What do you look for in a good CQB site?

[JinxDuh]

overhead observation platform

That was the plan I was thinking of for the sake of observing!

 

[Galvatron]

One thing I've noticed more cqb sites doing is restricting the number of pyros people can carry. As much as I like tossing bangs around I like this rule as it stops games turning into a game of who can afford the most pyros

When it was running, RIFT Airsoft's Battery CQB (mix of indoor and outdoor) site didn't allow pyro at all in part because of that concern. Though there were multiple access points, it would have been all too easy to turn most (if not all) of them into choke points when there were more than 20 or so players on each side.

In the (outdoor) CQB section of its Redcon site, pyro's only real restrictions that I recall are underarm throwing and that you can't throw blindly. The entrances/exits of it force you to advance to throw pyro in a useful area and thus expose yourself to oncoming fire.

 

[Krisz]

You're right that the number of speedsofters will vary from site to site, it must be that the ones I attend don't have very many. 

Would I be right thinking these tournaments are closer to paintball tournaments where things like pre firing are allowed? If so problems are going to arise when these tactics are used on a regular skirmish. 

For a normal skirmish I actually agree with you there, ban the arsehole not the kit as they're the problem. 

I don't know anything about tournament rules but all of these things has to come from somewhere. The main issue with some speedsofters that when they turn up for a normal skirmish and they try to apply competetiveness (overshooting, prefiring, jump shots etc.) and other people are gonna irritated by them very fast. More importantly they break all of the rules because they have to "win" at any cost.

It's very similar when a dude is so immersed in main character syndrome that he doesn't care about other people wellbeing anymore and he yeets or tries to chuck half of kilo stainless steel pyro across multiple rooms.
 

 

[LMKipper]

Of the few times I have been 'overkilled' it has been a bloke with an AAP-01 on HPA, who has run around a corner trigger spamming in the hope some would hit me. It's tough isn't it because ultimately people do 'speedsoft' because it's a very effective tactic when attacking. If you just run in and trade, that's a defender down. Rinse repeat.

I guess the only thing I would add is that perhaps long respawn times are a way of preventing this. If it's a long walk to respawn or there are timers, then it's not in your interest to get knocked out instantly. Come to think of it one CQB place I played it did their attack/defend on how many respawns were taken to knock out the defenders, rather than how long it took. Encourages slightly more conservative gameplay - if that's what your site and your customers want.

 

[Cannonfodder]

I don't know anything about tournament rules but all of these things has to come from somewhere. The main issue with some speedsofters that when they turn up for a normal skirmish and they try to apply competetiveness (overshooting, prefiring, jump shots etc.) and other people are gonna irritated by them very fast. More importantly they break all of the rules because they have to "win" at any cost.

Over killing and prefiring are exactly the sort of thing I mean. I takes bugger all skill to just finger bang a hair trigger and spray shots everywhere than it does to take aimed shots and is guaranteed to piss people off. 

It's very similar when a dude is so immersed in main character syndrome that he doesn't care about other people wellbeing anymore and he yeets or tries to chuck half of kilo stainless steel pyro across multiple rooms.

True, but in my experience it's more likely that the guy with the day glow hi cappa adapted to take M4 mags that'll be the problem

I guess the only thing I would add is that perhaps long respawn times are a way of preventing this. If it's a long walk to respawn or there are timers, then it's not in your interest to get knocked out instantly

Unfortunately the kind of person who's going to break site rules on spamming the trigger etc is also less likely to call a hit it it means a long walk to or wait at their respawn 

 

[rj1986]

They're harder to come by, but CQB in bigger areas.

Such as old schools and factories, rather than a series of 90 degree bends and 2x2m interconnecting rooms. Longer lines of sight, multiple access points and so on.

Going back a bit, Beaconsfield had a badger tac sight which was an old academy and was great as it was classrooms, presentation rooms, and old bar and stuff. Too bad the landlord moved up the redevelopment plans.

 

[Tommikka]

Over killing and prefiring are exactly the sort of thing I mean. I takes bugger all skill to just finger bang a hair trigger and spray shots everywhere than it does to take aimed shots and is guaranteed to piss people off.  

