modular markers of the future (quite a story)

[Vegeta]

So we are seeing more of the "Modular" marker come onto the market.
Now, we all agree, I belive, that the ultimate marker would haev to be eccessivly interchangable to fit all needs. This means being able to be your 9 inch HPA foregripped equipped warp feed, autococker threaded electro speedball gun one day, and the next, be your woodsball, extendable stock, with 14" bighshot, powerfeed, bipod mount, sinlge shot, automag threadded gun, and then the next day, be your stock calss pumpgun.

This would require alot of interchangeable parts, right? not just barrels and frames.. but all what I have listed below (with soem add ons):

(i am going to spell half this wrong, sorry)

-Interchangable girp frames (you might say duh, but some companies still haevnt figured this out yet.)

-Interchangable trigger guards. (double one day, single next, no havign to interchange the etire frame)

-Plug n Play, or drop in the grip electronics. (minimag one day, emag the next)

-modular valves and componets (retro one day, 68 the next, emag the next, for use with above)

-modular breech. This is a big one. Hopper left, hopper right, vert feed, warp, etc. No need to change the entire body, just change one part of it.

-modular threads. These would insert into the breech. autococker, automag, M98, spyder, all hot swappable in between or during games.

-"snap in" accesories like foregrips, that would be as simple as snapping the foregrip onto the bottom of the gun. Could use a latch system, or screw in, or a sight rail-ish like thing, where it just slides on, and you tighten. This would promote the changing of lenghts too, like the KAPP foregrip extender.

-Snap on sight rails. Not only for hte top, bot for sides. What good is a sight on a vert feed gun? Put it to use by sighting it down the side of the gun.

-Screw in stocks. Tippmann got the idea. That littel cap on the end of the 98 can be removed and a car stock, RVA, or rear-cockign knob can be put in. Smart.

-(some1 suggested this, forget who) swappable trigger frames that keep the smae base and trigger, yet swap the grip from standard to 45 to z grip. All that needs to be changed is the trigger rod. Could be done in 5 mintes.

-Bull-pup designs. Move that grip frame foreward to the tip of the gun, even outward more, have sear linkage rod, and put that warp on top you HPA tank. short. easy.

-modular sight accesories. someone got the idea to convert M98's, Prolites, and Carbs to military looking guns. (why is it always tippmann people?) Add on M-16 style grips to you gun. snap ons. or a raised sight on the tip of you barrel?

-Do I have to mention the M203? (Tippmann Ordinance)

-Hot swappable chips/chipsets. Eprom chips that are pre programmed with your firing modes. SO basically, you could, say, store 3 firing modes on the chip. lets say you want single, 2, and 6 shot bursts. Then you plug it in, and there are 3 buttons on teh back of your grip frame, labeled P1, P2, and P3. P1 is for the 1st progam, which you chose as single shot. P2 is.. and so on. Easy, quick, and no switching through modes in game to find the one you want.

-secondary unit of say 8 MB of ram with small processor. this could be plugged into your gun via USB port, FireWire, or a good ole 1/8 inch plug. It could be put anywhere on your gun, from next you your warp, or your battery pack, or even strapped to your HPA tank. During you game, it records:

shot counter
firing modes used
preferred firing mode
time played
maximum BPS attained
FPS of shots fired (would require external sensore to be placed on tip or barrel, much like that Tom showed us in the dyno room on the Extreme emag.

The memory card, the size of a Playstation mem card, could be taken from your device and put into a PDA or Palm Pilot after the game displaying your info.



Theres more, but Im hungry. What do you think? I really liek my last option. It seems simple.
Or hell, you oculd always mount he PDA right on your HPA tank. You need data, just look down, there it is.

or

Wireless Instant Messaging during games.

Scary isnt it?

[FooTemps]

Uh... Can you say "This would take too long to swap out parts"? It's really extreme and I brought up the idea of trigger assembly inserts...

