Locap thoughts and questions

[whan]

Here's my take as someone who spent his first 2.5 years in USPSA solely focused on SS (Minor), and switched to CO in the last 8 months as primary division. FWIW I'm A in both so have spent some decent time but not nearly as much as some others

 

There's 3 main reasons for the drop in participation in my opinion:

 

1. Shooting hicap is just flat out easier. Stage planning is far more straightforward, and allows you to be much more aggressive in movement and shooting with more makeups available. Of course all your competitors have the same advantage, but this makes you feel better about your shooting, and you also place much higher in Overalls
2. CO has provided a place to shoot Hicap with relatively affordable and attainable gear. Before CO, it was mostly limited and open, both of which mainly used custom guns and required reloading ammo
3. Most local matches are designed for hicap shooters - this is sort of an extension of point 1 but a lot of stages aren't designed with having a good number of reload spots in mind. This increases the stage planning stress and makes just not having to worry about it in hicap more enjoyable

As a whole, I would say it would make sense to bump production to 15 rounds, keep LO as its current provisional ruleset, make CO more like IPSC Production Options Light (weight limit, 15 rounds), and then just roll all locap into Limited 10, with 10 round minor/8 round major.

 

15 rounds is a noticeably different game than 10 rounds, while also being different from 140mm. The way current stages are designed it would allow for shooting of multiple positions without reloading, but also still require some planning to that affect. A nice middle ground in terms of stage planning - don't have to plan a ton of reloads, but also not as simple as 140mm where it's just 1 reload for the entire stage

Edited April 3, 2023 by whan

[Sarge]

Rules changes have consequences. So does keeping up with the times. Slowly killing off locap is one of them.

[BadShot]

56 minutes ago, whan said:

1. Shooting hicap is just flat out easier. Stage planning is far more straightforward, and allows you to be much more aggressive in movement and shooting with more makeups available. Of course all your competitors have the same advantage, but this makes you feel better about your shooting, and you also place much higher in Overalls

I think this pretty much says it all.

[Racinready300ex]

Getting me back to low cap would be tough. The big thing would be there needs to be people to shoot against. I could bust out my SS gun and probably be the only low cap guy at the local matches. If I travel to a major maybe there will be 6-10 shooters. That's a lot for a maybe.

 

I did shoot a club match late last year in CO with my P365 and 15 round mags. It was fun, and I could almost run the same stage plans as the CO guys. One stage I had to reload in a slightly different spot, and another stage was really risky with no make up shots before the load and maybe one after. This club usually only has one big field course. It was fun, and does seem like a valid option. 

[waktasz]

Practiscore showing the combined results as the default page when loading match results is what killed locap. 
 

[euxx]

13 minutes ago, waktasz said:

Practiscore showing the combined results as the default page when loading match results is what killed locap. 

 

If PractiScore wouldn't do that, its support team would be answering non-stop questions from people who believe in what you say that either ask why people's division results aren't present or why their division aren't shown by default...

[Johnny_Chimpo]

1 hour ago, whan said:

Here's my take as someone who spent his first 2.5 years in USPSA solely focused on SS (Minor), and switched to CO in the last 8 months as primary division. FWIW I'm A in both so have spent some decent time but not nearly as much as some others

 

There's 3 main reasons for the drop in participation in my opinion:

 

1. Shooting hicap is just flat out easier. Stage planning is far more straightforward, and allows you to be much more aggressive in movement and shooting with more makeups available. Of course all your competitors have the same advantage, but this makes you feel better about your shooting, and you also place much higher in Overalls
2. CO has provided a place to shoot Hicap with relatively affordable and attainable gear. Before CO, it was mostly limited and open, both of which mainly used custom guns and required reloading ammo
3. Most local matches are designed for hicap shooters - this is sort of an extension of point 1 but a lot of stages aren't designed with having a good number of reload spots in mind. This increases the stage planning stress and makes just not having to worry about it in hicap more enjoyable

As a whole, I would say it would make sense to bump production to 15 rounds, keep LO as its current provisional ruleset, make CO more like IPSC Production Options Light (weight limit, 15 rounds), and then just roll all locap into Limited 10, with 10 round minor/8 round major.

 

15 rounds is a noticeably different game than 10 rounds, while also being different from 140mm. The way current stages are designed it would allow for shooting of multiple positions without reloading, but also still require some planning to that affect. A nice middle ground in terms of stage planning - don't have to plan a ton of reloads, but also not as simple as 140mm where it's just 1 reload for the entire stage

 

Gonna agree 100%

 

As an aside I did some analysis of rule changes and comments and one thing that struck me as incredibly dumb is how weight limits have been handled throughout CO's short history.