I would disagree - but circumstances apply 

Overkill/overshooting is continuing to shoot an eliminated target …. But if a player is hit more than once then it is not necessarily overshooting 

Prefiring (my interpretation of the term being that you begin firing before you pass an obstacle, shooting a continuous steam and ‘lead it’ to your target as you pass the corner etc)

Prefiring can (and should) be ‘aimed’ shots with your eyes open 

This is similar to suppressive fire - shooting and denying an area, but you may end up with an elimination when someone pops out 

With ‘proper’ prefiring the attacking player advertises that they are on the way and their point of arrival.  An observant defender may hear the change in impact as each hit gets closer (and perhaps as they move across the defences) and place themselves ready in a position that they won’t be shot as they come in and are ready to shoot the attacker as they arrive

The latter issue of shooting modes, hair triggers as lazy high ROF isn’t always the case.  This can be dealt with in rules about the types of trigger system, eg capping full auto/assisted trigger modes but allowing mechanical semi to shoot as fast as their finger and the guns cycling action - even I can outshoot capped shooting mode ROFs on a mechanical trigger 

……..

Rules need to be set by the site, possibly with varying rules by type of zone/proximity and type of gun

A limited magazine capacity can be a fair solution to mad shooters - they can shoot as much as they like, but have to reload

Or as has been mentioned - life / spawn limitations / delays

Counting respawns is a good one - I was faction leader screaming like the demented idiot that I am, jogging forward in the wide open and throwing smoke.  After a series of very rapid respawns I noticed the spawn marshal counting my visits - I lost a lot of points in the first minutes of that game, but I also pushed my players forward to take control of a good amount of territory

 

[Pseudotectonic]

Interestingly the biggest speedsoft events e.g. SpeedQB actually has rules against binaries or other "advantageous programming of FCU". And penalties for overkilling.

 

[Tommikka]

Interestingly the biggest speedsoft events e.g. SpeedQB actually has rules against binaries or other "advantageous programming of FCU". And penalties for overkilling.

This is the key - rules

I would expect formal tournaments to have rules against or restricting trigger modes etc

Back in the 80s/90s the paintball tournament scene was dominated by ‘factory’ teams, and there was a technological war between manufacturers with the open battle being faster trigger modes and the secret battle being genuine hidden cheat modes giving even higher ROFs that a player could enable mid play and disable when a referee approached.

Games would be won by the wallet.

Restrictions were placed capping trigger mode ROFs etc, and there were attempts to restrict the amount of paintballs to try and reduce winning by wallet.

Factory teams can still dominate due to the ability to put the time in for practice.

Therefore in an organised tournament players are governed by equipment rules suitable for a competitive tournament (and may have been drawn from standard rule sets) whereas the average site may set (or not set) any rules they choose from.

A site might have very open rules to attract more customers and to sell more consumables with minimal restrictions …. and that puts me back to the solution to a problem being a rule

Are the pesky speedsofters tournament players who comply with tournament rules then change all their settings at a standard site - or players with a style of play ?

Perhaps the pesky speedsofters aren’t playing with illegal modes but just get blamed for having an aggressive style 

……..

As an aside - in paintball tournaments there’s a cheaty element  to the tactic of overshooting:

A round between two teams is generally won/lost on the basis of 3 or 5 points “race to x”, eg if a 3 point then the first to 2 wins takes the victory 

This means players must be ready to get back on field for the next point.

If you make the final kills with a long burst/touch of overshooting then those last eliminated players have to get off field, clean up, reload, and get back on field in a limited timeframe.

If they’re covered in paint then they have a mess to be cleared off (and risk going back on with remaining residue which results in being spotted by a referee and penalised for playing on with hits)

This makes them rush, they may not be fully ready and are stressed.  

It’s not unknown for a team to start the next point with less players on field followed by the last player who has to run into an active game, tapping in at the start gate before they can shoot

 

[Rogerborg]

Marshalling is the single most important thing.

 

[Cannonfodder]

Marshalling is the single most important thing.

I'd say that goes for all sites

 

[MrTea]

A quick second place to marshalling being fair and consistent would be; listening to feedback from the players on what does and doesn't work - being open to feedback is huge.

Bonus points if the site owner actually plays at the site to first hand see what is or isn't working.

 

[Pseudotectonic]

I think airsoft can benefit from a baseline rule book, similar to that speedsoft rule book, to better define the game and hobby, and allow it to evolve iteratively perhaps every year.

Perhaps the airsoft field / game operating industry is a bit like a dark forest scenario, everyone is trying to run on their own rules, but do not want to share the same rules because competition, which fragments the hobby and sets a very low bar as to how a game is run. The result is you get patchy results as to whether a field is using x rule and not y rule, and a varying degree of how the game is marshalled, which is not great for the growth of the game operating industry as a whole.

Whereas if there is some sort of trading standard, some sort of best practice rule book, maybe it will make a rising tide that lifts everyone in the game. And an essential step in raising the profile of the hobby.

