Hard? Yes. But Was It Absurdly Hard?

[Vlad]

Oh for the love of Pete .. Someone please close this thread. Apparently courses of fire designed and shot before rule changes, are now retroactivily illegal, even if they are up only for reference.

Folks, to those that gave me feed back on the question I've asked, thank you. To those who feel compeled to make every thread about something else, please grow up.

Edited March 27, 2006 by Vlad

[ChuckS]

Vlad,

Thanks for being so active in your club that you design, set-up and run match stages. An thanks for caring enough if you are doing the right thing by posting your designs and asking for criticism. Good Job!

Later,

Chuck

PS: Sit up straight and eat your vegtables....

[wheel gunner]

Vlad and Jim Norman,

Although I am here in NM, we have a lot of the same problems at our matches in the area.

Personally, I will say thanks for setting up and running the matches as well as asking for criticsm of the stages on this forum. Also, Jim thanks for speaking up for a lot of the people who work their tails off to try and get things going for their clubs only to be griped at fhen small things go wrong.

[Radical Precision Designs]

Vlad-

I am not a member of your Club. Although I did get started in IPSC in the Garden State in the late 70's and early 80's when the "game" was in its infancy. I started my pistolsmithing career in New Jersey (Englewood: Outdoor Precision Sports a.k.a. Precisioned Sports, Inc.) I have very fond memories of "early" IPSC competition in New Jersey. Many people from outside N.J. hate the present day restrictions imposed by the local politicians, alongside with the shooting residents of the State. Perhaps this "resentment" to exagerated (self imposed match shooting) restrictions is what many voice their displeasure at.

Some of this "new carnival" trending stages are viewed to favor the younger more agile shooters, and those using open guns. I do not know what the percentage of shooters is between the various divisions, from those who have posted in this thread, but I would be curious to find out. (By the way I shoot Open 9mm Major along with Limited)

A big bone of contention is the additional demands put on older or more "handicapped" shooters who must give up points to their younger more agile counter parts whose only advantage has nothing to do with firearms handling skills. In a practical sense, a shooter severely handicapped in the use of their (now) weak hand, can "practically" use a two handed hold, or a strong (remaining) hand hold for a "real life" situation and come ahead fine without being penalized (loosing their lives). But in this game they are given no option but to unfairly be forced into a situation that they have trained to overcome otherwise, or be penalized arbitrarily. I am not saying that "every" stage should be designed to favor this "minority", just that the planers should open their eyes and conduct a census of their members/"customers" and create stages acordingly. Our Sport suffers from tremendous atrition, usually of the most able to attend the matches because they are either ably retired or older/affluent enough to afford the costs of starting and continuing this game/sport. Many of the younger and agile carnival-challenged shooters can only afford to stay in it (the sport/game) only long enough to screw it up for every one else, before going away feigning boredom ... Arbitrarily saying to take it or leave it does not help to recruit new members, regardless of their age, or GENDER.

On the other hand, I am glad (very happy) to belong to a local Club that has a great amount of older, retired members (it is Florida after all). Most of the stages are indeed planed by a "super-senior". Many, many of the stages DO contain up to 50 yards "one handed shots" (resembling fast bulls-eye shooting). Very often he will "black-paint" a large area of the target. But if he were to put no-shoots around it or make it "virginia" count he would be "burned in efigy" for sure, and get no dessert later on at our lunch get together. As for shooting weak hand, yes, but keeping it "reasonable" and safety minded, with regards not to give anyone an unfavourable advantage. That IS the ISSUE at hand here, IMHO.

[Merlin Orr]

Vlad-

I am not a member of your Club. Although I did get started in IPSC in the Garden State in the late 70's and early 80's when the "game" was in its infancy. I started my pistolsmithing career in New Jersey (Englewood: Outdoor Precision Sports a.k.a. Precisioned Sports, Inc.) I have very fond memories of "early" IPSC competition in New Jersey. Many people from outside N.J. hate the present day restrictions imposed by the local politicians, alongside with the shooting residents of the State. Perhaps this "resentment" to exagerated (self imposed match shooting) restrictions is what many voice their displeasure at.