 

It's as if no one looked at the Production list's weights and thought....."hmmm we should keep those weights and give a reasonable (3-4 oz) allowance for the optic and any mounting plate/adapter in the division's appendix.  That would have completely avoided the stupid rule allowing slide milling to make the arbitrary 45 oz CO weight and the even dumber subsequent 59 oz blanket for both divisions.

Edited April 3, 2023 by Johnny_Chimpo

[waktasz]

9 minutes ago, euxx said:

 

If PractiScore wouldn't do that, its support team would be answering non-stop questions from people who believe in what you say that either ask why people's division results aren't present or why their division aren't shown by default...

 

You'd just have to change the home page of the results to have links to all the divisions, like USPSA's website shows. 

[RJH]

1 hour ago, whan said:

Most local matches are designed for hicap shooters - this is sort of an extension of point 1 but a lot of stages aren't designed with having a good number of reload spots in mind. This increases the stage planning stress and makes just not having to worry about it in hicap more enjoyable

 

I think that this might be the biggest thing right here. And probably got even worse after carryops took off as much as it did. In fact when I break out my single stack gun in a couple of weeks it will be in a specific match that I know generally has smaller stages, and while not really single stack friendly, it doesn't seem to penalize you as much. 

 

 

It makes me wonder if there was a shift in stage design, would that help get people to shooting low cap again. I kind of doubt it

[RJH]

4 minutes ago, waktasz said:

 

 

 

31 minutes ago, waktasz said:

Practiscore showing the combined results as the default page when loading match results is what killed locap. 
 

 

 

I've seen this posted before, but when I started 18 years ago or whatever is now we still looked at the overall results. You could print them out really easy with easy win score back then. 

 

So it may be something that affected majors, but on the club level I've always seen the overalls

[RJH]

Also, I seen people mention changing to 15 rounds or whatever, but I'm not asking about saving production or something to that effect specifically in this thread. Not really looking for changes to the divisions in this particular thread, other than maybe combining them but not any actual equipment changes

 

Really what I'm looking for is is there anything that the organization, or match directors, or whoever could do to get you to shoot a low cap division as it stands today?

 

 

[euxx]

14 minutes ago, waktasz said:

You'd just have to change the home page of the results to have links to all the divisions, like USPSA's website shows. 

Why I would be changing anything if PractiScore results page already has it. Even if I had anything to do with that.

Maybe it is the opposite? Because USPSA had those links their results upset people shooting those locap divisions.

[euxx]

5 minutes ago, RJH said:

Really what I'm looking for is is there anything that the organization, or match directors, or whoever could do to get you to shoot a low cap division as it stands today?

There used to be standalone Classic (aka SS + Revolver) Nationals, then standalone Production Nationals. Now we have the Locap Nationals back-to back with the Optics Nationals.

The new format is not encouraging at least SS, Revolver and Production divisions. People have to choose 1 out of these 3 and also have to stay at the match for almost two weeks in order to shoot 2 divisions. Previously you could shoot 4 divisions over 3 weekends spaced out within a few months.

Personally I do miss that Classic Nationals match format.

[waktasz]

17 minutes ago, RJH said:

 

 

 

 

I've seen this posted before, but when I started 18 years ago or whatever is now we still looked at the overall results. You could print them out really easy with easy win score back then. 

 

So it may be something that affected majors, but on the club level I've always seen the overalls

 

Print them out? Scores took weeks to come out and then would look the same as this format always has

 

https://uspsa.org/match-results-details?index=52174  

[BadShot]

53 minutes ago, waktasz said:

Practiscore showing the combined results as the default page when loading match results is what killed locap. 
 

I strongly agree with this thought.  

[RJH]

12 minutes ago, waktasz said:

 

Print them out? Scores took weeks to come out and then would look the same as this format always has

 

https://uspsa.org/match-results-details?index=52174  

 

 

Maybe I'm just spoiled with our local clubs. But since day one we had our scores up 20 minutes after the last shooter, sometimes less than that. And printed and hung on a billboard. They were listed by stage and match for division, and by stage and match for overall. And according to USPSA that would have been about 18 years ago

 

 

When I used to run my match, scores would be up 20 minutes after the last shooter. I didn't print them, they were just on a laptop and I let everybody look at them. Everybody looked at the overalls at that point as well if they were interested, but of course overalls were not on the USPSA site. 