 

[Rogerborg]

I'd say that goes for all sites

Yes, but particularly for CQB, given the increased adrenaline, potential for harm (high flung grenades, for example), and tempers to fray in close proximity.

 

[GeorgePlaysAirsoft]

I think airsoft can benefit from a baseline rule book, similar to that speedsoft rule book, to better define the game and hobby, and allow it to evolve iteratively perhaps every year.

Perhaps the airsoft field / game operating industry is a bit like a dark forest scenario, everyone is trying to run on their own rules, but do not want to share the same rules because competition, which fragments the hobby and sets a very low bar as to how a game is run. The result is you get patchy results as to whether a field is using x rule and not y rule, and a varying degree of how the game is marshalled, which is not great for the growth of the game operating industry as a whole.

Whereas if there is some sort of trading standard, some sort of best practice rule book, maybe it will make a rising tide that lifts everyone in the game. And an essential step in raising the profile of the hobby.

I respectfully disagree. In my opinion "airsoft" is fundamentally just a technology which facilitates whatever kinda activity someone/some people want to get out of it. If someone invented some kind of personal force field like in Dune that meant you could shoot people with real bullets out of real guns with zero injury that would be awesome and I would never have to set a hop or charge a lipo again.  Thing is people do want different things out of "airsoft". And most people only go to skirmishes rather than specific events for a specific vibe/emphasis/audience. And most people only to a handful of skirmish sites. Even if we could "define the hobby", I'm not sure we should. Also, most skirmish sites operate the same rules. At some point someone decided that sniper rifles have a 30MED, that semi auto DMRs should be locked to 425fps or thereabouts and the rest followed suit. I'm not really sure there is an issue there. The "rising tide" starts with the players, not the sites, and not some theoretical trade body. Be the change you want to see. Go to the events which actually suit you. On that note..

To actually answer OP's question...well I won't. I think you are asking the wrong question. The great opportunity you have is not anything to do with how CQB sites are laid out. But that you have a somewhat close knit, "high trust" "airsoft club" to play with. This means you can experiment with different game formats which wouldn't work as well, if at all, at a walk on skirmish. For example one way of mitigating the issue of spawn camping is to have no respawns, so no spawn to camp. Stuff like that. Loads of fun to be had coming up and testing out ideas.

 

[Pseudotectonic]

Of course no one can make it "illegal" to play airsoft however you like it. Any definition would inevitably become a sub-genre of the bigger hobby.

I just saw this video which perhaps frames it nicely, basically they are saying, as a hobby like airsoft naturally evolves, it will naturally become big enough to draw too much attention from other people. To overcome this, let's say public image problem, thus allowing the hobby to even continue to exist, it is quite useful to evolve a more sporty format to the hobby, just as other similar "problematic" hobbies have done. This "sport" of airsoft, is currently taking up de fecto by speedsoft.

But I think skirmishing should develop its own sport. If someone skiing around and shooting a rifle can become an Olympic sport, there is no reason skirmishing cannot. @GeorgePlaysAirsoft As you say most sites already share a common rule set. You see rules as a killer of new experimental formats. I would argue it is exactly that rules, a set of clear and robust rules, is what will enable experiments with new and different formats. Even a close knit group doing an experimental game (I assume is based on skirmish rules), it would still be operating with some custom rules. And there should be rules (or framework) about these rules. Again your example of no respawn, is still based on the idea of a default rule of respawning at a certain location.

I just feel that if you draw a Venn diagram of all the rule sets enforced by all the sites (at least in the UK) there would emerge a basic skirmishing rule set. My opinion is, it is this non-binding, but well adopted and tested, rule set that should become the basis of airsoft sport. Airsoft skirmishing, not some 5v5 paintball format, should define the airsoft-based gunfighting simulation sport.

If such as rule set is defined, it doesn't mean it is changed, it just means it is regularised. So that people outside can have a better understanding and expectation of the hobby. And that competition between game operators can take place on better grounds, with most if not all of the sub-standard and poor quality operations condemned as not following code.

To start, it will not be something prescribed, merely documented, from the existing, better practices. It is a manicured, curated representation of "skirmishing" that we can call airsoft sport.

And if you make variations of these rules, you make your experimental skirmishing games. Of course if you are doing some non-standard game format that is totally different it would not be relevant. The point is, you are making a variation from something. That something needs to be documented at some point in time, and now is perhaps a good time.

 

[Rogerborg]

I do agree that it would be better if airsoft was recognised as a sport, as paintball is.  Contrast the UK Paintball Sports Federation with the UK Airsoft Players Union (and other assorted bodies). 

