Comstock Factoring

[SmittyFL]

Hey Gang,

    I'm fairly new to the forum and did a search, but I didn't find anything on comstock factoring. If it is discussed on here please ignor this and refer me to the thread.

    It has taken me a while to finally understand it and now I was wondering if anyone actually changes or alters they way they approach a stage because of it.

    If a definition is needed let me know, it's a little long but if anyone doesn't understand it I'll post it. Thanks

[Phil Dunlop]

Smitty, have you read Plaxco's words on the subject? I think they are very useful.

I bear the concept in mind when I can, and remember one instance at the aussie nats where observance of the concept resulted in a stage win.

I wouldn't worry about it, but if you include the calculations in your stage routine, from time to time it will help

P.D.

[Tony Chiavacci]

I often change my approach to stages based on it. I know most of the better shooters I have shot with take it into consideration.

[SmittyFL]

Tony & Phil,

   Thanks for your response. I can call my shots on target fairly well, I don't think however I can call an A vs C at game speed. I typically shoot as fast as possible ensuring I get all my hits. Do you actually think to yourself "well this is a 10 factor so I'm going to push it a little and if I throw one, oh well" or "this is a 4 factor so I'm going to back off and ensure an A"

    I guess what I'm asking is; is your thought process that specific. Maybe I'm not good enough to worry about it. I don't think I could /guarantee/ all A's unless I backed way off.

Thanks

PS- Phil, I have not read Plaxco's stuff, it is in his book or online somewhere?

(Edited by SmittyFL at 7:05 am on Jan. 9, 2003)

[Phil Dunlop]

Smitty,

Brownells did sell it a few years back.

For most stages my approach just takes care of itself.

When something goes wrong I am aware that my hit factor will inevitably be lower than I'd hoped and as such is more influenced by accuracy than speed. So if for e.g. I fumble a reload I would be inclined to complete the course with an accuracy rather than speed bias.

The stage I mentioned originally was a very long run through the bush. I calculated that because of the vast movement the HF would be low, so I shot with the focus on A's. It took me 42 sec, but my points beat the eventual match winner who did it in 36!

Hope that helps,

P.D.

[Detlef]

for every single stage you should calculate your best guess for the HF that you will achieve. Those guesses become better with experience. When you have calculated this, you know *your* points-time equivalent on this stage (say HF=5 means 1 point equals 0.2 sec). With experience, this becomes an enormously useful guide how to shoot a stage. You can even go and compare various approaches to a stage (e.g. go prone and engage those 50 y targets vs. runnig 40 y and engaging them as 10 y targets) and tune your strategy (e.g. a fast runner and bad shooter would choose the latter, a slow potato but good Bianchi shooter would use the former).

Make it a routine to calculate this, it will eventually benefit you enormously!

--Detlef

[shred]

It's handiest in extreme situations with very low or very high HF stages.. like one at a local "High Round Count" match.  The HF was something like 20 (big pile o targets all up close).  I thew a mike and came in second on the stage, 'cause I'd factored it out and knew it was a total speed stage.

[Tony Chiavacci]

Smitty, I personally would not ever look at a stage regardless of the HF and decide to go so fast I will throw a miss (not that I don't do it, believe me I miss plenty). However, On a high HF stage I'll definitely speed up and accept more Cs and maybe a D or 2 if it is high enough. I am certainly no expert but have had a few moments of brilliance. When I'm really on my game I can tell weather on not my shot is an A or a C. Unfortunately most of the time I am not very sure. Misses and most Ds are the only thing I can usually call accurately and of course always try to make  up  a miss when I can.

(Edited by Tony Chiavacci at 9:43 pm on Jan. 14, 2003)

[benny hill]

it's easy. above 7.5 factor SPEED. below 7.5 ACCURACY

[chp5]

Factoring a stage, Practical suggestions -merged thread

Spinning off from recent threads about speed and shoot all A’s, I’d love to hear practical suggestions about how to effectively factor a stage.

As I understand it, factoring is simply figuring out the average points per second of the stage. For example, a 100 point stage shot in 10 seconds is a 10 factor. For a 10 factor stage, each second is worth 10 points – each .10 second is worth one point.

Obviously, speed is very important on a 10 factor stage. Conversely, points/accuracy are paramount on low factor stages. So knowing the factor will help the shooter determine how to shoot the stage.

