EMAGs in the real world?

[DarkApollo]

I'm probably the worst person to be responding to this because I am anti-electro in general. Modern electro markers achieve their RoF in a way that has only a very loose connection to actual trigger pulls. Some are worse than others but they are all essentially cheating (consistently violating the 1 pull 1 shot principle). It's to be expected (inevitable) since the easiest and cheapest way to gain performance advantages over your competitors products is to program them in. Once one did it everyone had to follow suit and you get what we have today. I say this only to express my distaste for electro's in general. The fact that my pneumags and RTs can out shoot them without eyes, batteries, micro switches, or violation of 1 pull 1 shot, and yet the elctro's are tourney legal if frankly laughable. The sport is owned by the industry rather than the industry being driven by the sport. But I digress.

E-Mags don't cheat (note: I have not used my switch listener to test an E-Mag so when I say they don't cheat I'm basing that on my very positive opinion of TK's integrity). Their electronic performance is technically inferior (in the same way that every hitter in baseball today is technically inferior to the best hitters of the steroid era). I sold my E-Mag because I found myself always in mech or hybrid and figured I'd be better off with LX RT's.

Performance on paint is going to depend on how you tune the LX. In that way they are identical to RT's so can speak to that. I average about 2 chuffs a day (usually right at the start) I have not chopped a ball in years. HOWEVER. The LX kicking in can occasionally cause "bloopers" these shots occur right after the lx activates. It is possible to shoot a blooper with the flowing shot while it is still in the barrel.

LOL WUT?
Every electro I own is one pull one shot. Angels, Timmys, Cockers, etc.. Yes you CAN make it shot more, but SEMI is SEMI. The switch CANNOT send more than one signal, ever. That is just not how it is made. The microcontroller can split up that signal but by default, every trigger pull will be one shot.
I would LOVE to see someone pull a trigger so fast that a ball is still in the barrel (traveling at 300' per second, the average barrel of 12" or 1' would mean the ball has left the barrel after 1/300th of a second, TELL me that you can 'blooper' a shot that fast)
Every time I have seen an LX vent, it takes a second to reset, after 1/300th of that reset time, the previous CLEAN shot has already left the barrel.

Then you go on to talk about out shooting an electro with an RT? Talk about hypocritical.. R/T.. Reactive Trigger.. Two shots per pull (true R/T)... Not to mention the RT effect where you HOLD the trigger in just the right way and it just goes FULL AUTO. What is this about 'cheater modes'?
All in all your argument made no sense and has no empirical data to back up your claims.
Are there cheater modes? Yes, but semi is semi is semi.

[BigEvil]

I love paintball guns and am a giant gun whore. I love them all.. Dye, PE, Smart Parts, Wgp, WDP, Mac Dev, Bob Long, Empire, Zodiac ect ect ect (yes I own or have owned them all.. ) I ALWAYS, ALWAYS gravitate back to either my Warped Xmag or my E90.

[Tropical Life]

Honestly it's either your a fan to the emag or not and you will know it once you see it. Same thing with lookin at a old school mustang and looking at a new school mustang. Both will get the job done.

[Nobody]

real men don't care about the weight, cause we have things called muscles...

better is a subjective question. Gordon has an opposite opinion, cause he likes to start shtuff. though they are heavier, so what? you can guarantee no chops with a L10. eyes and electronics can go bad, never heard of a L10 going bad. there are certainly cheaper alternatives, but that's like comparing a Chrysler K car or any other mass produced cheap vehicle;Kia, Geo, whatever(the Ion of the paintball world) to a McLaren F1. they are both cars, but somehow most people will pick the F1 over the K car.

plus, its fun to walk onto the field with an emag and show the people not only what a Emag can do, but show them that a gun that is older than a majority of the players can keep up with nothing more than what it started with.

[GoatBoy]

Is this the same person that posted roughly the same question on MCB?

Gun weight matters. How much is significant is up to your play style, but it affects snapshooting ability as well as fatigue over the long haul.

L10 setups can go "bad". They can decide to go down a carrier mid-game, which causes erratic velocity and obviously loss of air. L10 tuning is somewhat particular to set conditions, and when you change those conditions, you might have to re-tune. For instance, changing paint/barrel/velocity. You can tune the L10 to a conservative setting, but then you lose the max benefit. I'm a huge fan of the L10 but I see no reason to be quite so sanguine about it.

As far as I can tell, there are only two functional reasons to go for an E-Mag:

1. Warp capability. A clean warp setup isn't available on other electros.
2. Mech mode.

If you don't care about these, then I don't see the point. Maybe related to #1 is modifiability (which might not actually be a real word).

[Nobody]

L10 setups can go "bad". They can decide to go down a carrier mid-game, which causes erratic velocity and obviously loss of air. L10 tuning is somewhat particular to set conditions, and when you change those conditions, you might have to re-tune. For instance, changing paint/barrel/velocity. You can tune the L10 to a conservative setting, but then you lose the max benefit. I'm a huge fan of the L10 but I see no reason to be quite so sanguine about it.

well, goatboy has heard of my classic mag already, but i have yet to adjust anything in my L10 in about 10 years. don't know what i did, and it could just be that, something i did to have a miracle setup, but what i say is the truth. to me its a set and go and don't mess with it. i went more of a conservative method(or the original setup, not the softest on paint, but still haven't broken paint.

but back to the original question. if you like mags, and want them faster or better or more consistent, they can be just that. its just like players who use old brass, or KPs, or cockers. they use what they like and it doesn't matter what everyone else thinks. its in your hands, it should only mattre to you. to get an elimination, it takes one ball. that hit doesn't care if it came out of a $10 walmart/kmart special or a $2000 custom gun. get one, or don't. its only your money.