Some of this "new carnival" trending stages are viewed to favor the younger more agile shooters, and those using open guns. I do not know what the percentage of shooters is between the various divisions, from those who have posted in this thread, but I would be curious to find out. (By the way I shoot Open 9mm Major along with Limited)

A big bone of contention is the additional demands put on older or more "handicapped" shooters who must give up points to their younger more agile counter parts whose only advantage has nothing to do with firearms handling skills. In a practical sense, a shooter severely handicapped in the use of their (now) weak hand, can "practically" use a two handed hold, or a strong (remaining) hand hold for a "real life" situation and come ahead fine without being penalized (loosing their lives). But in this game they are given no option but to unfairly be forced into a situation that they have trained to overcome otherwise, or be penalized arbitrarily. I am not saying that "every" stage should be designed to favor this "minority", just that the planers should open their eyes and conduct a census of their members/"customers" and create stages acordingly. Our Sport suffers from tremendous atrition, usually of the most able to attend the matches because they are either ably retired or older/affluent enough to afford the costs of starting and continuing this game/sport. Many of the younger and agile carnival-challenged shooters can only afford to stay in it (the sport/game) only long enough to screw it up for every one else, before going away feigning boredom ... Arbitrarily saying to take it or leave it does not help to recruit new members, regardless of their age, or GENDER.

On the other hand, I am glad (very happy) to belong to a local Club that has a great amount of older, retired members (it is Florida after all). Most of the stages are indeed planed by a "super-senior". Many, many of the stages DO contain up to 50 yards "one handed shots" (resembling fast bulls-eye shooting). Very often he will "black-paint" a large area of the target. But if he were to put no-shoots around it or make it "virginia" count he would be "burned in efigy" for sure, and get no dessert later on at our lunch get together. As for shooting weak hand, yes, but keeping it "reasonable" and safety minded, with regards not to give anyone an unfavourable advantage. That IS the ISSUE at hand here, IMHO.

I like these observations! Of course I am one of the old worn out guys he is talking about....

[raz-0]

I shot the stage in question, and I actually did better at it than I expected given how badly I have been shooting strong and weak hand.

As to some of the criticisms I've seen here, a lot of them seem to be misplaced. As for the round count, that was a simple mistake of trying to follow the rules and missing one. As was pointed out, we could have kept it a PITA while being completley in compliance with the rules.

Yes, a lot of the people zeroed the stage. But I can also say that when we break out classifier stages with very long targets with hard cover, a lot of the people zero the stage. Unless you are going to claim putting on a number of classifier stages does a disservice to USPSA shooters, I don't see your reasoning there. Some stages are just plain hard if you don't have the particular skill it emphasizes or enough of it.

From an age/disability standpoint, the only valid gripe I heard was that the targets blended in with the sand of the berm. IT wasn't that this condition hasn't ALWAYS existed at some time of day, but this pit might have it a bit more than some of our others.

I could comment on a lot of people's strategies and complaining, but that would be pointless until the scores are done and we see how people's approaches panned out.

What I can say the course revealed in every single shooter was the mental approach to the game. This stage REALLY rattled a bunch of our regulars from D shooters to master class.

The biggest mental problem seemed to be that a large group of people just couldn't deal with the concept of a stage where EVERYONE was going to have to screw something up. But once again, as a USPSA member you might want to check your bitching as long as par time stages are still allowed as they follow the same basic premise.

About the only thing I could sympathise with completely, and oddly enough was not a common complaint (I heard noone make it), was that shooting that stage early in the day could wreck your head for the rest of the match.

[Flexmoney]

Vlad, I think this is a good discussion. As long as the posts stay on topic (which is "how tough" and not "how legal") then we can leave it open.

[Vlad]

ok by me then.

[38superman]

I think there is a simple litmus test for whether a shot is too hard.

I have seen super squad shooters ignore no-penalty movers in favor of the time savings.

Even with the penalty if a shot is difficult enough, it may be a better strategy to simply avoid it and keep the time.

If this is the case the target is too difficult.

I like a challenge and I do believe that a weak hand 20 yd head shot is makeable (if I have all day to take it).

However, with Virginia count and the potential to pick up 2 mikes and 2 no shoots,

it may not be worth the risk.

I think I would snap off a round in that general direction to avoid an FTE, keep the time and let it ride.

On the other hand I'm just arrogant enought to think I could pull it off and take the shot anyway.

Tls

[rubberneck]

The more I think about it the more I think that some of the complaints about the stage would have been mitigated if the stage was shot under ideal settings.