Two questions:

1. To determine the factor, you need to know two things: (a) points available, and ( the time it takes to shoot them. You KNOW how many points are available before you shoot the stage, but how do you know the time required to effectively shoot the stage before you shoot it? Maybe you could ask the RO what others have shot it in (in bigger matches), but how else do you know the time part of the factoring equation?

2. A 10 factor stage is speed intensive – a 3 factor stage is point intensive. What about the 4-9 range? How do you break them down?

P.S. Please don’t just tell me to shoot 90-95% of the available points at my natural speed or similar advice. I’d like to learn about factoring. Thanks.

Edited October 15, 2004 by Flexmoney

[Tri Burst]

Cy I have wonder the same thing for a long time. I see/hear other shooter at bigger matches say this is a X?.00 HF stage. I "THINK" they come up with that by just looking at the stage and figure out what they "THINK" would be a good time and use that and there class to determine what the best shooters will run it in. I know that's how I do it or should I say try to do it. I also use the time estimate of what I think I should run it in as a base to see how I did on the stage. If I run it near the time estimate I figure I did good. Now comes the HF and the HF of other shooters of my skill and that of better shooters. I use all of those factors at one match to gage the next.

But you really got me how some shooter come up with the high HF for any stage. Unless they ask the RO what was the best time so far and who shot it.

[Rob Boudrie]

I saw one Sunday shooter at the 2004 Area 7 championship consulting a printout of the interim high scores for each stage from the partial results where were posted to the web on Saturday.

[SmittyFL]

http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?...stock+factoring

The above is a post I started last year on a similar subject.

You need to know what you can do what in. In other words, how are long are your splits and transitions at 10, 15, 30 yds? What is your draw and reload time under match conditions? It gets more difficult on large field courses with lots of running, but you can figure that out also. How long does it take you to sprint 10 yds and fire an A shot on a 20 yd target? That's something you can figure out for example. Also watching other competitors and gauge whether you're faster or slower.

Like anything else practice makes perfect. Just start doing it at local matches. Prior to the stage write down all the time breaks you think you'll have for the stage. 1.20 draw, .25 split, .50 transition, .25 split, 2.5 reload while moving to next port, etc., etc., and then check the timer afterwards and see where you were right and wrong.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure this out a while ago. And while I admit it is helpful, 9 times out of 10 it comes down to shooting as fast and accurate as you can. But it's good to know what you can do at what distance. It takes a lot of intimidation out of sliders, swingers, and the like.

Hope this helps.

[Jake Di Vita]

The way I do it is I estimate the approximate time and what I think my hits will be. Then I figure out how long it will take me to ENSURE all hits are A's. Whichever hit factor is higher, that's the way I shoot it.

[vincent]

There are shooters who document their shooting performance on standardized drills so often that they know how long it takes them to perform the key elements of most stages. They can use this information from their shooters log or from memory to come up with an approximate time for a given stage.

On multiple occasions I have seen top shooters estimate the winning score for a big match before the shooting started and be really close when the dust settled.

[SmittyFL]

This is third hand hear-say, but I believe it.

Someone asked Eric G. before he shot what he was going to shoot stage 16 in at the Nationals. He replied 17.12. When asked why not in the 16's, he said it is not worth the risk, you need the points on this stage.

He ended up shooting it in 17.70 with two make up shots on steel.

[chp5]

Thanks for the replies.

Follow up questions:

1. When trying to estimate your time on a stage not yet shot, do you guys just estimate the draw, splits, transitions, etc. based on past perfromance/experience? Another way to skin that cat might be to use a stop watch (I have one on my wrist watch) and air gun the stage in the walk through and time it. This assumes you can actually move at speed while others are reviewing the stage as well.

2. What about my original question #2: "A 10 factor stage is speed intensive – a 3 factor stage is point intensive. What about the 4-9 range? How do you break them down?"

In another thread, Benny Hill wrote: "it's easy. above 7.5 factor SPEED. below 7.5 ACCURACY." Does anyone have a similar or differing rule of thumb?

[Ken Kwiat]

BE and Matt Burkett and others have covered Comstock factoring pretty well in their books. But, as a basis

From BE's Beyond Fundamentals (p. 147):

"...come up with a time that's within one or two seconds of what you think it will take you to shoot the stage with good hits -- mostly As -- and then take that time and come up with a factor -- score divided by time. Take the number of points possible on thte stage and divide it by the time that you think you can do it in to get the factor. Then put a 1 over that number to make it a reciprocal. Now you've got the time in seconds that you'll have to shoot an A instead of a C. If that factor comes up to 4, for example, you've got .25 seconds to fire an A insead of a C..."

