Where did AGD go wrong?

[Nobody]

i think it was a poor decision to try and make a stand alone E-trigger for an automag, and preserve the backwards compatibility. the direct acting noid, and thus massive battery needed to power it ... it might have been fine for a late 1990's electro, but by even the year 2000, it was outdated. a wiser course of action would have been to totally revamp the automag valve, ditch backwards compatibility and make a true electro-pnumatic triggered blowforward gun, with eyes. such a gun was probably in the works, but the above "we have capital to do one thing, defend ourselves from SP, or make a new gun" dichotomy got in the way.

I'll take a stab at this.

1) at that point, there was no R&D for a new valve nor should there have been. The valve works well, add in the L10 l, which is near something no one else has, there is no need the deviate from the line when there is not a problem.

2) remaking the valve and/or the gun line, to a better marketing is hindsight. We are coming from what history laid out not at the precipice of staying the course. The real forward push of lighter was just starting but never gain ground. Look at cockers, angels, shoebox shockers, and see that the mag was not the heavyweight in that crowd, but all of those guns (except the shocker which was ditched completely) did get smaller and lighter in their lives. You can not do that to a mag without a major redesign, which is time and money.

3) a redesign is thoroughly stupid. Its not the package that is the problem. Look at the cocker/ressurection, other than simplifying the internals and changing/bulletproofing the pneumatics, the only thing that really changed is the appearance. You hold a 98 cocker up to a 2016 ressurection, they are the same in looks. The pneumatics are in the same place, and most parts are even interchangeable. But its the marketing of it, its the preceived notion of freahness, and a impressive support system that thrusts the cocker back into the mainstream that the mag sorely lacks & needs. The ressurection didn't change the cocker, it only fixed the problems, updated them to today's simplier player.

[Nobody]

Now SP did a few things great. 1 was making you the consumer feel that you needed this or that part or gun. At the point of circa 2003, the Impulse was the it gun. You had dozens of private label guns, multiple part houses adding in their own mark and part to the mix.when you build in that need of not only needing the gun to be completed (impulses came without a LPR, which every stacked tube electro needs to set hammer/rammer pressure) but people could put personal pieces to make their guns more unique. Throw that in the marketing of and high profile of many pro teams sponsored by SP using it (and subsequently the later SFT & NXT shockers/ the poor Nerve never found a niche) was paramount of them making their mark and even trying to dominate the market with their lawsuit.

But the main point is, they had marketing. Whether it was paying for teams to use their guns, having many companies provide guns, parts and exposure. Looking back 12 years ago, you had multiple base, special editions, limited editions, private label, and most importantly the fields/proshops wanting to cash in on them by having those guns and selling them down the line. It was the underground marketing that AGD could never get. Mags were never flashy, never had the PL versions, never had the extensive aftermarket part path that some guns had. Being the thinking man's paintball gun, all the technology was buried in a single tube, all within a valve. It also didn't help that even though the L10 eliminated any chopping (the bane of all mags, preceived and actual) the main point of any RT/RTPro/Emag/Xvalve was the reactivity enabling the guns to sing way passed the 20bps range without the aid of any cheater boards.

Regardless of what the pros shoot, the basis of all paintball is the woods. The TacOne bodies gave the people a place to put whatever on them, the key to any woodsball gun has been 2 things: weight and efficeincy. Lugging around an Emag, or an Xmag with a warp, or a classic loaded up, gets tiresome very quickly. Ask beemer about his warps at LL8 and when he used Dayspring's Etek. And when you go into the woods, or just a field, its what are the people using. That is the biggest influence on what people will use/buy. Year's ago, i played some 3 man speedball tournaments. 1 year there were all kinds of Timmys used because the Pev and their(at the time) 7 proshops all stocked & used timmys. A few years later and they switched to Egos. Mags rarely had that benefit.

You can also add in the slow move from powerfeeds to centerfeed/aluminium bodies, lack of R&D on seeing what or where the game is moving. I really think that if TK would have found a Face for AGD that TK could have moved to solely the technical aspects and had the face do the promotion. Then the next smaller Emag could happen, the next developments could be made, hell even a factory pneumag. Alas, that could never happen.

[going_home]

∆∆∆∆. And that is why marketing was my #1 reason. Companies time and time again prove marketing can sell a crap product any day of the week over a quality product that isn't marketed. Especially in the days before modern internet.

Ronco !

[going_home]

I'll take a stab at this.

Who didnt see that coming ?

[blackdeath1k]

Ronco !

I was actually thinking about vanilla skate company compared to Riedell when I made that post. Or the fact mags had no marketing to speak of by 2001. Nobody knew what they were unless they had been playing a few years already in my area.

[cockerpunk]

I'll take a stab at this.

1) at that point, there was no R&D for a new valve nor should there have been. The valve works well, add in the L10 l, which is near something no one else has, there is no need the deviate from the line when there is not a problem.