[Vegeta]

IT's not like you will be doing it all at once. Lets say you wanna switch threads and you chip between a game. Unlock and screw out the threads, screw in new threads (breech end). (am I spelling that right? breach?) Maximum of 30 seconds.
Take off grip plate, take out chip, snap in new chip, put grip back on. Maximum of about a minute 30 seconds. Its not like you are gonna change everythign at once. Like go from e-mag to mini in a minute. Thta would require quickstripping hte valve, installignthe new one, and taking out the electronics (unplug and snap out) and detachment of battery pack, and changing of threads and possibly breech (feed). I could see that taking anywhere from 6 minutes to 15.. depending on how skilled you are.

Now its not like, to get it off, you have to take out screws. new threads screw in and would snap. Valve would require screws.. don't wanna repeat of AirStar.
Everything could be quick-stip pins, snap ons, or scew in/on.

[Minimag4me]

i like the idea but imagine the bill on all of the extra parts and electronics. You can only use so many parts at one time and you would have hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars of spare parts to be stolen. It would be easier to have more than 1 gun and with all of the modulear parts you could probably make several guns.

[FooTemps]

Well, what you said is true Vegeta. It would only take 30 seconds to switch out threads if you have the threads readily available. If you have a case of modular parts it will take you more than a minute to find the threads for the certain part of a gun...

[clockworkmiller]

One other thing you have to worry about is that the gun has to be the top of the line. It cant be average in any area, otherwise people will drift towards markers that are already established.

Anothing thing to worry about is threading for barrels. If you design it to take mag barrels, then people with mags will surely consider it simply because they already own barrels for it. If you use, say, cocker threading, then you'll get cocker owners buying it, and the rest of the people buying new barrels, which they may or may not like. If you use your own individual style of threading, then comes the trick of getting the gun to catch on and then convicning barrel manufacturers that it would be in their favor to produce barrels for your gun.

Then comes the major problem. The cost of the gun + stock components + electric components (Im assuming it would come in the recball config) + labor for exchanging parts has to be significantly less than the cost of a tippman + emag + stock class gun. Otherwise, people, including myself, would buy three guns instead of one.

And finally, the R&D for that type of gun would take years upon years. Think how easy it would be to change a Sniper III to a Cocker and then back to a Sniper III. The cocker is a pump gun that pumps for you. You would need to design the gun the same way (avoiding copyright and patent violations) that could be field stripped into the other in a manner of minutes.

One last thing I just realised. How would it handle taking the elctric trigger mod in the stock class version? It clearly isnt intended to do that, but it needs to have a way to operate without breaking anything if set up that way.

[Paintchucker]

Buying Add On Parts is expensive. I would think you would be better off just buying a couple of guns. One setup for speedball, one setup for woods play...

[Hasty8]

Why do Mags or Tippmanns work so well?

Because they have so few moving parts and are solidly built.

You get a marker that is entirely modular and all you will have after a while is a bunch of pieces that don't really fit together all that well because tolerances have been worn down due to constant swapping.

And why do I have to totally change my marker configuration to go from speedball to woodland? I use my emag for everything. The only difference is that for speedball I fold my stock in and for woodland I sometimes fold it out.

And will new chipsets really make all that noticable difference? Come on now. There is only one thing holding back your rate of fire and that is your finger. And is it really neccessary to shoot 40 bazillion balls per second? It only take one to mark someone out.

How about trying to get some work in on your accuracy there?

Moral of this post?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[minimag187]

The Angel IR3 has instant messaging, but it is really useless, by the time u send the message to your teammate, he'll be bunkered.

[rudy]

having it totally modular would only be successfull if you could get several gun manufactures to agree to standards. i should be able to use the same trigger guard on my cocker angel and mag frames. same with the feed system my hopper right or power feed should fit on all my guns. and rather then modular barrel threads get everyone to agree to all use cocker threads or angel or spyder threads. and in order to really pull it off you have to make sure that the companies that are doing it have a complete range of guns in all prices. cause companies like smart parts would be totally against that they want to sell a separate peice for each different gun. if you could pull that off it would work well. and make sure after market companies have access to all the specs so they can make good parts that work well.