Lob Shots ?

[bankz5152]

Semi sensible debate came up on FB about this, wondered what the folk of Arnies think.

 

For those that don't know its what paintballers do to get more range, aim the rifle 45deg or more in the air to essentially 'mortar' rounds on to the other team.

 

I personally hate the practice and most the companies I play with have banned the practice because it is unsportsmanly and just plan *suitcasey* behaviour. 

 

What you do think? Acceptable or not?

[shmook]

It's *badger*s to me. Easier with a large paintball you can see, but I can't track a bb over 60 metres away!

 

If you can't hit someone, fight your way forward until you can...

[scorch]

It's *suitcase*, but at the end of the day a BB has left their gun and strikes you... What can you do?

[renegadecow]

I find it pointless. If it's so far away that your hop up can't make it fly straight anymore, the bbs have spent all their energy to be noticed and the shooter can't visually confirm a hit anymore.

[Gigueand]

Uh... we're firing round projectiles at one another as a hobby... if someone manages to hit me, lobbed shot or not, I'm obliged to call myself out. If people start not taking hits because "that shot was lobbed" it's just one step closer to saying "I'm not taking that hit because it was fired by someone not wearing Crye."

[Dentonboy]

It isn't something I've ever noticed done, nor something I've tried myself (although I probably would with my M203 when I can finally be bothered to use it).

 

A hit is a hit is a hit.

[shmook]

I didn't mean I wouldn't take the hit, I was implying that lob shots are pointless and you should change tactic rather than attempt them

[PureSilver]

1. First and foremost, a hit's a hit. You take even if you think the other player is cheating, because it doesn't matter what you think it - it matters what the marshall thinks.
2. Second, how would one go about banning this practice? Elevation of just a few degrees is all you need for arcs of fire - it's not like marshalls will be able to spot the guy getting his protractor out and shooting at a 45° angle.
3. Third, why would you ban it? Physics is physics and real firearms have to do this too - snipers and support gunners especially, the former for extra range and the latter to drop fire onto those behind raised terrain.

Lobbed shots are a valid tactic for some long-distance shooters, especially snipers. If a marksman with a high-power scope can hit you out to 300' - and there are players on ASF that claim they can - then would you rather be hit by a 700fps 0.66g BB going in a perfectly straight line, or a 500fps 0.43g BB descending towards you?

[bankz5152]

Well yeah its a difficult thing to judge but someone with an M4 aiming to the sky to lob bbs is just *suitcasey* but not really cheating. Can't really put it any other way, yeah i'll take the hit but I wont be happy about it and it ruins the game. Unsportsmanlike and just why is how I feel about it. 

 

Theres no exact angle just dont be a *rickroll*, seen it a few times at ambush/longmoor when someone is clearly lobbing bbs down range marshal comes over and tells him to use his rifle properly. 

 

Real firearms do have the ability but youll never see someone with an M4 aim up in the area to hit a target and if they do its not really comparable to airsoft I dont think. 

 

Bit wishy washy but the subject is... Finally it is what paintballers do! 

[ninja master of coffee]

I think the only time this becomes unsporting is when it's coupled with massive ammo capacity, players can lock down an avanue of attack by spamming rounds in a high-ish arc. They can't hit people with actual marksmanship but they can, by sheer volume of fire, prevent anyone from advancing through that area. That gets very dull. Real world tactic or no, it's just not conducive to an enjoyable game. That's not to say I wouldn't take the hit but I probably wouldn't return to a site where it was rife. To me the answer is to limit ammo, if someone wants to spam fire at a 45 degree angle they can but they will just run out of ammo. LMGs with larger ammo capacity of course still can but their point is support fire and suppression so that's fair enough, eliminate the machine gunner, find a different rout or accept high casualties. So, yes it is unsportsmanlike under certain conditions and can result in bad game play but there are ways of limiting or stopping it, sites just have to take that into account, I've seen people try it at limited ammo games, they quickly learn not to after they've blatted off their 600 rounds at nothing then all been shot at a reasonable engagement range.