 

The majors  shot had the scores posted on a bulletin board shortly after the last shooter as well. That was how everybody could look at the scores and arbitrate, protest, whatever it's called if the score on the board was incorrect. But try as I might I cannot remember if they posted the overalls or just left them as divisions 

 

 

And all of this I'm speaking of is before practicscore was a thing, but after ezwin score. I didn't shoot back when it was all done by hand on a calculator and did take a couple of weeks to get the scores to everyone

Edited April 3, 2023 by RJH

[whan]

26 minutes ago, RJH said:

Also, I seen people mention changing to 15 rounds or whatever, but I'm not asking about saving production or something to that effect specifically in this thread. Not really looking for changes to the divisions in this particular thread, other than maybe combining them but not any actual equipment changes

 

Really what I'm looking for is is there anything that the organization, or match directors, or whoever could do to get you to shoot a low cap division as it stands today?

 

 

 

Not on a regular basis, I don't think. As others have suggested, having locap only special matches would be the ticket IMO. I recall Gridiron 2021 being pretty fun, as everyone was either prod, SS or revo. Stages were designed to that effect and it was nice being able to essentially compare yourself with everyone on a relatively equal playing field. It was also fun to shoot with friends who normally shot Open or Limited as well 

 

No easy way to do it for most locals given the reasons I listed above. It also takes extra effort to design good locap friendly stages, which can be a big ask for local matches where stages are often designed by local club volunteers, many of which are going to shoot hicap regardless. Not a dig at all on the volunteers (really appreciate them for designing stages), just makes it hard to design matches that are enjoyable to locap

Edited April 3, 2023 by whan

[motosapiens]

11 minutes ago, whan said:

No easy way to do it for most locals given the reasons I listed above. It also takes extra effort to design good locap friendly stages, which can be a big ask for local matches where stages are often designed by local club volunteers, many of which are going to shoot hicap regardless. Not a dig at all on the volunteers (really appreciate them for designing stages), just makes it hard to design matches that are enjoyable to locap

 

I guess I don't understand this argument. It's not rocket science to make stages that don't suck. The stages at area matches and nationals are all pretty lo-cap friendly because they make them legal stages. the only reason to have s#!tty stages where you shoot 18 rounds from 1 position is because the designer is lazy and stupid and the stage is s#!tty.  those stages are s#!tty for hi-cap divisions too.

[whan]

1 hour ago, motosapiens said:

 

I guess I don't understand this argument. It's not rocket science to make stages that don't suck. The stages at area matches and nationals are all pretty lo-cap friendly because they make them legal stages. the only reason to have s#!tty stages where you shoot 18 rounds from 1 position is because the designer is lazy and stupid and the stage is s#!tty.  those stages are s#!tty for hi-cap divisions too.

 

I guess my point is at many locals you have more of a random assortment of people who step up to help design stages. Some who may be relatively newer to designing or the sport. I just don't think it's realistic to always have local matches be designed fully up to major match standards despite all being legal stages

 

I'd also add that IMO just because stages are legal doesn't necessarily mean it's friendly for lo-cap especially at the local level. For example a stage where you have a lot to gain from shooting on the move on 6, 4 and 6 round positions in close succession. Or if you had a position with 4 steel and 2 swingers. For sure, both of those examples are doable for high level lo-cap shooters but still are geared towards the strengths of hi-cap, and lower level lo-cap shooters are going to struggle

Edited April 3, 2023 by whan

[Sarge]

54 minutes ago, motosapiens said:

 

I guess I don't understand this argument. It's not rocket science to make stages that don't suck. The stages at area matches and nationals are all pretty lo-cap friendly because they make them legal stages. the only reason to have s#!tty stages where you shoot 18 rounds from 1 position is because the designer is lazy and stupid and the stage is s#!tty.  those stages are s#!tty for hi-cap divisions too.

Not even close to what people are saying LOL. Big difference between s#!tty and low cap friendly. I build stages that are legal for my locals. They are not s#!tty but I hear comments every once in awhile like, Damn making it tough on the locap guys arent you?

[motosapiens]

46 minutes ago, Sarge said:

Not even close to what people are saying LOL. Big difference between s#!tty and low cap friendly. I build stages that are legal for my locals. They are not s#!tty but I hear comments every once in awhile like, Damn making it tough on the locap guys arent you?

