Adolf Hamster

i can see where you're coming from, for the most part that's how i've done things. never cared much about the winning side of it, indeed it's a rare occasion i even know wether or not the team i'm on has actually won whatever the objective is. however after all the care an attention you put into getting into a decent spot and getting a good shot off it's terribly disheartening for it to have been wasted by a failure of the target to follow simple rules. ha, you caught me before i even typed it. i guess for me at least it's just depressing how incapable people are of following even the simplest of instructions. needless to say my annoyance at [insert annoying airsoft thing] is exponentially proportional to how long they've been playing (and by extension should know better). wish i had your luck, in the decade or so i've been at this i can only remember one game that didn't feature a single instance of any of the usual suspects (irony being the only non-hpa gun there was a gbbr, take that stereotypes), hell some places i've played at you'd call it a good day if more than half of the players were playing decently.

a fair point, and indeed it is all too common. not sure if a site that would wield the banhammer regularly (or in many cases at all) would necessarily get more customers, but they sure would get the same customers coming back. see herein lies the problem, there are elements of this hobby that are indeed unfixable, and the longer i've been playing the more and more it's putting me off because "oh someone's got godmode again" or "yep, someone's running spicy again" or "someone's hosing everything in sight again", nothing out of the ordinary, all the same stuff that annoys us all and happens all the time, which is kinda the point. and while i'd like to explore potential options to fix these issues, it's ultimately me being in denial that the only real solution is to just not play the game, which sucks because a good day with a good crowd this hobby is amazing fun. yeah i wasn't objecting to it being a general statement, i was mourning the truth of it being a general statement.

a statement that can apply far too generally. problem is, how to keep the majority happy and have their game (mostly) unspoiled by those who's idea's of what's acceptable lie very much at the extreme? for example lets say my idea of an acceptable amount of full auto was half a magazine per trigger pull at 50 rounds per second, i'm certainly having fun but i suspect there are very few people who would be happy to be on the recieving end of that.

it's a hard question, ultimately there's always gonna be the hicap heroes who will cut down every tree they see that twitches wrongly, there are people who will lost their shit if they recieve more than a single hit, and the rest of the pack who are somewhere in between. one of those problems that wouldn't exist if people weren't assholes.

better to do ammo limits, you can plink on semi or go hose but find yourself out of the game and back to the car to refill after 5 minutes.

ahh yes, the game that's more designed to empty magazines than actually be winnable. had something similar, very limited flanking opportunities, although in fairness if they'd let me go where i was planning to then it would have made things very hard for the defenders as you'd have the perfect spot to wipe them out where anyone you couldn't hit could easily be got from the frontline.

Not so sure with the skill element, if anything its adding a level of marksmanship especially for snap-shooting and you do still need to employ tactics such as flanking, indeed i'd say they're even more necessary now as you cant just run towards the enemy cod style and expect to survive. That is of course assuming a rough level of parity, if you're the only one there with a well dialled in pew amongst a sea of rentals then yes it does make for a point and click adventure.

i wouldn't put it past them at this point.

according to ups a plastic hop unit is a firearm and needs treated as such.

That guy...... i suppose credit where it's due, it's not an m4 mag

is this avenger's new alt?

not always, plenty of guns where pulling the barrel for cleaning just isn't practical. but certainly given it's easy enough to pop the top it wouldn't hurt to be able to look down the barrel and check every now and then. you're going a bit more complex than i do, i just have a scrap of microfibre (literally glasses cleaning cloths) wrapped around the end and shove it down there. lubricating the bucking is a contentious issue, on the one hand folks are alarmed by the idea of oiling something that's supposed to be grippy, on the other hand it's meant to be good for the longevity of the rubber. certainly i used to use silicone and it only took a few shots to get the bucking gripping again. tbh it's a wear component, especially if you're using a softer compound and it ain't gonna last forever. depends on your budget/playstyle, i've run games firing .48's in an assault style role and whilst it was hilarious how it turned airsoft into a point and click adventure it did grate a bit how much money's worth of ammo you could burn through in a day. yes bls are one of the brands i've heard are pretty decent, although not used them myself as geoffs tend to be easier to get here. i'd get the nub now and wait a bit before splashing out on the maxx, for example that money spent on a chrono will be more helpful if you're going to be doing your own teching. not that the maxx is a bad unit, but it can be a bit of a pain to work with/fit/get setup right. and more importantly any benefit it can provide is gonna be lost if say the gun has bad airseal.