2) remaking the valve and/or the gun line, to a better marketing is hindsight. We are coming from what history laid out not at the precipice of staying the course. The real forward push of lighter was just starting but never gain ground. Look at cockers, angels, shoebox shockers, and see that the mag was not the heavyweight in that crowd, but all of those guns (except the shocker which was ditched completely) did get smaller and lighter in their lives. You can not do that to a mag without a major redesign, which is time and money.

3) a redesign is thoroughly stupid. Its not the package that is the problem. Look at the cocker/ressurection, other than simplifying the internals and changing/bulletproofing the pneumatics, the only thing that really changed is the appearance. You hold a 98 cocker up to a 2016 ressurection, they are the same in looks. The pneumatics are in the same place, and most parts are even interchangeable. But its the marketing of it, its the preceived notion of freahness, and a impressive support system that thrusts the cocker back into the mainstream that the mag sorely lacks & needs. The ressurection didn't change the cocker, it only fixed the problems, updated them to today's simplier player.

once you decide to make a true electro-pneumatic triggered blowforward, there is little sense in keeping most of the classic automags configuration or parts. the job of the mechanical on/off (for example) is essentially redundant with a pneumatic solenoid valve, and a bolt tail, they do the same thing, you don't need both. once you take out the on/off, you don't need the reg on the back (make the gun shorter), you can still keep the level 10, just add eyes (new body/rail construction for optimization there), pretty soon you have a gun that rather looks like most modern blow forward electro pneumatics.

the automag is a fantastic design, but its fundamentally a mechanical gun. because it was designed as such.

clean sheet of paper design, making an AGD electro, i think would be a pretty different looking gun. a gun that would look and function a lot like the guns of today, but made in the mid-2000s. that would have been pretty awesome innovation. something more like a freestyle or the original GEO.

[blackdeath1k]

once you decide to make a true electro-pneumatic triggered blowforward, there is little sense in keeping most of the classic automags configuration or parts. the job of the mechanical on/off (for example) is essentially redundant with a pneumatic solenoid valve, and a bolt tail, they do the same thing, you don't need both. once you take out the on/off, you don't need the reg on the back (make the gun shorter), you can still keep the level 10, just add eyes (new body/rail construction for optimization there), pretty soon you have a gun that rather looks like most modern blow forward electro pneumatics.

the automag is a fantastic design, but its fundamentally a mechanical gun. because it was designed as such.

clean sheet of paper design, making an AGD electro, i think would be a pretty different looking gun. a gun that would look and function a lot like the guns of today, but made in the mid-2000s. that would have been pretty awesome innovation. something more like a freestyle or the original GEO.

Sounds like you are describing a Geo to me. And honestly every time I think of the design of the Geo function wise I think of a new age simplified electro pnumatic mag design.

I stand corrected. You already mentioned the Geo in your post. A board, regulator, solenoid valve, dump chamber, and bolt. That makes up a Geo.

[Spider-TW]

clean sheet of paper design, making an AGD electro, i think would be a pretty different looking gun. a gun that would look and function a lot like the guns of today, but made in the mid-2000s. that would have been pretty awesome innovation. something more like a freestyle or the original GEO.

But that would put it up against the gen-E matrix and early freestyles, along with the 2k2 (and 2k5) intimidators. All of these hinged upon HPA also. Compressors in the 90s were still very pricey animals. They have come a long way also. Not saying it wouldn't have been viable, just another uphill battle. If AGD ended up as an equal to Dye and Bob Long, we would probably asking that same question "why would I pay that much?".

The other side of SP was that they were always expanding, probably beyond their means. They like to say that they got caught by having their recent large loan getting called in, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had been running from one loan to another for a long time. People complain that AGD doesn't have a factory; but regardless, it has limped along with the efforts of a few. "Minimally sustainable" is better than smacked down and sold off.

[cockerpunk]

But that would put it up against the gen-E matrix and early freestyles, along with the 2k2 (and 2k5) intimidators. All of these hinged upon HPA also. Compressors in the 90s were still very pricey animals. They have come a long way also. Not saying it wouldn't have been viable, just another uphill battle. If AGD ended up as an equal to Dye and Bob Long, we would probably asking that same question "why would I pay that much?".

The other side of SP was that they were always expanding, probably beyond their means. They like to say that they got caught by having their recent large loan getting called in, but I wouldn't be surprised if they had been running from one loan to another for a long time. People complain that AGD doesn't have a factory; but regardless, it has limped along with the efforts of a few. "Minimally sustainable" is better than smacked down and sold off.

this post confuses me. why does compressed air matter?

high end electros in the early 2000s were all running compressed air. it was the standard gas for high end guns. only the shockers were still using co2, but that was because they were so horrendously inefficient, and co2 has a much higher energy density, not because it was more commonly available.

the Xmag did go up against the matrix, freestyle, and timmies .... and it lost.

[Spider-TW]

this post confuses me. why does compressed air matter?