 

Edit: for clarity. Also I don't count snipers using arced or lobbed shots since these are typically far more accurate and good for specific targets, get shot by a sniper, learn to use cover and concealment better.

[Dentonboy]

I don't see it as a pointless exercise that should be banned at all.

 

Worst case - you waste bbs and attacking team kick your *albatross* while you are looking skywards,

 

or,

 

Best case - you take out opponents before they can take you out. Which, generally, is how I play this *game*.

 

If we were playing along the lines of 'well real guns can't do that', well, ban hi-caps while you're at it.

[bankz5152]

I would ban hicaps given the power to do so! lol 

 

It does come down to dont be a *rickroll* rule like Ninja said if you spend the entire day doing that and behaving like a penis then your going to ruin a lot of peoples day. 

[scorch]

ban hi-caps while you're at it.

 

Now you're talking.

[Dentonboy]

I would ban hicaps given the power to do so! lol 

 

It does come down to dont be a *rickroll* rule like Ninja said if you spend the entire day doing that and behaving like a penis then your going to ruin a lot of peoples day. 

 

I haven't played at a site where someone concentrating on looking upwards to lob bbs into a certain area with uncertain results wouldn't be ruthlessly flanked and sent packing!

 

I get why some people are down on hi-caps, but if they're the only available mag for your AEG, what can you do?!

[scorch]

AEG, what can you do?!

 

Glorious gas master race?

[ninja master of coffee]

I don't think banning hi-caps is necessary, just introduce things like ammo limits and burst fire duration, so, no burst longer than say one or two seconds. This is sensible anyway as it prevents over kill, either you can easily make the shot and more rounds is just going to annoy people or you can't really make the shot and you're just spamming rounds in the hope someone gets hit or they just can't cross that area. To me it's about people actually having fun and skill being the main deciding factor rather than a deep enough wallet to go through thousands of rounds in a day. Lobbed spamming just gets boring, it might win a game but in a fashion that at least one of the sides will just have a day. I would also suggest that if people are being *rickrolls* with spam firing and over kill, limit them to semi auto, lobbed shots become pointless and over kill becomes difficult and very obviously deliberate if it does take place.

[blobface]

I assume this is something that needs to be experienced to hate it... I try my best to go to sites where the distance is so close that you hit what you aim at most of the time...

 

That said, thinking about it, If you are hit by a lob shot, it surely means you're just exposed out in the open anyway? Unless they're literally shooting straight up where the whole area including teammates might get friendly fired depending on the wind direction... I mean technically real snipers are lobbing their shots and their enemies take the hit just the same... 

[ninja master of coffee]

In fairness this isn't something that I've experienced in a while due to different rules and game dynamics. It certainly used to be a problem at a number of woodland sites I frequented. The thing is, I like woodland airsoft, I like the environment and many of the types of games, the problem came when the site organisers couldn't be bothered to think of anything more inspired than "attack and defend" with fairly large, open areas you had to traverse as the attacking team, games could effectively be completely locked down by spam lobbing thousands of rounds at the direction of attack, it got old quite quickly since doing the reverse was basically impossible.

[CameronZombie]

Even with things such as highcaps and replicas that shoot at low FPS that are detrimental to realism, that's the penalty for standing in an area where people have line of sight on you and can reach with their rounds.  If you get hit by someone who you thought was unable to reach you but they then compensate for that distance, that's not cheap imo. 

 

Now what's cheap is the old, "I look like I'm just talking to the admin/marshall when in fact I have a knife/pistol and will pop you when your back is turned to game the game". But that's neither here nor there.

[RSM]

There is a difference between a few degrees of elevation so your rounds are 'plopping' down on someone 10m beyond the 'point and click' range of your gun and trying to emulate the plunging walking fire doctrine of a Maxim gunner. I've only once seen the latter at the GZ NAE where we could hear an AEG going off really close by, as in at most on the far size of a bush....and rounds were landing on our heads, so other than someone being up a tree with an AEP, we reckoned there was some mortaring in effect.

[ED-SKaR]

I'd probably never do it, because I've no idea where the shots were landing, short of mounting a zoom optic on a grenade launcher sight set at 30° or 45° and even then I doubt you'd be able to track them with any regularity.