yes, indeed i forgot to mention it. i really should have a copy-paste answer for this as it's a common enough question/response. as above, i forgot not everyone has one lying around, with improvements measured by chrono results it's definately worth having one if you're gonna tinker yourself.

the first question is what is your goal? given it's an sr25 i'm going to assume that you're after the usual range/accuracy camp. bearing in mind when it comes to suggestions for specific products you can ask 10 different people and 11 different answers, and while i tend to stick to reccommending stuff i've actually used myself that doesn't mean there aren't other perfectly viable (or even better) options out there. as a general rule i tend to go with a particular order, in a rough order of effort-reward ratio: clean the barrel- and get into the habit of keeping it clean, at least before and sometimes even during every game day. there's debate over silicone versus alchohol and what it does to hop rubbers which i avoid by doing neither. if your gun came with a plastic clearing rod that's the perfect tool for the job (won't scratch up the barrel) with a strip of microfibre wrapped round it. some folk use cigarette filter tips although never tried that one myself. feed it good quality heavy ammo. it's amazing (especially with ak's) the number of times i've "fixed" a gun with jamming/feeding/accuracy problems just by emptying the mag and refilling it with geoffs. weight wise you want to be going as heavy as possible, the limit being what your gun can lift (which can be changed) and how much money you can afford to be sending downrange. for an assault style role i tend to find around the .3g range is a nice balance between cost and performance, but for a lower round count gun like a dmr then splashing out for the heavies is much easier. the best airsoft gun on the planet would still shoot like shit if you fed it crap ammo. hop rubber/nub- this goes hand in hand the ammo choice as this will dictate how heavy you can go. my general go-to combo is the standard maple leaf macaron with omega nub, sometimes the longer feedlips can cause feeding issues and in those cases i tend to switch to the PDI W-hold with a standard nub. the hardness rating is something that needs to be appropriate for the weight/weather/energy considerations. a lower powered setup, colder climate or heavier ammo would preferr going softer (eg to lob .48's at 1j i need to use a green/tan) whereas a higher energy might just push the feed lips out of the way and leak air. air seal- in short, you want every atom that's in the cylinder to be going down the barrel after the bb and nowhere else. a bad air seal will make for terrible shot-shot consistency (vertical dispersion) and a lower average fps. there's no point spring swapping until you're confident that all the energy you're making the motor wind up every time is going to be turned into useful benefit. you can get a rough guide to how good the gun is currently by seeing how much change there is in fps between shots on a chrono, you want this to be as low as possible. do make changes however you will need to crack open the gearbox, which can be a daunting prospect. for the basic air seal checks you can have a look here: energy- once you've got good air seal then you can look at the spring. you shouldn't worry about being 5-10fps under but if you're a big chunk under the site limit then you'll want to think about bumping it up. this will ofc mean a spring change. barrel- we're starting to hit the diminishing returns curve now, and the gun should already be pretty decent. there are debates about tight versus wide bores however the one overriding factor for what makes a good barrel is quality, whatever diameter it's meant to be it shouldn't vary, it should be straight, and the inner surface finish should be smooth. some folks polish their barrels and can get very good performance out of stock brass, however a drop-in is a lot easier. in terms of specific products on a budget the ZCI 6.02's are fantastic value for money, if you wanna go a bit more high end then personally i'm a fan of the PDI stainless stuff, although remember we're hitting the diminishing returns. hop unit- tbh unless there's a specific problem with the stock unit, i'd tend to leave it alone. one of the big problems you can get in airsoft is tolerances, and a good quality hop such as the maxx might still make the gun worse if it's not the right fit for that gun, the stock unit will at least be the proper size and fitment. note that this rule tends to apply generally- simply throwing the most expensive/shiny of any given component into a gun isn't always going to improve it. what you do want to make sure is that the hop unit is being pressed up nice and tight to the gearbox, in many cases there'll be a little spring that does this however a larger spring wrapped around the barrel or a stack of o-rings can work quite nicely. of course this is all improving the guns base ability to lob bb's with consistency, however there are other things that might be worth considering that can help improve practical use when accounting for actually having to use the thing: trigger response (well, lock time)- while you can largely get around this by knowing your gun well it definately feels better to have less time between pulling the trigger and the shot actually happening. the simplest and easiest way to do that these days is a precocking mosfet like the gate warfet/titan or the higher end perun units. bear in mind as a platinum series your gun will already have an internal mosfet and might well be snappy enough for your preferences. handling- doesn't matter if the gun shoots straight if it's so heavy/awkward to use that you can't aim it properly. we're very much in the hedgerows of personal choice and if you want to plaster your gun with grips/flashlights/lasers/bipods etc for no other reason than you want to/think it looks cool then absolutely go for it, just remember that extra weight comes with a penalty.

