Let's talk Sao carry ops

[Racinready300ex]

15 hours ago, GigG said:

Here we go from earlier...

 

 

I wonder with CO so far ahead is it a success or a failure? Meaning, half the divisions are dying. Pcc is struggling too really. We're constantly reading threads about "saving" divisions. Lets say we add SAO to CO and it's a huge success. Then we see limited and open drop down below 10% and CO ends up at 50%. We then have 7 out of 8 divisions on life support. Are be improving things? Now every division needs to be "saved". Should we save divisions at all?

 

Or we add a new LO division. I think you end up in the same place just take a few years. Is this the right direction? Most of the sport will still be on life support.

 

What should the division numbers up look like? What's the goal of them? To me having everyone in just a couple divisions would be okay, but then why have several divisions that no one shoots? 

 

What happens if the Supreme Court rules against capacity restrictions? I be low caps already dismal numbers take a serious hit minus revolver because those guys are crazy.

 

I don't know the answer, I'm looking forward to SAO-CO and it'll be interesting to see what uspsa looks like in 5 years. 

 

 

Edit, what I'm getting at here is to save divisions we need to pull people from CO not add them. So CO's massive success in a way is hurting everything else making uspsa a failure. At least assuming your goal is have all the divisions be popular. If your goal is deep competition, CO is the only thing in uspsa that's working. 

Edited November 22, 2022 by Racinready300ex

[Boomstick303]

1 hour ago, Racinready300ex said:

Now every division needs to be "saved". Should we save divisions at all?

 

Why do divisions need to be saved?

[Racinready300ex]

3 minutes ago, Boomstick303 said:

 

Why do divisions need to be saved?

 

I don't know but, people talk about saving them all the time. To me, we shouldn't save divisions and we should have the means to eliminate divisions that aren't shot. But, there are probably 2-300 revolver shooters who would disagree. 

[Fishbreath]

1 hour ago, Racinready300ex said:

minus revolver because those guys are crazy

 

You've got that right.

 

Almost all talk of winding down unpopular divisions (or adding new ones) is off the mark, though. "Is it popular" is the wrong metric to use. What matters is whether the division is distinct enough from existing ones to serve competitive equity. Rifles? Definitely need their own division. Revolvers? Same.

 

Limited 10? Well, if we applied the rule about magazine capacity in ban states in a sensible way (i.e., what you can buy, not what you can possess if it happens to be grandfathered in), I don't think there's much reason to keep it, since it's just Limited with shorter magazines.

 

Limited Optics? Ehhh, maybe? I've never run a 2011 myself.

 

Ultimately, though, "We should eliminate division X" is an argument without a natural limiting principle until you're down to one division, which is what we had in the early 90s, and was a situation we collectively disliked enough to go from one to eight over the next 25 years.

[Boomstick303]

I don't care if USPSA keeps any division.  "Saving" divisions is extremely short sighted.  I am not sure how placating to 1.2% to 8.6% of the membership is healthy for any organization.  Rules should be made and/or changed for the current times, current firearm technology, and optics to maintain a healthy organization.  Not to "Save" divisions.  Keeping archaic rules or changing rules to SAVE divisions is probably not the best course of action.  One caveat to that is a mag capacity rule for production.  That is about as far as the ORG should go for "Saving" a division.  IF that saves that division, great.  I do not think it will.  

[GigG]

1 minute ago, Boomstick303 said:

Why do divisions need to be saved?

 

Bingo! The point shouldn't be to save any division. The point should be to make Divisions that are competitive for the most shooters as we can. 

 

Back in the day there were 3 Divisions Open, Limited (it may have been called something else) and Revolver. Open had comps and later RDSs. Both Open and limited got expensive real quick.

 

The 1996 mag ban came in so Limited 10 was created. Though I don't know why an Open 10 wasn't created at the same time.

 

SS got created primarily for nostalgia. But for some reason the powers that be decided that Power had to also be limited by mag capacity and not just points.

 

Production got created with some very limiting rules applied including doing away with Power as a variable altogether.

 

CO gets created using the same limitations as Production but let's make it Open light and ban comps and major ammo. 

 

PCCs get thrown in there because let's face it,  they are cool.