Yesterday it was windy, very light rain (at least when my squad went through it) and the head was hard to pick up against the berm under an overcast sky. If yesterday was 70 and sunny with no winds it would have made life a bit easier. Shooting that stage when the shoot and no shoot were dancing in the wind really played mind games with some of the guys in my squad, myself included.

[Vlad]

As a note .. I dont think the math of the stage allowed for any sense in dumping rounds into the berm. 120 points total minus 30 (6 alpha's) minus 60 (misses) means that if you got all A's on the rest of the targets your maximum points would be 30. A fourth of the available points. You would have had to have a time four times faster (roughly) by just dumping rounds.

[shred]

Hmm.. I know (from practice) that I can hit 5-for-5 regularly freestyle on a 12" plate at 40 yards, I usually hit 4/5 strong hand and 2 or 3 weak-hand (with no time limits), and 12" at 40 works out to a 6" head-box at 20.

If there's a NS close by, I'd think hard about dumping a round WHO into the berm instead of risking a yanked shot into the NS. I'd probably go for it FS and SHO.

That's about the point I think the shooting harder than I want-- If I consider dumping a round instead of trying to hit the target.

Dropping 2 mikes (30 points) on that one target only leaves you with 90 points to work with. Not great, but not 4x either.

Btw, what was the high hit-factor on that stage?

[wsimpso1]

Vlad,

Points to you for setting up and running matches, and then doing a post-brief and quality check on your match afterwards. Keep it up and you will only produce better matches this way. You are trying and that is important. Keep it up.

More people need to remember that when the experienced guys get disgusted and quit, you have lost all of the knowledge and bruising that the experience taught to the experienced guys. Enthusiasm of the new guys that take over will not make up for the lost experience and then you will get to break in another bunch of newbies. Go easy on the MD and stage designers, particularly if they are running post briefs and learning.

So it was a tough stage, but if they are all easy, what good does that do anybody? I like the tough ones because I do train at 25 yards all three ways.

Seriously, the long shot WHO with the close no-shoot was probably too much. Making it tough with hard cover probably would have been better and still made even Avery happy.

If the stage is hard, but the shooters can take away some shread of self respect, it helps. I like the idea of "balancing" and of "progressive" stages. Balanced stages have some easy stuff along with hard ones, and progressive stages, well, the better you are the less targets you will leave unshot.

There were several things that you could do with this type of stage design. For balanced stage design, start the freestyle run in the box and place a fault line close, and run the hardest target plus two others where the fire zone gives them to you. Targets that you can not see, you can not shoot. Vision barriers may help too. For SHO and WHO runs, you have a second start box and fault line further down the alley and it exposes only three targets of lesser difficulty. This way, the lesser trained shooters can leave with some dignity and less loathing.

For a progressive stage design, you might design the stage with three levels of difficulty, and the number of hits is going to tell the tale. Leave in the hard shot but with hard cover instead of the no-shoot, and two others of decreasing difficulty. Almost all shooters should be able to make the easier shots freestyle, and only the best at long shots should get them all.

In both cases, you should be able to seperate the shooters by ability with their raw scores and the time will finish seperating them without destroying dignity.

Keep at this design effort and the stages will get better.

Billski

[Vlad]

I havent finished the scores but the highest fit factor so far was 4.0073 by a Open class GM. I very much doubt anyone did any better, he had 2 misses though only one of them was on the target in question. We also had a C class L10 shooter get all hits, though his times where a ways lower.

Edited March 28, 2006 by Vlad

[38superman]

As a note .. I dont think the math of the stage allowed for any sense in dumping rounds into the berm. 120 points total minus 30 (6 alpha's) minus 60 (misses) means that if you got all A's on the rest of the targets your maximum points would be 30. A fourth of the available points. You would have had to have a time four times faster (roughly) by just dumping rounds.

Vlad,

I had not done the math but I was only suggesting dumping the last 2 rounds.

The 20 yard head shot weak hand on the last string.

That means that you would only have a possible 90 points but you would also trim substantial time.

Take the following scenario:

Lets assume that you got all alphas on your other hits and dump the last 2.

You end up with a 20 second total time.

You sacrificed the 10 available points, accepted the 20 point penalty for the 2 mikes.

That means you end up with 90 points and a hit factor of 4.5

Now lets say you took those last 2 shots and got all 120 points but your time grew to 28 seconds.