We may not be talking about the same thing. I guess i'm not really looking for stages that are overtly friendly to locap and negate any high-cap advantage, like 8 shots or less available from any position and all positions at least 4 yards from each other. I'm just looking for stages that don't completely suck for locap. If I have to do reload in 1 big step, I'm cool with that. If I have to go 1-1 on steel or suffer the consequences, I'm cool with that.

 

To me, a s#!tty stage is when the only reasonable way to shoot it involves 1 or more standing reloads. If a 36 round stage can be shot from 3 positions, then it's a s#!tty stage and the stage designer needs a boot to the head.

Edited April 3, 2023 by motosapiens

[motosapiens]

22 minutes ago, whan said:

I'd also add that IMO just because stages are legal doesn't necessarily mean it's friendly for lo-cap especially at the local level. For example a stage where you have a lot to gain from shooting on the move on 6, 4 and 6 round positions in close succession. Or if you had a position with 4 steel and 2 swingers. For sure, both of those examples are doable for high level lo-cap shooters but still are geared towards the strengths of hi-cap, and lower level lo-cap shooters are going to struggle

 

i don't see anything particularly unfriendly to locap about either of your examples. Most low level shooters don't really shoot on the move anyway, and the ones who practice can easily stuff a reload into 2 steps and keep shooting on the move.

 

However, when someone puts 11 shots (4 paper and 3 steel) only available through a single port, and then tries to claim that you can shoot some of them through the same port from 2-3 steps further back, I am going to call BS.

[whan]

22 minutes ago, motosapiens said:

 

i don't see anything particularly unfriendly to locap about either of your examples. Most low level shooters don't really shoot on the move anyway, and the ones who practice can easily stuff a reload into 2 steps and keep shooting on the move.

 

However, when someone puts 11 shots (4 paper and 3 steel) only available through a single port, and then tries to claim that you can shoot some of them through the same port from 2-3 steps further back, I am going to call BS.

 

I guess it was more to @RJH's question around what can be done to increase locap participation. I agree that for a high level shooter all of those examples are doable, but they also create extra difficulty specifically for lo-cap. The extra risk of a standing reload from the steel+swingers or forcing 1 or 2 fast reloads in order to shoot on the move just amps up how much harder it is to shoot lo-cap relative to hi-cap. And for that reason I think a lot of people are moving to hi-cap (specifically CO) just to have a less punishing experience

 

 

Again, among higher level or more serious shooters, that may not be a problem (and if anything probably should be tested at major matches), but I do think a significant number of people at locals do shoot more as a hobby and likely prefer a less stressful experience. I remember when I switched from SS to CO I realized I was a lot less mentally tired at the end of a match day, if only because stage planning was so much easier not having to really plan reloads or worrying as much about risk in stage plans. Because of that, my enjoyment of matches increased and honestly is the main reason I'm sticking with CO going forward (that and having more actual heat)

[motosapiens]

15 minutes ago, whan said:

 

I guess it was more to @RJH's question around what can be done to increase locap participation. I agree that for a high level shooter all of those examples are doable, but they also create extra difficulty specifically for lo-cap. The extra risk of a standing reload from the steel+swingers or forcing 1 or 2 fast reloads in order to shoot on the move just amps up how much harder it is to shoot lo-cap relative to hi-cap. And for that reason I think a lot of people are moving to hi-cap (specifically CO) just to have a less punishing experience

 

 

Again, among higher level or more serious shooters, that may not be a problem (and if anything probably should be tested at major matches), but I do think a significant number of people at locals do shoot more as a hobby and likely prefer a less stressful experience. I remember when I switched from SS to CO I realized I was a lot less mentally tired at the end of a match day, if only because stage planning was so much easier not having to really plan reloads or worrying as much about risk in stage plans. Because of that, my enjoyment of matches increased and honestly is the main reason I'm sticking with CO going forward (that and having more actual heat)

What you are saying makes sense. I don't know that there's much to be done about the fact that shooting is just plain easier with hi-cap and a dot, and for some people that makes it more fun. 

[zzt]

It is quite easy to develop fun locap stages.  I have to do it every match at my home club.  They have a whacky rule that says no running with a loaded gun.  There was an incident years ago where someone tripped and fell.  No AD, safety was on before he hit the ground.  Board said, what if.   So to run, you have to lock the slide back and drop the mag.  We have a ten round limit in mags.

 

You shoot the first view, make up if necessary, or dump the remaining two rounds on a target.  Slide lock, drop mag, run to next view, reload, engage.  Repeat.  Repeat.  There is no particular trick to designing challenging locap stages.  It just isn't done often, at least in my area.