Alternative speedballish formats

[vijil]

Following on from that other thread.

Most people are kind of bored with the Team Deathmatch nature of modern speedball.

I'm aware of alternatives - I think there was AFPL redzone, in the past there was moneyball and the NSL. And of course over the years we've had various versions of TDM with 10, 7, 5 man.

Most attempts at objectives like flags or buzzers just become an afterthought, because they're not well thought through and the incentive balances are wrong.

Just asking - which of your have played aternative speedball formats, and what were they like? Respawns? Balls? Zone capture? Talking about versions of PB that work on a small or smallish flat field with obstacles, whether airball or hyper or whatever.

Here in NZ nobody every bothered with anything other than standard 3, 5 and 7 man TDM as far as I can find out. In the old days they'd give out points per kill or flag capture, but it was still effectively just same old TDM.

[The Hobbit]

I was thinking, keep the basic structure. Instead of having to get to the other teams start to score. There score post is the center point of the field. Have it so it isn’t easy to get to but doable while the other team still has bodies.

[vijil]

I like that.

I was thinking similar - a point for the pull, center flag, and then another point for the hang but it's on your own start box instead so it's more doable. So it's like a retrieval scenario and you could salvage a draw if the other team got the pull first.

Bunker density and layout would be the difference between awesome and suck for this one.

[Trbo323]

Still to this day one of the more interesting formats I've ever played was at an indoor field, you could modify it to play at most fields but here's how it worked

Called wally ball, the field was pretty unique, indoor, half small rooms half an open area with air bunkers in it.

The big rule was you had to always be within arms reach of a wall (hence the name). Each team had a flag, they were on opposite sides of the open space and the teams both started right around the transition from open space to rooms on opposite sides. so to get the other teams flag you had to decide if you wanted to go around the outside of the open space with only some air bunkers blocking shot lines, or go through all the rooms where there was a million doors and corners to contend with.

To complicate it more, each team had one player designated as the "respawn queen". If you got shot you would go back to the respawn queen to tag back in. If the respawn queen got shot though they were out with no way to come back in. So it became a game of how many players did you hold back to protect your respawn queen and how many to send forward to try and get the other flag, all while staying within arms reach of a wall.

So much fun






















Sent from my motorola edge 2024 using Tapatalk

[vijil]

Some good ideas there. Probably quite specific to your location, but having a medic (or queen or whatever) who you have to protect is an idea I've thought about but never seen tried. Cool that it works.

[Magmoormaster]

I've never seen it done but I would love to see small scale attack and defend formats on an assymetric layout. One of the speedsoft leagues does attack and defend but it's still on a standard symmetrical field so it seems kinda dumb.

[Magmoormaster]

oops

[BrickHaus]

Set up something like a multi flag center flag.

Put a drum on the center 50. Both teams have 7 flags each. Only one flag can be carried by a player. Multiple players can carry flags at a time. You are shot you bring your flag back to respawn. 3 minute respawn windows with a short open respawn.

15 minute games. Or 30 if you have the time.

most flags at the time limit, or 7 in the hole wins.

You could make it 2 drums mirrored also.

We played a version of this ( hard point?) At my field and it was fun.

We played in a very asymmetrical wooded field.

[vijil]

It's a good idea - basically forces every player to take turns being front or back

[BrickHaus]

And you guys likely don't memorialize the D-Day scenarios like we do here in the US, but it makes for a great game format.

The field has to be specifically built for it, but its fun.


Allies have "spawn boats" which are boxes of plywood and an operational front door. They are equipped with Bangalore props, and sachel props. They have timed respawns on boat drops, unlimited lives.


Germans can start anywhere they want on their half of the map. They have respawns limited to having X bodies in the respawn area. Up front they have an initial " barbed wire " prop wall. Allies can't cross until someone gets a Bangalore to it.

Germans also have 2x bunkers that can house 3 people each. They are invincible until the Allies get a sachel charge in them. ( Or bunker tap the walls).

for our game allies also got a tank to support the assault.

Then the objective would be to take the flag behind the German gun nests. Then swap sides and run it again. Then to prevent having to break a tie, you give points for each action. X points for the Bangalore deployment. X for each nest being destroyed. X points for a flag tip. X points for the Germans to prevent any of the above.

obviously you could wipe the whole war history aspect out of it and still have a fun attack defend format.

[vijil]

Ah, yes, though I think this crosses the line from speedballish well into scenario/woodsball territory, even if the gear and guns are definitely not milsim. I've seen many of the old OK DDay videos. People would regularly fly over from here in NZ just to play that one event. Looked like a blast. I'll need to find some recent ION videos if there are any. edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irDbjwSThI0 love it.