 

But I wouldn't ban that kind of behaviour either for the reasons that I would or wouldn't ban anything else:

Is it unsafe? An airsoft shot at that range is carrying no energy, and is landing where everyone has eye protection, it sounds safe to me.

 

Does it give you an advantage or the opponent a disadvantage? Now this is something I've had a hard time explaining to people. I feel anything that gives you an advantage should generally be allowed and somewhat encouraged to improve the sport (But not to the point where we want that particular shoe lace because it's 0.08% less likely to come undone) However, anything that hampers the opponent makes it less fun for them, and in the spirit of the sport shouldn't be common practice.

 

Example: A torch on your gun gives you better visibility and helps with quick target acquisition, alls fair. Putting a torch on the floor and standing around the corner from it to blind the opponent so they cannot possibly see where you are shooting from, suddenly it's no fun for them and a bit of a rickroll of a move.

 

I'd say "lobbing" doesn't give the opponent any real disadvantage other than getting hit further away, because they can "lob" back if they couldn't otherwise use cover properly

And let's face it, if you can't take cover from that range, and are standing around long enough to be "lobbed" on, you'd probably get hit by a "real shot" if you want to use those rules.

 

 

 

 

The only way I can see this being remotely effective is to create a "beaten zone", using MG terminology. Real medium and heavy MGs in the past have had mounts and calculations pre set so that you can fire the gun at considerable range, dropping shots into an oval or eye shaped zone. Even the heavy MG bullets have lost much of their energy by the time they get there, but are still capable of killing, this leaves the enemy not all that keen about walking through the area, either pinning them in place, or denying a rout of transport to them.

 

But to create a beaten zone with airsoft guns? You'd need to organise a fair few players with a lot of ammo to do that.

If someone can organise that, I'd respect the fact that they are organised over the tactic they are using.

 

 

 

 

I think it's a pointless waste of ammo, but isn't that most of the times we pull the trigger?

Does it detract from the fun? not really.

 

Let them try, call the hit if you're hit, but I don't see it happening often.

 

 

 

 

 

[edit] Gak sake don't I drivel on.

[3vi1-D4n]

45 degree is a bit extreme, but I remember trying to get machine guns to hit stuff across a 150m valley I have had to arch it 30-40 degrees.  Hop up will get 70m-80m depending on FPS and barrel length but to go the other 70m requires some lobbing.  Normally on MGs I set the rear sights to 1000m that usually gets me out to 100m.  

 

But yeah thats pretty much the only time lobbing is used, on MGs, occasionally battle rifles and bolt actions (KAR98K).  So lobbing is a legitimate form of play. 

 

I think one should ban hicaps on anything lighter than 6kg.  Its easy to police and there is a reason why it is done (to maintain balance between firepower and mobility, encouraging interdependence on roles IOT enhance the scenario environment).

 

Policing duration of bursts is micromanagement and bureaucratic, and that sort of top-down poor management practices are only tolerated in Britain and little Britain (New Zealand), just to create jobs for the unemployed upper class wannabes.

[abbadon101]

 

Policing duration of bursts is micromanagement and bureaucratic, and that sort of top-down poor management practices are only tolerated in Britain and little Britain (New Zealand), just to create jobs for the unemployed upper class wannabes.

Has a valid place in urban sites though. I wouldn't be happy with a 5 second burst at point blank range. True accidents happen but there isn't a need for overkill.

[Got Wood?]

Slightly off topic, I think anything over 20 rds per sec is overkill. I've met some lovely guys, with hi speed guns, who get labelled as wankers because a 1sec burst of full auto, (which is reasonable) ends up with 20-40 rounds hitting a person (which would rightly you off)

[3vi1-D4n]

Has a valid place in urban sites though. I wouldn't be happy with a 5 second burst at point blank range. True accidents happen but there isn't a need for overkill.

 

So long as people are on 30 rounders they can spam all they want LOL as there isn't much point in blowing your load on one guy and then gets your *albatross* drilled by others because you ran out of rounds...