You end up with a hit factor of 4.28

If you could pick up those last 2 alphas in 6.6 seconds it would be a wash.

Two "A" zone head shots over a no shoot at 60 ft with weak hand in 6.6 seconds just to break even.

No thanks.

That is my litmus test.

If it benefits you to shoot at the berm instead of the target, the shot is too difficult.

Tls

Edited March 28, 2006 by tlshores

[Vlad]

I see your point. I'm going to run a few tests through EWS when i'm done with the scores to see what the math works like. My personal aproach was not to dump the rounds but to aim at the left side of the head and do my best. That way if I missed the odds are I wouldn't hit the NS. I know I didnt spend 6.6 seconds doing it, as my total time for WHO was 11.34 vs 8.46 for freestyle. Keep in mind I'm only a B shooter so someone elses times may be different.

[Mistral404]

Every once in a while our club has a few demented stage designers that put up a very hard stage. The majority of the folks get a no shoot or penalty assessed. Yep lots of people complain. But my reasoning is that the spray em and lay em folks set up easy fast stages for their style of shooting. Accuracy has gone out of the game and speed has overwhelmed it. So hard stages are a reality check. You want to shoot a match somewhere else and be competitive learn to shoot different types of stages. Do not get complacent.

[38superman]

That would have been a tough stage but I would not have complained about it.

As long as the stage is presented to everyone in the same way, its a level playing field.

I like stages that challenge your marksmanship. Bring 'em on.

Tls

[Ben Stoeger]

Vlad-

I see alot that I like:

You actually are trying to design better stages. You give a shit. Thats a good thing. Try not to take the critisism to personally and see what you come up with next time.

I would rather have my abilities pushed right to the edge (over, in this case) than see another 32 rd 5-10 yd hose fest.

Later

Edited March 28, 2006 by Ben Stoeger

[SRT Driver]

I admire your creativity.

Tlshores,

Round dumping probably wasn't the answer here. This was a "survival" stage..get decent hits but don't spend all day, take some stage points and move on. Burning through it wouldn't be the answer for me and I like strong / weak hand drills. The points are worth more here since it was below a 5 factor stage.

As far as too hard..dunno but I bet those who shot the stage might work a little more on strong / weak hand shooting.

[Nik Habicht]

The stage was interesting. After discussions with another production shooter, I decided to go for the far target on the freestyle string only ---- and I got Alpha Bravo. I decided the risk/reward/time scenario was too lopsided to try for that either SHO or WHO, but since I don't practice round dumping I wasted at least a couple of seconds on each of those strings ---- time I should have spent moving. I also managed to crank two more rounds into hardcover on targets shot on the move. It was tough!

I liked the stage much better, when I first saw it in the morning and thought it was a one string, comstock forty point stage. I spent some time debating the merits of shooting the whole thing from the box --- being tall I had heads everywhere, though the T3 head was at a severely oblique angle ---- or engaging T4 from the box and then doing the rest on the move.

All in all --- creative and fun, illegal and not every one's cup of tea. As an occasional stage, I like stuff like this ---- and have been known to design similar stages.

[Bucky]

Here is an interesting question, some shooters (not I) waited until the very end of the course to dump their rounds and not get the failure to engage penalty. The target was 99.9% obscured at this point, but there was in fact a half inch corner of the head visible. In reality, the target was not engagable at this position. What is your take on that?

Also, for those that dumped rounds, everyone I saw that did this shot 2 rounds. Wouldn't one have been sufficient?

[38superman]

I'm no range lawyer but I believe the answer is that one shot fired at the target is sufficient to avoid an FTE penalty.

If you're going to sacrifice points in favor of keeping time off the clock, don't burn that time savings by moving and firing an extra shot.

If any part of the target is visible snap of a round in that general direction and you're done. I'm not sure if the target even has to be visible. An interesting question for Mr. Amidon.

I would really like to see some statistics on this stage.

It would be interesting to study the hit factors, point totals, elapsed time for various class shooters.

Tls

Edited March 28, 2006 by tlshores

[Vlad]

I've put up the match scores on obcats.com.

[ChuckS]

Interesting results! The only guy who had no penalties was a C L-10 shooter! (Oh please tell me he was shooting a .45 SS!!) There is your answer! A shooter with a good grasp of the skills needed for this sport can come through penalty free. Definetly not "Absurdly Hard".

Thanks for sharing,

Chuck