That said, scenario organisers and players are much, MUCH more willing to try new ideas than the typically speedball group.

I have a few ideas in mind that straddle the line between speedball and woodsball, but they're just ideas.

[flyweightnate]

The big trick is that there needs to be an objective worth the gamble to get out early. Something more valuable than losing a TDM, that can't reliably be accomplished by playing defense.

Occupying a central bunker/ feet in a zone for a certain amount of time (points for first entry, points for duration) is one option. E.g Whoever hits the 50 center first gets 3 points, then a point a minute, for a 5 minute game. In edge cases both teams have a guy there earning points, which is OK too - doesn't help you win the match but counts towards points in a tournament tiebreaker.

This forces an aggressive strategy, creates an objective, and makes defense expensive. You win all your bouts head to head but never score a point, or have 1 minute uncontested after the other team is out? Well, a 4-0 win isn't great. An aggressive team could get the first 3 minutes then get smoked and still win 6-2. Which gives more total points towards the tourney format.

Snake is still important to cover center, pins and doritos still offer angles, but home becomes a purely support play as the angle is terrible.

[tyronejk]

I had a similar idea to this and think it could work. I think points for reaching the center may not work out (similar to that flag tube thing in the middle of Living Legends) since it's too difficult to call if a player get shots right before or after reaching the center and there's a strong incentive for a player to keep running into the center after getting shot.

I think the time spent in the center makes sense though, since you wouldn't have this particular playing-on issue but still incentivize players to push aggressively to the center.

[flyweightnate]

That's a fair point... first to get 10 seconds in the center could help, and give refs time to check them after entry.

Or even just the first full minute is worth 5. I bet a very a boring, defensive game would get wild with 75 seconds left.

[vijil]

I think AFPL Redzone was very similar to this

[Jsc5150]

Velocity Paintball used to run tournaments where 50/100 points per match was just the initial flag pull.

Still speedball, but kicks everyone’s ass into high gear

[vijil]

Center flag right? I feel like this might be the best overall solution with the lowest amount of change needed.

I'd go one point pull, one point hang. And then it's mostly about layout design to get it right. Probably want to block most lanes to the flag.

Maybe combine with h+1 rule to keep the budgets reasonable and stop it being quite so insane off the break.

Then do some testing and decide whether it's better to hang on your own base or the other end. If it's the other end it will just become an elimination game after the pull, but if it's your own end there wont be much incentive for runthroughs unless you're on the defensive... which might be cool. I dunno. It would mean games often end with bodies still alive on both sides and I'm very OK with that.

[Chappy]

Centerflag pull is worth extra points for every opposing player on the field, or worth more the earlier you pull it. Depending on your point structure, a flag pull before your team shoots anyone could be an auto win, or a difficult lead to overcome.Simething along the lines of the post above that appeared while I typed this lol.
Also stock class speedball is way more fun. Laning as a strategy makes for a BORing a@@ game in the long run. But that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

[Jsc5150]

Pump speedball is amazing. The freedom of movement makes for way more aggressive games

[vijil]

So long as it's stock class and not open pump, yes. Or maybe constant air but 10 rnd tubes only.

But in terms of what would actually get more traction as a growth sport, magfed (25 max per mag) probably hits the balance.

[drewkroeker]

At the start of the year I played at a small indoor speedball field with my brother and one friend who came out. We had a good time thanks to some pre-planning. Here are a couple games we played:

1) bomb push. A small soccer ball (bomb) starts in the middle. There is a yellow line of cones designating my endzone. My opponent cannot cross this line. There is an orange line of cones for my opponent's endzone which i cannot cross. This prevents you from steamrolling your enemy off the field. Using a phone or alarm clock or ref, set a 4 minute timer. You have four minutes to push/throw/shoot the bomb past the enemy's goal line. The best way to win is to roll the bomb so it's just inside the goal line and post up on it. My brother and I were using pumps vs my buddy who had his geo. I think we won 5 out of 6 games. By the end I was throwing the bomb right to my opponent so he would have a chance to throw it back and win. Each team has four respawns, so the guy playing on his own can still win if he gets enough eliminations. Using pumps dialed back the firepower for me and my bro but it was still difficult to fight us even with a geo shooting 10.5bps.

2) Le Mans start. 1v1v1 everybody starts 12 yards away from their marker. At the GO!! signal you run and grab your marker and try to shoot the other two people before they shoot you. Really quick but really fun, especially for the guy starting between the other two.

Having multiple pumps/magfeds/speedball markers on hand meant that we could change things up instead of doing just 1v1s. Of course more people is better but we did what we could, we still had fun with only three people.

