Paintball Size Thread

[Ironnerd]

I did check the Nelson web site, and it appears to be active. They state that "Nelson Paintballs are available in .68 caliber, .50 caliber, .40 caliber, and 6MM."

So we could (were we so inclined) get some actual, non-suck, "NELSON" paintballs made up for MCBers? I vote Orange or Yellow fill.

[MrBarraclough]

The Nelson Ranger that my local field (Southern Alabama Paintball) orders is always a kind of bronze colored shell with bright green fill.

[MrBarraclough]

I do not by any means wish to damper anyone's enthusiasm, but I feel that I should point out that the Nelson Ranger I play with every month is not the roundest paint I've gotten lately. Defy from ANSgear appears to be more consistently round (though markedly smaller). Maybe it's just a trick of the eye, but the Nelson looks ever so slightly like an oblate spheroid, as though it bulges a tiny bit at the seam. The Nelson is most definitely the old size, though. It won't roll out of my .688 or .689 barrels but can be blown through with a good, sharp breath. I bought a .685 CP one piece barrel back in January but immediately returned it to ANS because there was no way Ranger was getting through it. Defy of course rolls straight through a .688 like any newer paint would.

And Ranger is a little tough/bouncy. Nelson touts this as a feature, not a bug, by claiming that Ranger is especially formulated for woodsball, the idea being that you can supposedly shoot through foliage better with less fragile paint. It does seem to work for that purpose, I must say, as one does occasionally get caught by that one ball that manages to slip through the bushes. I can drop it from head height onto my concrete driveway and it bounces nearly every time. When it does break, it tends to split open rather than shatter and the shell is a little rubbery, so it more ruptures than fractures. By comparison, Defy Level 2 cracks like a bird's egg from waist height and tends to shatter rather than split open. The shell fragments are small, brittle, and crumbly. The fill in the Ranger is bright, neon green and a little runny, but not watery. It wipes off easily with little to no residue.

According to the chart on the box, Ranger supposedly shares most of the characteristics of Anarchy except it has a tougher shell.

Nelson Precision is the lower grade of paint at my field. Shell and fill always match and it is usually a bright orange, pink, yellow or blue. The shell is actually slightly thinner and more fragile than Ranger. The fill is very bright, but somewhat thinner and rather runny. In my limited experience, Precision has a higher tendency to dimple from storage. A few months back there was some kind of shipping delay and the field did not receive its usual shipment of paint before the weekend. That week we shot the field out of paint and got into the last cases of Precision that were on hand. That stuff was awful. I kept checking my barrel for broken paint because of how wildly it flew. It really was like shooting through a break on every single shot. Maybe that was not a representative sample; I'm not sure. But to be safe I just buy the Ranger and leave the Precision to the rentals.

[RedLeaderSB]

Is it possible to order some black shell, orange fill Nelson Anarchy? And would it be worth it, for those who have experience with such?

[DocsMachine]

The issue is simple; There's no competition. There's only what, two, at most, encapsulators still in the US- three if we count Nelson. And a couple on South Korea, as I recall.

And the simple fact is, players will still buy up every single ball, no matter how crappy it is. If we as a group stopped buying crappy paint, or better yet, started returning it en masse, which would unfortunately be at our own expense, then they might try cleaning up their act.

But if they can keep cutting corners and skimping on materials and we STILL keep buying every single box, bag and jar, where's their motivation to improve? After all, the single most important trait 95% of players use to select their paint, is cost. The cheaper paint sells many times faster than the one only slightly more expensive. And there's simply not enough demand for a "premium" paint- that is, a truly premium, not premium-as-a-marketing-buzzword.

Fields and stores want cheaper paint so they can make more profit, players want cheap paint so they can "keep up with the tourney players", and so on. We all pine for the golden years of RP Scherer, but the the fact is, they'd have gone out of business by now, anyway, because nobody- or nowhere near enough, anyway- would be buying their expensive paint.

Even if GI or Valken got a new CEO or whatever, who was an actual player, for a change, and insisted on a crackdown on quality control, for the first half-year or so, they'd be throwing away a TON of product. Income and stock prices would dip, shareholders would get scared, and the CEO would get voted out. On the other hand, a CEO comes in, has them reduce the size of the ball from .680 to .675, and thus makes the company another million and a half per quarter, he's given a raise, more shares and another yacht.

Nope. Our only savior at this point will be if somebody starts up a "private label" encapsulator. Except that doing so will costs millions, and is almost certainly likely to fail because no one buys expensive paint, no matter how good it is.

So buck up, chums. This is our lot, we're gonna have to live with it.

Doc.

[martix_agent]

Even if GI or Valken got a new CEO or whatever, who was an actual player, for a change, and insisted on a crackdown on quality control, for the first half-year or so, they'd be throwing away a TON of product. Income and stock prices would dip, shareholders would get scared, and the CEO would get voted out. On the other hand, a CEO comes in, has them reduce the size of the ball from .680 to .675, and thus makes the company another million and a half per quarter, he's given a raise, more shares and another yacht.




Doc.

You have just described the issue with today's standard of capitalism. Nobody cares about the product, they just care about the profits.

[MrBarraclough]

Markets give us what we demand. They reflect consumer preferences, to the extent that they are able.

And as Doc points out, what we as a whole apparently demand is cheap paint. Our expressed preference may be for higher quality paint; that's what we bitch and moan about on the internet. But our (I'm using "our" as broadly as possible here) revealed preference is for mediocre-at-best but cheaper paint. Our purchasing behavior is how we reveal our preferences.

[DocsMachine]

You have just described the issue with today's standard of capitalism. Nobody cares about the product, they just care about the profits.

-It may not be ideal, but it's far and away better than any of the other options.

Doc.

[DocsMachine]

It's also worth noting that WE, ultimately, are the cause. As I said, the first and foremost thing by which we select our paint, is cost. The cheaper the better. This has been true since the very earliest days of the sport, and it was certainly true 20 years ago when I ran my own field. The so-called ROF wars pushed that along even more- When you have to spend two to four cases a day just to stay in the game, yeah, you're gonna go with the cheapest paint you can find.

And the companies listened to us. The fields demanded cheaper paint, the tournies wanted cheaper paint, the players wanted cheaper paint, the stores wanted cheaper paint. 25,000 people ask for cheaper paint; five, maybe six ask for "better" paint. Which way do you think they're gonna go?

Right now, if an upstart Elon Musk type started up a new encapsulator, and produced a very round, very consistent .688" ball with just the right balance between shootable and fragile, and only 15% more expensive then the usual paint... That business would be defunct in less than two years, because almost no one would buy it.

The fields and stores wouldn't buy it, because the players wouldn't buy it. The players won't buy it because this sport's already too expensive- and the vast majority of them don't know the difference and wouldn't care if they did.

This is our bed, ladies and gents. We made it, and we gotta sleep in it.

Doc.