8th May saw my first post lock down return to the field after the second COVID peak. I had originally intended to go to April's event but it turns out that ICU shifts the night before events isn't such a good idea. I reviewed my kit again ahead of May with a slightly heavier rig in mind.
Splatoon's terrain is mostly pseudo-urban with a container structure dominating the centre of the top field with cars and other odds and sods providing cover on the lower tier. They have a couple of FFS like side fields with woods but we spend most of the time there in the container space. With April, I opted for a lighter load out for transport considerations but after I realised that some Green Cloaks events will be on later in the year, I bought a huge 28" suitcase and rifle back to increase my public transport carry capacity so I could get out and about with more gear. To that end, I went heavier for the May event.
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| April's load out as detailed in my last post |
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| May's load out |
So this is back to my more traditional 18 pattern with a Haversack and Talon magazine pouches up front. It has everything the April equipment load has but with key additions.
The Haversack can carry a full day's fighting load of food, tools, smokes and spare ammo. I've added the helmet for filming with as well as a trauma pouch (because it's cool!). The battle belt at the core has space for an addtional 2 Talon hex stack pouches when I finally get around to buying the remaining Talon magazines I need. The 18 pattern can be donned and doffed like a jacket so it doesn't take long to get access to things in the pack.
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| (C) 2021 Games of Foam, Reused with permission |
You get a sense of how everything hangs together in this photo taken by the Games of Foam event organisers. It does give me a little bit of a turtle soft shell at the back with the haversack but no worse than the guys carrying HPA bottles. The great thing about that shot, though, is that I was wearing my DPM Goretex jacket because of the rain and the wind earlier in the day. It doesn't get used very often and gets thrown on over my DPM work shirt with all it's patches and colour. It makes the gear look a lot more low profile than if I had bare skin and velcro pathces all over my arms.
Kit Review:
In the main, the kit isn't anything new with most of it having been field tested before the plague. The new shoulder pads did a good job of distributing weight and providing excellent wiring channels for my water, comms and slings. They're also a great spot to grip when lifting the rig and putting it on.
The major problem I had is that the battle belt panel was sitting too high to comfortably use the side arm holster or the dart dump pouch. They're sitting really high up in my arm pit and that's really annoying. I'm looking at ways to effectively drop the belt line but most of them don't really work while retaining stability in the system and access.
In my reflections on shingles back in October 2019, I took a detour via battle belts and it occurred to me that I could kill two birds with one stone here. One of the draw backs to the 18 Pattern and Haversack that I have here is that it's very tricky to get access to the pack when I'm wearing my gear. I also don't have a lighter, skirmish option in the event I'm on screening duty or similar. However, when I built Arashi, my LARP heavy fighter I used a battle belt under the vest to allow me the option to have super-heavy and lighter options in a single load out. Now, the battle belt I used for Arashi is the battle belt that I'm using to stabilise the 18 pattern here and I think I'll leave it there. What I can do, however, is place a narrower, 'Skirmish Belt' under the battle belt above and possibly slightly over the duty belt on the waist. On that, I can drop the regular access items like the dump pouch, side arm and possibly water bottle. Then the battle belt as is can be filled with more Talon magazines and possibly low frequency access pouches for things like smokes and thunder flashes. I have skirmish belt prototype kicking around from a discussion with a fellow BritNerfer back during the worst of the plague so I'll pull that out and see what I can get done with it.
Blaster Review:
I took the Gryphon and the Caliburn down to site. I used the Cali to drop a few pot shots at folks but quickly returned to the realisation that I can't function with manual prime blasters. I need to be able to put a burst of shots on target or to be able to suppress a position. I'm not looking to take one or two shots on target. If I'm throwing foam in your direction, it's not because I want to tag you but because I want your head down while someone moves. If I tag you, it's a bonus. I can't do that with single shot.
First and foremost, we need to solve the Merlin motor melting problem in dual stage cages. After seeing a dual stage Gryphon in the field yesterday, I honestly think that if we solve the motor durability issues, it's going to supplant HPA as my preferred blaster technology. If we can get reliable, durable 250FPS at semi-automatic then those flywheel systems don't have anything like the reliability problems the HPA queens do. I found with the Gryphon yesterday that, once again, I could throw whatever crap darts I wanted to into the mag and it would just feed. I had a couple of stoppages from soiled darts in the Talon itself but a couple of taps on the bottom against the nearest container or piece of cover fixed that problem. If we can't solve brushed motors then dual stage brushless might be the next thing to poke but I want to keep things as simple as possible.
Next, half darts are king. Not because they are necessarily better than full lengths - they get lower FPS in flywheels - but because they are much, much more space efficient. I can carry the same number of darts in the half the space as full lengths. If I'm putting bulk foam on target then so long as they can reach the target, accuracy is less of an issue. I think I saw maybe fewer than 30 full length darts yesterday during my sweeps and it's clear that it's becoming the dominating form factor.
Long term, I want to get a dual stage Tempus built with a cooling system for the motors to prevent failure that will replace the Gryphon as my line rifle for these sorts of games. 250FPS semi-auto in a rifle form factor is the dream. I'll print it in full PETG and go the whole hog. The Gryphon might still have to tag along at places like Splatoon, however, since 250FPS up close in buildings is a bit impolite. The Caliburn still has a special place in my heart so I think I'll still HPA it as planned and use it for a 300FPS single shot sniper rifle. My little stock Firestrike is still going strong as my sidearm for use in confined spaces. If the Gecko supported straight Talons then I'd probably have replaced it by now but it doesn't so the Firestrike is safe for now.
Persepectives:
It was great to be back in the field with my fellow foam flingers. I think a lot of us are getting back into the swing of events with some problems with rules communication and just general low energy in places but that's to be expected after the system shock that has been COVID. There are a number of technical challenges that have cropped back up that we need to get back to solving - particularly the motor heating problem - and that will give us the boost to get back to iterating and developing. Above all, the community spirit remains strong, we're all still looking out for each other and we'll be seeing one another more frequently as the tide recedes and events spin back up.
Final thought: I'm really going to need to look at my sub-130FPS equipment at some point because I just realised that I've spent 18 months solely focusing on the higher end stuff because of the way games have been run over the last year. Yikes!