 

Now in 2022 Production, SS, Lim 10 and Revolver combined don't have as much activity as any one of CO, Open, or Limited. I don't know about the other areas but at Area 4 there were 2 SS and 1 Revolver shooter.  Production had 13.

 

The logical thing would be to keep SS & Rev. Give them their own nationals. And try and revive Production by the simple expedient of making it Carry Op without the Optics.  Same rules. And there is yet another nationals. 

 

Limited 10 can play with Limited and if they live in a state where they can't have the mags let the Org keep them man sized mags in a box somewhere and deliver them to the Area/Nationals each match.

 

Then create Limited Optics which are basically race guns with no compensator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Boomstick303]

3 minutes ago, GigG said:

Same rules. And there is yet another nationals. 

 

The Organization in its current form loses money at each Nationals.  Not sure we want to keep adding Nationals to placate less than 5% of the membership.

[GigG]

Just now, Boomstick303 said:

 

The Organization in its current form loses money at each Nationals.  Not sure we want to keep adding Nationals to placate less than 5% of the membership.

Easy Fix.

 

Open, Limited, Lim-Op, PCC

 

CO, Production

 

SS, Revolver

 

Or, considering how low the shooter count is for SS and Revolver don't even have a nationals add it on to CO/Prod.

 

You would then basically two nationals Race Gun and Production Gun.

[Boomstick303]

1 minute ago, GigG said:

Easy Fix.

 

CO can carry a Nationals on its own and should capitalize on those membership numbers.

 

Open, Limited, Lim-Op, PCC

 

Production, SS, Revolver

 

Carry Optics

 

[Racinready300ex]

22 minutes ago, Boomstick303 said:

I don't care if USPSA keeps any division.  "Saving" divisions is extremely short sighted.  I am not sure how placating to 1.2% to 8.6% of the membership is healthy for any organization.  Rules should be made and/or changed for the current times, current firearm technology, and optics to maintain a healthy organization.  Not to "Save" divisions.  Keeping archaic rules or changing rules to SAVE divisions is probably not the best course of action.  One caveat to that is a mag capacity rule for production.  That is about as far as the ORG should go for "Saving" a division.  IF that saves that division, great.  I do not think it will.  

 

I'm pretty sure that number is % of activity. It's vary likely that it's a even lower % of the membership. And L10 is really inflated because in banned states people shoot L10, when the could just shoot limited loaded to 10 just like every other division does. It's not crazy for a area match to have 0-3 shooters in L10 out of 450. That's like .5% of the turnout. 

[GigG]

But if you modify Production to just be CO without the O there's a logic to putting them to gather at nationals.  

 

But the more I think of it you may be right.  Because if they are basically the same gun you could just pop off the optic and use the iron and shoot two nationals with one gun.

[Boomstick303]

4 minutes ago, GigG said:

Because if they are basically the same gun you could just pop off the optic and use the iron and shoot two nationals with one gun.

 

Not only that, that format would boost the Production numbers because shooters do not have to choose to shoot CO or Production.  They can shoot them both.  

[Racinready300ex]

19 minutes ago, GigG said:

The logical thing would be to keep SS & Rev. Give them their own nationals. And try and revive Production by the simple expedient of making it Carry Op without the Optics.  Same rules. And there is yet another nationals. 

 

I think this part might be a mistake. Just because a division exists doesn't mean it should get a nationals. We know every nationals looses money. We also know the org is running a deficit and is considering raising dues even though we have record numbers of members paying dues. 

 

I don't think we should have a nationals for two divisions that make up 5% of the sport. You should just stick those divisions with something popular. Like CO nationals is it's own thing, why not let 10 revolver shooters in so it can be their nationals too? 

 

 

[Boomstick303]

8 minutes ago, Racinready300ex said:

I'm pretty sure that number is % of activity. It's vary likely that it's a even lower % of the membership.

 

I used those numbers as an example.  I also think those numbers are lower.  

[crg]

8 minutes ago, Boomstick303 said:

 

Not only that, that format would boost the Production numbers because shooters do not have to choose to shoot CO or Production.  They can shoot them both.  