[BigEvil]

Plus you can set them on fire and they keep working

[Patron God of Pirates]

LOL WUT?

People think of a switch pull as a digital 1 or 0. This is not the case. Software can and does set a threshold for the voltage pull at which a signal is considered a 1 or a 0. Example: the micro controller I used to set up my switch listener defaults to 1.5v on a 5v (in actuality a 3.5v) pin. Above 1.5v and it is considered a 1, below, a 0. To date, every electro I have tested (15 so far) reports more signals to the solenoid than signals from the switch. They achieve this by lowering the threshold during higher rates of fire. This listens for switch noise and reports false signals. Further, they all hold multiple shots in queue during high rof. Further they all average out the signals to produce a consistent rof. The last part is IMO a necessity preventing human control interfering with the markers mechanical limitations. The end result is markers that fire more than you pull the trigger, fire when you are not pulling the trigger, and fire only when all of the markers systems are prepared to do so. No need to learn the trigger, software does it for you.

Modern electros do not read trigger pulls to shoot. They read trigger pulls to learn the intent of the shooter so they can handle the dirty work. I can and have proven this. I'm not sharing my results (because the only industry entity that I brought this up to threatened to sue me and I simply don't care enough [and can't afford] to take it that far). I did the testing to validate my theories for my own purposes. If you would like to test it as well I can tell you how.

Further, you don't need empirical data. Logic alone will tell you that "cheating" is the inevitable result of competition among electronic marker manufacturers. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to R&D a new valve/bolt system. It costs about 10 seconds worth of man hours to program your boards to lower the voltage threshold during X cps. And nobody will bust them because the "pro" leagues are owned by the industry. Low cost improvement with zero chance of backlash. Who wouldn't do it?

As far as the RT thing goes. A "response trigger" does what you are talking about. A "runaway trigger" such as a heavily shimmed ULT will shot itself. But a "Reactive Trigger" merely pushes back on your finger. It does not cycle the sear both ways for you. You have to maintain positive pressure against the trigger to cycle it and relax enough between shots to let it push you back. This is 1 pull 1 shot even if it is sickening easy to accomplish. Is it a grey area? Sure. But compared to the egregious cheating being done by the electro's it's nothing.

Bloopers: Yes. In some cases (particularly with a tight bore fit) the shot that chuffed does not even make it out of the barrel at all.

[El Zilcho]

Bloopers: Yes. In some cases (particularly with a tight bore fit) the shot that chuffed does not even make it out of the barrel at all.

I can attest to this, I had a poorly tuned LX and a .678 Eigelbarrel, did not make for a good combination.

[Spider-TW]

I love paintball guns and am a giant gun whore. I love them all.. Dye, PE, Smart Parts, Wgp, WDP, Mac Dev, Bob Long, Empire, Zodiac ect ect ect (yes I own or have owned them all.. ) I ALWAYS, ALWAYS gravitate back to either my Warped Xmag or my E90.

I haven't owned them all, but it's just as bad when I set out to design my own marker, go round with this or that, and then conclude that I have basically ended up with a mag again. New markers are more integrated and lighter, but both of those features have their trade offs that I'm not sold on.

[mpsd]

[2xFast]

Yeah, I started a similiar one over at MCB. Thought I'd try over there for some possibly less biased answers :)

MPSD do you have any pictures of your 2lb setup? I'd be particularly interested in the CF battery pack. Was it just a housing change or did you switch over to lithium ion batteries as well?

I think I've seen a couple of the CF bodies...looks like they hacked off the non critical section of the ULE body and replaced it with a CF tube...is that about the long and the short of it?

Overall I'm leaning heavily towards Emag. I'm never going to play competitively...might as well have something funky in my hands right?

...now I just need to put the cash together.

[blackdeath1k]

Heck. I don't even use an emag. I go older than that. I use a 97 automagrt that I bought back then. Its been upgraded to a Ygrip and a foamie L7 bolt vs the hard nose. I do not have a killer input pressure for reactivity. And I play against mostly GEOS when I play. Not felt outgunned yet. There's are lighter. But if your in shape that shouldn't be an issue until day 2 or 3 of a scenario. That's the only time I really wished it was lighter. Get what makes you wet every time you play with it.

[GRimm]

Its funny, I mainly play with my emag or my xmag and I am almost always shooting in mech mode (every now and then I'll flip it to E and have some fun, albeit rarely). What I love the most about them is how they feel. Every time I pick them up it just feels perfect in my hands. I love they way the feel when shooting, the way they sound, they way they look. I love the attention they bring as well, passing people and hearing them talking to each other, "Sweet an xmag!" or my favorite "what the heck it that?". As long as I play paintball I will be shooting an e/xmag

[mpsd]

Yeah, I started a similiar one over at MCB. Thought I'd try over there for some possibly less biased answers :)

MPSD do you have any pictures of your 2lb setup? I'd be particularly interested in the CF battery pack. Was it just a housing change or did you switch over to lithium ion batteries as well?

I think I've seen a couple of the CF bodies...looks like they hacked off the non critical section of the ULE body and replaced it with a CF tube...is that about the long and the short of it?

Overall I'm leaning heavily towards Emag. I'm never going to play competitively...might as well have something funky in my hands right?

...now I just need to put the cash together.

Here are some pics of it:



And here is how it looks like today:


The battery pack was custom made for me at a car tuning shop here in Brazil, years ago. The battery itself is a custom one but not a lithium ion one. Weights the same as the original.