i'd be more interested in the ford system for antifog with the tiny wires to heat up the lenses. i vaguely recall seeing some images from shot show or somesuch for a product that worked like that, but i can't remember who made them and no idea if they're still in business. there was also someone on here looking at doing it DIY, going all fancy n shit with moisture sensors.

It is the unfortunate side effect of this pandemic that people have had some vastly different experiences, everything from mostly continuing as normal, working hammer and tongs on the front line, sitting indoors going insane on furlough or even worse ending up with no income and no certainty. I'm glad to hear as hard as your troubles were that you had the resources to weather the storm. You are right though, there are ways and ways, as i mentioned originally the way my local looked to solve this same problem was to open on more days, which gives both the site and the players what they want.

Hence my point about opening more being preferable to double booking which i agree is a shitty way to go about solving the problem. Thats the problem with autism- at the "lesser" end of the scale folk can, especially as they age and gain experience, become very adept at appearing normal, right up until the point they're not. indeed for the older generations it's very common for folk to be undiagnosed (and by extension unaware themselves why they act certain ways). Possibly, although as mentioned it can be incredibly hard to tell in person let alone secondhand. Saying things either verbally or with body language that are just the wrong fit for the situation is a common symptom (leading to more frustration because now people are pissed off). Again as with above this could be interpreted either way. Given you were a regular there and had a much clearer view of how he was acting you could well be right, as mentioned it could be interpreted either way when reviewed second-hand in writing. Tbh the reason i brought it up was more just to plant the seed that there could be an alternate explanation, having read it and realised some of the similarities. For sure, i mean they could at least have been up front about it- let folks know what was going to happen so they could decide if they still wanted to make the trek or not.

As much as i hate to be the devils advocate, it is understandable that sites who've spent the last year taking it rough from the government are gonna be desperate to get back to some sense of financial sensibility. However, there's a right way and a wrong way. My local's answer to the problem of wanting more money was hey, lets open more (as in doing wednesday evening and saturday shoots on top of their normal sundays) because our customers wanna play as much as we want their money. The wrong way is diluting down the service and not even giving your customers the common fucking courtesy of explaining why. However i might want to hazard a theory as to the way he was acting. I'm not saying this is what is going on, and without the context of being there it's equally possible he's just an asshole. However, sometimes folk who are on the spectrum can have quirky ways of dealing with confrontational situations, if they start to get overloaded then falling silent and walking off to do seemingly mundane tasks can be a coping mechanism relied on right before the bottled up panic gets unleashed as rage. If this is the case then the very last thing you want to do is to follow them/further elevate the situation as they may be very close to breaking.

Best of luck with it, hopefully my paranoid side is wrong, that things too shiny to not be on the field.

It's a tricky issue. It is entirely possible this could be some very simple tweak required. I've seen folk get epic deals on "boneyard" guns that ended up a 10s job with a clearing rod to sort. Likewise there could be a broken part (especially if its a proprietary part) that will be a bastard to replace/fix. If there was some info as to what the problem is (low fps, poor/no feeding, inconsistent hop, etc) then it'd make deciding which is which a lot easier.

that's a lot o' schmeckles for something with an unknown problem. sure if it's something simple to fix then it ain't so bad but for all the info given this thing could be wrecked inside.

gold?

that's slightly better than the one i came up with, which i didn't post in case it went down like a lead balloon...... i mean at least it's green?

i don't think there are many locations in the uk where that would be an effective set of colours