Benny's rule-of-thumb of HF of 7.5 equates to .13 seconds to fire an A instead of a C -- that's still a pretty big difference in split/transition time inho.

I personally think getting too hung up on the Comstock factor can be a dangerous "need for speed" above the 7.5 range that results in me pushing too hard for speed and then I end up missing or hitting a partial -- then look at your HF! It sucks. Don't get me wrong, if I come up to what I know intuitively will be a low HF stage (i.e., most classifiers), you bet I try to turn the visual acuity up to get the points. But, it's a slippery slope on the other end of the spectrum because I end up opening myself up to making crash-and-burn kind of mistakes.

Where looking at the Comstock factor really helps is in deciding whether engaging a disappearing target is worth the time or not.

[DogmaDog]

At the MS classic I tried running through a stage with an "airgun" and a stopwatch...I think that worked pretty well. You have to be honest with yourself about how long it takes to shoot and reload, though...the sights on an airgun can be a lot faster than on your real gun

I consider dropping one C every 5 to 10 shots, and divide that score by the time to estimate my hit factor.

Then I consider how much time a miss or a D cost--I don't worry about Cs, as I typically don't call them as "bad"...I can usually call a D or a Mike, and make it up, and stand a good chance of coming out ahead, though.

All of it is kind of an academic exercise...I make up called Ds and Mikes whenever I shoot them, and I don't shoot them very often (I threw 2 or 3 Ds at the MS classic, and one was on a swinger).

The airgun technique did seem like a good way to decide how to run a stage, if there were several different ways to do it.

DogmaDog

[Jake Di Vita]

Only problem with that is in the new rules you can't have anything in your hands.

[shred]

I'm sure I've posted on this elsewhere, but for most shooters the easy-factoring way is "lots of movement, long targets, dinking with props = low HF". "little movement, lots of close targets = high HF". The tricky ones are when you have to do a lot of slow dinking, then have some close targets-- those are still low HF targets (see: http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=6319 )

But.. after being a die-hard factorer on each and every stage, now I only do it occasionally. Part of that was due to my chat with BE on the subject, part of it was understanding that it just didn't matter except in either extreme cases or when deciding if blowing off some prop or target is worth it.

btw, 3-gun rifle stages tend to have very low HFs.

The important thing is your HF is YOUR HF. Don't go off the top shooters score unless you also are a top shooter. Your points-per-second value may be far different than theirs.

[Storm]

Check out the Sept. 10th "Ask Rob" answers on Rob Leatham's site. It might help answer some of your questions.

http://www.robleatham.com/answers040910.htm

When trying to estimate your time on a stage not yet shot, do you guys just estimate the draw, splits, transitions, etc. based on past perfromance/experience?

That's what Jerry Barnhart would tell you to do. Time yourself in practice or check the timer at local matches. Know what your splits and transtitions are at different distances. At the match, use a stopwatch to time the movers. You can also use the stopwatch to time yourself when moving from one spot to another during walkthroughs.

But, as Shred said, that's probably overkill in most situations. Where it matters most is if you have multiple ways to shoot it and you want to figure out what is best for you. It also helps when you're trying to figure what sequence to shoot multiple movers in.

[B.J. Norris]

FYI, a 7 HF is neutral, and points and speed are equal.

I rarely get a calculator out and factor the stage out. On a typical field course, which is 100-150 points, I figure on no more than 5 points down, with 10 being the limit for a decent run. Anything less than 100 points, I'm looking to drop no more than 5 depending on the difficulty of the shots, ideally, 3-0 points down. Barring any major problems, I can usually come to within 2-3 seconds of my time. Most of time difference is the true run being a little faster, since I'm pretty conservative when estimating my time. It also helps to know what the top shooters are going do on the stage IMHO. That way you can figure out where/how to push and make up any lost points on other areas on the stage. Knowing where you lost the match points is critical, since you can go home and practice those areas.

[Flexmoney]

I merged this thread with Smitty's...and moved it to "Tips".

[cpty1]

Cy, answers to your questions from my perspective:

1. all of the above, in addition to after the shooting starts, if you're squadded with someone of a similar skill level/class, and you're fortunate enough that they shoot the stage before you do.

2. I use a 6.5 HF as a breakpoint. Anything below, I'm looking for points. Anything above is speed intensive. The breakpoint probably varies from shooter to shooter as Benny talks about a 7.5. I came to my current 6.5 baseline based on results of major match stages I've shot.