[devilzcall]

Competitive nerf currently has one of the more interesting competitive formats I have played.

its basically time control with respawning, but respawns are allowed along both field sides connected to each teams corner.

The format works well as 5v5 with multiple objectives or 3v3 with a single center objective.

A fun twist is when the objective buzzer has to be held to accumulate points, basically putting the scoring team at a disadvantage and making the scoring player more vulnerable.

the whole format will lend itself a bit better to pump/magfed and limited paint formats.

[vijil]

The objective buzzer is really good.

Have often thought about how to handle respawns. You need a kill to actually matter, so it can't be too quick. Timed respawns are common at big games but for speedball I'd thought something like needing to run around both your own back corners and back to the start box before you're in.

[flyweightnate]

Run a lap but they get to shoot at you if you're between their back corners.

In rare cases would it be a helpful strategy too look backwards, but on the off chance there's bad blood it would be good TV.

... I know, i know, not the image we're going for.

[Fubarius]

I tend towards simple is better.

Now I tend to think smaller teams (as low as 2v2) film better, but this format works with larger teams as well. So, multi-point format, in this case first to 10 points, or highest after a time limit. Seems like a lot, but it won't be.

Scoring, eliminate all players on opposing team, 1 point.
Hang center flag with at least 1 opposing team member alive, 5 points.

Or, an alternative to a center flag, on each end of the field stick a large bell, or small oil drum, big bucket, beer keg, whatever. Something that has a distinct and noticeable sound when shot. Put a small wood wall in front of it, so that you can only get a clear shot from at least mid field, if not half way across the opposing side of the field. Shooting the bell is worth the same as a flag hang, but a team can be more sneaky about it. For filming you get a scoring situation with a nice big paint splat and rewarding sound to show to the audience on replay.

As an aside, when talking about filming paintball I think people get stuck on trying to show the paint flying through the air. That doesn't matter, what matters is where the paint hits. Shots that bounce off a bunker or net and lands unbroken is boring. Bit bright colorful SPLATS, that's a selling point. So design a field where every shot fired will not only break on, well, something, but will be caught on camera. And give each team their own color of paint. Most fictional depictions of the game seem to assume this anyways.

[vijil]

I'm trying to summarize all this and come up with some kind of a happy medium. Goal is:

• team based
• easy to ref (this rules out moneyball). Probably shouldn't be getting refs to count bodies during the game. Also:
  • no electronics (rules out AFPL Redzone I think). To keep it playable for walkon or outlaw games.
  • no timers other than the main game limit. Again, this is a ref load and outlaw ball issue. Needs KISS principle.
  • easy to admin. So, I think just one or two objects. Having loads of flags gets a bit funky.
• easy to explain (rules out NSL and traditional 7man). No complex scoring structure. Definitely no points-per-kill or points-per-body (alive or dead). KISS, again.
• playable anywhere there's bunkers. No need for walls or buildings or whatever.
• Minimal special equipment. So ideally you could just use a jersey or a ball. Having to set up special structures or noisy things, I think the sound thing is a pretty good idea Fubarius, but I'm trying to shave this down to the MVP.
• No paint lines required to mark the field. Again - outlaw. Any field, anywhere, any time.
• An incentive balance that makes flag action happen while the opposition still has bodies alive at least, say, 50% of the time. (rules out NXL, xBall, etc)

So when I put all that in, I end up with something like this:

Center flag, 1 point for first pull

and

A point for the hang, but the hang is on any Endzone bunker.

Endzone is not just past the end line, it reaches up the field a bit and is defined by touching an endzone bunker while carrying. So the back line of bunkers (at least) would BE the opposition endzone. We don't have to paint the ground and mark an actual endzone. Could use colored bunkers for this but generally will be clear enough. The field layout determines which bunkers are and are not endzone bunkers. You might decide that only the home bunker counts. Whatever.

And that's it.
No respawns.
Standard penalties.
People can throw the flag. If it is thrown out, it is placed back in on the sideline.

Considerations:

Might need to be careful with bunker layout around the flag and the zones. Field layout and lane blockers would matter here. Remember old school Xball layouts with the pins?
You can tune the gameplay by tweaking which bunkers are in or out of the endzone. It could even change between games. But that's complex.

Team size - Whatever, but I'm thinking 4v4. Dunno why I think that. Feels like a good balance.
Field size and bunker set - probably much the same as NXL.
Paint - I'm thinking hopper +1. Lets you lane a bit off the break but then you need to slow it down.
Also a magfed division because of the noob appeal.

Anyways.

The other thing is filming. I would just have all the cameras at one end so every shot is over the shoulder (best shot, see both ends of the gunfight) and it's easier to follow. Teams switch ends between games anyways.