunderCactus]

With heavier rounds you have better potential for more range over airsoft, it's the deformation of the round in flight that really holds you back. I really do think you'd get a lot better range and accuracy with backspin as long as you could stop the rounds from deforming so much.
We're using tiny 6mm pellets that weight 0.30g and we're sending them very accurately out to 260ft.
Would be a matter of mass vs drag, but you'll never send a low velocity spheroid as far with rifling as you will with hopup. The rifling only stabilizes it axially to a limited extent so it doesn't tumble in flight. Hopup has the effect of stabilizing a spheroid and making it lift at low velocities.