However, good luck persuading sites that it's in their interest to follow someone else's rules, and likely pay fees to a governing body.  And I do mean good luck - if this is something that you want to see happening, don't wait around for someone else to do it.

 

[Kzwi]

Much like bigger woodland sites, go to a site with a good marshall team.

The Mall in Reading was epic, but would have been shit without the excellent marshall team.

Now I am in Suffolk, I play at Battle Stations in Snetterton, same. They make it inclusive, they make sure newbies are welcome ( we try to help with that obv) so it's brilliant

Speedsofter are not as big an issue as lots of people say because they do help change the game dynamics. I am not into it because I prefer a more realistic replica.

A good team will weed out the wrong kind of players and that'll be a great experience.

Regarding @Cannonfodder answer on spawn, the mall would sometimes have a rule on respawn, you wait in spawn until there is 5 of you and then you go, that's brilliant because at any time, one team could be missing up to 4 players so it helps the other team push and moves the game, keeps it from getting stagnant.

 

[Tommikka]

Of course no one can make it "illegal" to play airsoft however you like it. Any definition would inevitably become a sub-genre of the bigger hobby.

I just saw this video which perhaps frames it nicely, basically they are saying, as a hobby like airsoft naturally evolves, it will naturally become big enough to draw too much attention from other people. To overcome this, let's say public image problem, thus allowing the hobby to even continue to exist, it is quite useful to evolve a more sporty format to the hobby, just as other similar "problematic" hobbies have done. This "sport" of airsoft, is currently taking up de fecto by speedsoft.

But I think skirmishing should develop its own sport. If someone skiing around and shooting a rifle can become an Olympic sport, there is no reason skirmishing cannot. @GeorgePlaysAirsoft As you say most sites already share a common rule set. You see rules as a killer of new experimental formats. I would argue it is exactly that rules, a set of clear and robust rules, is what will enable experiments with new and different formats. Even a close knit group doing an experimental game (I assume is based on skirmish rules), it would still be operating with some custom rules. And there should be rules (or framework) about these rules. Again your example of no respawn, is still based on the idea of a default rule of respawning at a certain location.

I just feel that if you draw a Venn diagram of all the rule sets enforced by all the sites (at least in the UK) there would emerge a basic skirmishing rule set. My opinion is, it is this non-binding, but well adopted and tested, rule set that should become the basis of airsoft sport. Airsoft skirmishing, not some 5v5 paintball format, should define the airsoft-based gunfighting simulation sport.

If such as rule set is defined, it doesn't mean it is changed, it just means it is regularised. So that people outside can have a better understanding and expectation of the hobby. And that competition between game operators can take place on better grounds, with most if not all of the sub-standard and poor quality operations condemned as not following code.

To start, it will not be something prescribed, merely documented, from the existing, better practices. It is a manicured, curated representation of "skirmishing" that we can call airsoft sport.

And if you make variations of these rules, you make your experimental skirmishing games. Of course if you are doing some non-standard game format that is totally different it would not be relevant. The point is, you are making a variation from something. That something needs to be documented at some point in time, and now is perhaps a good time.

Spot on with rules as a framework but not impinging on the ability to have specifics for the site/type of event

There isn’t a single paintball rule set.

There are some basics, and also of course national legislation.

In competitive paintball there isn’t a single rule set - there was an attempt at a “world paintball tournament” ruleset - even that had two different sets of “world” and “USA” rules, let alone US paintball politics meaning that every league had its own rules.

The Millenium is the major European tournament and other leagues just happily adopt those rules giving consistency for players 

When UK scenario paintball scene was in its heyday, and pretty much everyone was on the same UKscenario forum a collective of event organisers / sites formed the UKSPC - UK scenario paintball community or collective ? - (this was a decade ago)

The standards set things such as bottle checking, providing free UKPSF air safety sessions and only allowing self filling by UKPSF air safety card holders and the rule element of maximum velocity 280fps, 260fps for CO2 or close up/night games - this aided players by not having a range of velocities between sites and events with players previously adjusting every couple of weeks for the next event 

(Our first event opened the 2010 scenario season and therefore was the first UKSPC compliant event)

The UKSPC didn’t need to cost anything for sites to join up etc, it did align with the UKPSF with their recommended standards and air safety training.  But the collective was voluntary - it just needed organisers to see a need and take action (back then the scenario scene was pretty much by players for players, so the host of X was also playing Y and Z)

The UKSPC is probably forgotten, but the general standards remain whether intentionally or because an organiser today just uses what is common 

All our paintball rulesets are based on the UKSPC set, and then I refine to the game format.  Our Airsoft rulesets have been similar but then handed to the Airsofters for translation