That was referring back to my earlier point about the present technology in the early 2000s, relative to mass marketing. Yes, high end markers were running nitrogen and HPA, which TK had a big hand in. But HPA was still lagging on the local fields. In 2005, there was a web page that helped you locate fields with HPA. Any marker shooting at those higher rates needed HPA, for fill speed if nothing else. It only took a few years for it to really take off, but by 2005 SP was marketing the Ion.

While that may have indeed been the time to inject a dedicated electro-spool, I don't see the Freestyle nor the Ion as leaving a lot of new market space, regardless of patents and shady practices. Sure AGD could have been competitive, but not so much in innovation as much as production and marketing. Sure, innovations could have been made on any one design, but the market was still boxed in.

Assuming they all survived on the high end, was there enough market to sustain AGD, Dye, PE, Bob Long and SP?

the Xmag did go up against the matrix, freestyle, and timmies .... and it lost.

An AGD electro-spool would have won? As it is, people already complain about the "lack of innovation" in the paintball market as a whole.

Anyone know if Bob Long was still making good money before the sale?

[Nobody]

once you decide to make a true electro-pneumatic triggered blowforward, there is little sense in keeping most of the classic automags configuration or parts. the job of the mechanical on/off (for example) is essentially redundant with a pneumatic solenoid valve, and a bolt tail, they do the same thing, you don't need both. once you take out the on/off, you don't need the reg on the back (make the gun shorter), you can still keep the level 10, just add eyes (new body/rail construction for optimization there), pretty soon you have a gun that rather looks like most modern blow forward electro pneumatics.

the automag is a fantastic design, but its fundamentally a mechanical gun. because it was designed as such.

clean sheet of paper design, making an AGD electro, i think would be a pretty different looking gun. a gun that would look and function a lot like the guns of today, but made in the mid-2000s. that would have been pretty awesome innovation. something more like a freestyle or the original GEO.

Bait in, time to set the hook

You are missing 1 huge aspect of the mag and AGD. The valve is part of the gun, it is almost unibody like a car; in that the valve is part of the structure of the gun. With that it is incredibly hard to stop what you are doing to change in midstream to go an entirely new direction. Looking at those guns of that era, Bob Long kept refining the stacked tube design that he learned off ICD. Dye bought up matrix and everything Gen-E and War Machine(?) had done before, again refining the design. The same with WDP, even though they kept trying different sensors to detect paintballs that either a reflective or breakbeam eyes. SP was the only ones that did change the entire gun, but as far as i know, the development of the SFT could have been years in the making. Whether SP saw that the development path of the old shoebox was basically nil, or they could not compete with the RoF wars with that closed bolt design.

But because you said development, this also goes into the C&D that SP started. Though slow to pick up ground as people didn't or wouldn't believe it, the ominous spectre of that did kill AKA's Viking and Excaliber, force ICD to sell out to Empire then fold paintball activities by 2006, and a few others i can't remember. That more than anything potentially stopped AGD from doing any development to refine or even go a different, possibly a true blow forward electro.

The freestyle was an elegant design but it was as temperamental as an F1 car. The first models had horrendous efficiency but each generation did refine the gun (though the FSP was the basturd step-child that well was a basturd in design and implementation), to the point that if development was not stopped and ICD did get some decent HPRs that could keep up with the gun's potential. (Pssst, there were rumors of Empire planning to use the Freestyle FS8 bolt in the Vanquish, but they chose to go with the more recently acquired SP shocker properties)

So again, like an arch, you just can't focus on the keystone but all of the factors to the one thing. Everyone here in this thread is absolutely correct because most of these people had lived through that era. This is an opinion question, not something you can do a quick "sound byte" for an answer because there are and were so many factors that played major and minor parts. I knew you woikd give your quick, "cut bait & start over" answer because that is who you are. Even that isn't wrong except when considering all the factors in that time.

[Nobody]

Oh, about the Xmag loosing to timmys and trixs et al? TK himself said that the programming for the Emag was not that great. He was thoroughly surprised that Lornecash dumped all of the Xmod programming into the stock Emag board. Anyone here can attest, who has had a emag/Xmag with the various AGD programming to how better the Xmod is to waking up the inherent capabilities of said mags. Also, look at those guns, they also had support of aftermarket companies that did make better boards/chips. Tadao, Virtue, regardless of whether they made cheater boards or not, they did give people an option, by choice or even sponsorship.

You can also look at pure gun sponsorships and factory teams. AGD only had a few, even Jax Warriors moved to the cocker. When you loose even that development aspect of actual on field feedback, it is hard for anyone to plan on what the needs are for the gun. Add in that there is a SPECIFIC rule to BAN the RT and other positive force triggers. You are climbing a mountain to even compete.

No, the Xmag didn't loose against those guns, it was unable to compete at the same level.

[going_home]

Wait...

Did Doug just say Gordon was right ?

I just really dont know what to say.

[Dayspring]

Wait...

Did Doug just say Gordon was right ?

I just really dont know what to say.

The next thing that'll happen is that the Cubs will win the World Series.

Surely the 2nd sign of the apocalypse.

[Nobody]

Right or correct in that there was no wrong answers, not that his answer was better or best for the situation.