How to easily estimate Hit Factor in Walkthrough

[XRe]

(Mebbe wishful thinking, that... )

Yeah, probably a little wishful ;-) And they've also designed them where they had Max Traps that ended up being head shot only targets because the shooter never had a chance to actually shoot them while they were open... Stuff like that

Stage 12 at Area 2 this year was a good example - two disappearing targets on a 40 point speed shoot. You needed the points - but a lot of folks thought they might could get away without 20 of them, until we showed them the math

[Chills1994]

my rule of thumb is to complete the stage in under whatever the round count is. 32 round stage, well, I try to finish it under 32 seconds....and of course that varies with the stage design, movers, swingers, etc....and that is just for an iron sighted gun without a comp. open division guns are 'nother story.

[Duke Nukem]

I dont think "shoot alphas" is the answer. I looked at the scores from a bunch of major matches and the winners in open and Limited only shot 70% Alphas.

The higher alpha count shooters lost the match.

[Jadeslade]

Yeah-chek out Nils score from 2010 Limited Nats. Speed kills.

Dave. Calm down. You are starting to personally attack me. I don't dig it.

[Jadeslade]

I wish people would look at what question the original poster is asking and answer instead of giving hearsay from somebody else or pontificating. If the sport never evolved, we would all be shooting one handed .45's.

He just wanted to know how. Really a simple question.

[XRe]

Dave. Calm down. You are starting to personally attack me. I don't dig it.

Um, if you read a personal attack in that, perhaps you should read again. The OP asked a question for which the right answer is not the one he (or a number of people commenting on this thread) are looking for. Kyle gave the right answer. You said "It's easy to say just shoot alphas. Duh." in response. I pointed out that you just took a dump on the best advice given in the thread (and then elaborate on why it's the best advice in the thread) - and that's a personal attack?

As far as the OP's question (which you say hasn't been answered), let's pick it apart, bit by bit:

Wondering how you guys approach Hit Factor in your stage walk through.

Answered.

Essentially, what I am looking for is an easy formula or model to use when I look at a stage to determine whether more of a speedy approach or an accuracy approach is necessary to the stage. Ideally neither accuracy or speed will suffer. But alas, i'm only human and not quite there yet.

Answered - it's already determined on the vast majority of stages. You need to do both at the pace your sights dictate - or put another way, you need to shoot as fast as you can shoot almost all As - which distills down to Kyle's answer: shoot alphas. If you come across a rare stage involving a lot of open targets at really close range with very little movement between them, you can accept some point loss for speed.

How important is it to determine hit factor before shooting a stage or is it more advisable to simply shoot the stage without worrying about it?

Answered. It's not - simply shoot the stage without worrying about it. Shoot alphas.

None of what the three GMs on this thread (that I know of) have told you is "hearsay", nor is it "pontificating". Answers don't always come in the form you expect them - and they're not always what you think you want to hear.

Finally, you say:

Yeah-chek out Nils score from 2010 Limited Nats. Speed kills.

Which just goes to prove that you're missing the whole point Kyle, Steve, and I are getting at...

[Nik Habicht]

I dont think "shoot alphas" is the answer. I looked at the scores from a bunch of major matches and the winners in open and Limited only shot 70% Alphas.

The higher alpha count shooters lost the match.

Math skills a little lacking? :D Your numbers kind of make the point that one should shoot alphas.....

Lets assume a 100 round match -- so the math is easy.

70 percent alphas = 350 points (70x5)

That leaves 30 rounds. The folks who are winning are hopefully shooting all Charlies, maybe one or two Deltas.....

30 Charlies = 120 points for a total with the alphas of 470/500, or 94% of possible points.

28 Charlies, 2 Deltas = 116 points. Add the 350, and the shooter amassed 466/500 or 93.2% of possible points....

Wow, converting two charlies into deltas hurts.....

No one is saying shoot all alphas -- though that would be nice if there weren't an impact on time. We are saying, focus on shooting as many of them as possible -- and to do that you'll have to let go of the notion of time mattering a great deal. Be efficient, take no more time than necessary.....

[XRe]

Well put, Nik - and the math is spot on. The target is 95% of available points, and it sounds like the majority of shooters winning the majority of matches (per Duke Nukem's assessment) are right there...

Be efficient, take no more time than necessary.....

..., do the shooting at the pace it needs to happen, and do everything else as quickly as possible. That's literally all you need to know to excel at this game (well, that's oversimplifying, but... )

[EkuJustice]

Seen one stage at a recent match where a disappearing targer could have been debated based on the division and the hitfactor. It was basically 4 paper targets maby 15 or so yards out, and a pepper popper which activated a drop turner. For single stack, the difference was shooting the 8 paper and then calling the shot on the steel with you last round or shooting paper do a standing reload and then do steel and drop turner. At 2 alphas, and a hit factor of 5 its going to have to be sub 2 seconds for the reload, re engaging the target and turning some to hit the dropturner.

[Nik Habicht]

Yeah-chek out Nils score from 2010 Limited Nats. Speed kills.

Nils won the Limited Nats in 2010, having shot 87.9 percent of available points.

In 2011, Nils shot 91.69% of available points and was beaten by Shannon Smith who accumulated 94.54 percent of available points. Points win when the times are close -- and in 2011 they were close....

Clearly time played a factor in 2010 -- but it may have been probably was an outlier.....

[XRe]

Clearly time played a factor in 2010 -- but it may have been probably was an outlier.....

The scores aren't up on the USPSA site, but I suspect Max's Open win in 2009 was somewhat similar (after all, he zero'ed a stage, and still won the match) - can't go research it, though. But, those would be the only two matches in my recollection where this was the case, and there wasn't some other mitigating factor (like, the match winner was head and shoulders above the rest of his competition in terms of skill level).

Also, you have to take into account that the 2010 match was arguably a very difficult match (in fact, it seems like the Limited match may have had more difficult target presentations than the Open match - and the Open match wasn't easy by any stretch), and it quite possibly caused a lot of folks to check up on the speed and be a bit on the cautious side (so, overly slow) - but not for Nils (as witnessed by the number of penalties that he drew). Definitely not a typical scenario.

My point, though, to William's comment was that no one on the "shoot lots of alphas" side of the discussion here has said anything about slowing down (for sure, no one has alluded to anything like "speed kills" or the like). There's a fundamental misunderstanding about the speed that one can shoot As and the fastest speed that one can shoot the stage with a sight picture "on brown" - the two are so similar as to be almost unnoticeable on the timer (measured in the 1-2 hundredths of a second per shot for top level shooters on typical targets - say, around a half second's worth of time on a 32 round stage between shooting all Cs and all As). In fact, it's almost certain that had Nils shot more points and fewer penalties, his times wouldn't have suffered to any large degree, and his lead would've been quite a bit larger.... (not sure what Nils' opinion would be, as I haven't asked him directly about it).