 

It would also get some amount of newer shooters like me that shoot production guns in limited because we want to shoot high cap and know we're not going to be competitive in either division anyway. I have no idea how many of us there are but to some extent we're inflating limited numbers.

Edited November 22, 2022 by crg

[Boomstick303]

Just look at past Nationals and group them accordingly.  You honestly need to have a CO only Nationals.  It obvious the numbers support this.  As far as the rest of them they need to make them attendance number based versus what makes sense in comparing division equipment.  Then create the stages accordingly.  It is possibly that stages can be created to placate strengths and weaknesses of two divisions, possibly three if you worked at it.  

[Racinready300ex]

18 minutes ago, GigG said:

But if you modify Production to just be CO without the O there's a logic to putting them to gather at nationals.  

 

But the more I think of it you may be right.  Because if they are basically the same gun you could just pop off the optic and use the iron and shoot two nationals with one gun.

 

Production is already CO without the O. If you can pull you optic off you can put your stock base pad back on. Really most people would have two guns anyway. Certainly someone who's going to nationals. 

[motosapiens]

2 hours ago, Racinready300ex said:

 

So CO's massive success in a way is hurting everything else making uspsa a failure. 

Not sure how you could consider uspsa a failure just because CO is popular. Is there some rule that all divisions must be equally popular?  

[motosapiens]

7 minutes ago, Boomstick303 said:

Then create the stages accordingly. 

why make the stages any different?

[mikeAZ]

 WELL, being that I'm 81 years old.. "Super, Super Senior" class is all I want to see!!. I could shoot any of the existing classes if I wished...  

[Racinready300ex]

1 minute ago, Boomstick303 said:

Just look at past Nationals and group them accordingly.  You honestly need to have a CO only Nationals.  It obvious the numbers support this.  As far as the rest of them they need to make them attendance number based versus what makes sense in comparing division equipment.  Then create the stages accordingly.  It is possibly that stages can be created to placate strengths and weaknesses of two divisions, possibly three if you worked at it.  

 

 

Then it should be Optics Nationals, Irons Nationals and popular nationals.

 

Popular nationals currently would be CO, in a few years it might be Lim-Op and CO gets bumped down to optics nationals. If no division stands out then only two nationals.

 

Every Nat's looses money, the org is running a deficit and wants to raise dues. Nationals isn't the only reason, but we can't keep holding this many nationals and expect the 32,000 members to pay higher dues so 300 members can go shoot nationals multiple times a year.

 

I think Hopkins said something like 1k or 1.1k unique members shoot nationals. So if we had 5 or 6 Nationals there are a lot of people shooting more than one. And I think we have 33k members. That's how I came up with those numbers. 300 is just a wild guess. 

[Boomstick303]

1 minute ago, motosapiens said:

why make the stages any different?

 

True.  They do not really if they are created per the rule book.

 

It would be interesting for whatever Nationals PCC was in if there were various targets that could be taken from the front or that back of the stage as an option.  

[Racinready300ex]

1 minute ago, motosapiens said:

Not sure how you could consider uspsa a failure just because CO is popular. Is there some rule that all divisions must be equally popular?  

 

There must be. See all posts about changing a division to improve turn out in said division. 

 

You got my point, we're on the same page. I just worded it from a different angle. 

[MHicks]

All divisions have plusses and minuses.  People shoot whichever division or divisions that they want. It can't happen but I think USPSA would be a more interesting sport if the numbers of shooters shooting in each division was spread out a little more evenly. It is less fun to shoot SS when there is very low turnout although it's my favorite division. But people are showing what is popular.

 

Some shooters are shooting in divisions because they want as much competition as possible vs shooting the gun they actualky like to shoot the most. I'm getting set up for CO too.

[CC3D]

52 minutes ago, MHicks said:

Some shooters are shooting in divisions because they want as much competition as possible vs shooting the gun they actualky like to shoot the most. I'm getting set up for CO too.

I do believe that a division can reach a critical mass where people begin shooting it not because they want to, but because it's the only place where they feel they have competition. I believe having the majority of people shooting one division takes away from the diversity of equipment and guns that can be run and makes the sport less fun overall. I dont think there is any reason to make the most popular division even more popular. People clearly enjoy it as it is, stop sucking away competitors from other divisions for the sake of it.