Forcing it your way

[shred]

Anytime you design an IPSC field course and think "I'll do this to make the shooters do X", drop back 10 yards and think seriously about what you're doing.

X is often "make open shooters reload", "make the shooters think on their feet", "shoot these targets in this order", "shoot like this", etc..

Most of the time this equates to "I want to try and make them screw up", not "I'm creating a freestyle shooting challenge".  What's up with that?

The "open reload" is the one I hear most, invariably on 30-34 round courses.  Limited shooters just don't understand that a 24-26 round course with 4 steel on it is far more intimidating to an Open shooter than 30 rounds.  

With 30, open shooters just plan a reload and go on.  With 26 and chances for needed make-ups, they've gotta decide how far they can risk pushing their big-stick and skills...

[Loves2Shoot]

Good point Shredster.

I carry 4 mags and have one in the gun, 132 rounds at the line. Shooting open you seldom even need to run your big stick close to dry if you are semi-proficient with the reload, unless someone puts a bunch of steel that you can hammer away at while running to another shooting position. Shooting at steel on a dead run because you have lots of ammo to spare, that is my idea of fun!

It is much more fun to have tough shooting, but I hate when designers forget about the limited folks in the stage design. If you want an open shooter to do a reload, make the COF a standard, otherwise what is the point? I think the best courses have a stage description that says "At the start signal engage all targets as they become visable." Lazy designers need to say more

[Flexmoney]

I think the best courses have a stage description that says "At the start signal engage all targets as they become visable." Lazy designers need to say more.

I couldn't agree more.  

[Ron Ankeny]

Yeah, shoot them as you see them...that's what I try to designe every month, but it gets old and burn out is at hand.

[Rich Bagoly]

Why must you state; "as they become visable"?

The laziest stage designers say less.....

[shred]

I don't even mind "shoot these from here, and those from there", so long as there's a good reason for it (lack of barricades, staff, setup time, whatever).  It's the "everybody must shoot while wearing an eyepatch because I only have one good eye" or "I want to make them shoot wrong-side with a rifle" kinda stuff that annoys me.

[Nik Habicht]

I designed and built my first field course earlier this month.  The most gratifying thing was watching a GM and an M take 3-4 minutes to plan the stage out ---- and then to watch them shoot it differently.  Come to think of it, most of the squad shot it differently.  I like giving people choices ---- like you can stand here and take 12 shots, but some of them will be at twenty yards or more, or you can shoot six while moving from this general vicinity and reload while moving closer to the final six.

[IPSC CHIK1]

the best compliment our club ever received was at a state sectional at which all clubs designed, built and staffed one stage each. we built a wall with various windows. the stage description was "start in box A, from box B you may NOT shoot over, under or around the wall.   box B was 8' deep and 48' wide. only 2 targets were NOT visible from 2 0R more windows. Jerry Barnhart, shooting a single stack 45, blazed through the stage, beating the next Master by 15% ( there was no GM then). he walked off the stage with a mile wide smile and said " now THAT is an ipsc stage".

[tightloop]

Wonder if he would have said the same thing if he had been beaten by 15%?

[Duane Thomas]

At the time he said that, he didn't know the final relative scores.

[JFD]

I try to use "X" just to point them in a general direction, usually for safety reasons.

The thought of "making" ISPC shooters do much of anything is kind of a funny thought to me right now as I design stages and see them shot.  Probably this is mostly funny due to my limited design ability.

Now I can design an IDPA stage and control the shooter's every move, even though I'd rather not.  Of course around here, give them a COF where they have to solve a problem on their own, and they look at you like an alien being.  

[xcount]

Gotta tell a Jerry Barnhart story which involves making shooters "do X".

At the first big match I worked as a CRO I was a draftee and worked an "inherited" stage - someone else designed it. It was a speed shoot with 3 shooting positions - over a 2' high vision barrier set atop 2 barrels, through a port in the vision barrier, and under the bottom of the vision barrier. Mandatory reloads were required when changing positions.

There were 3 target arrays and the COF description said shoot an array of your choice from a position of your choice, reload, shoot a 2nd array from a 2nd position, reload, shoot the last array from the last position.

Two of the arrays were no big deal - one was 4 paper targets and the other was 2 paper, 2 full size poppers, and 2 US poppers.

The 3rd array was "interesting". At the start all you could see was a plate and a full size popper which activated 2 swingers. These swingers were guarded by 3 steel No Shoots so that the swingers seemed to pass through "windows" between the No Shoots.

After I set this up I looked at it from my C Limited perspective. I hated swingers and the steel No Shoots scared the bejeepers out of me. I figured the safest way for me to shoot this was to shoot that activator popper first, immediately do a reload and shoot the rest of the stage, and finish off with an extra reload to go back to that 1st array to complete it. I figured the swingers ought to be just barely moving by that time. My next thought was "I wonder if this is the way the bosses want this shot?"

Well, no they didn't want it done that way. They quickly changed the COF description to say something like "all the targets in the array had to be engaged before going on to the next array". Which left me spending 4 days explaining what "engaged" meant.

Once that sentence was added to the COF, many shooters came up with a different but similar plan. Shoot the activator, fling 2 shots in the direction of the swingers to meet the "engagement" requirement, shoot the plate, do the reload, etc., etc., then come back for the now slowed down swingers.

On day 3 Jerry showed up and spent some time watching my stage. That afternoon he shot it.

He shot the activator popper first and then swung over to the plate - and missed it!! He took a 2nd shot at the plate, dropped it, and swung back to the swingers. He put 1 shot on the left swinger then 1 on the right (which was just a tad slower than the left). Back to the left, 1 shot as it was coming back across. Back to the right for 1 more shot on that one. Then he reloaded and shot the rest of the stage.

He was the only shooter to go at it that way (and one of very few to not "go back" for the swingers) and he just flat SMOKED that stage. The nearest competitor to him was about 10% down as I remember it.

The funny thing was as he was walking away he told me he thought the miss on the plate had screwed up his timing on the swingers but that it seemed to have worked out OK. Yup, seemed OK to me.

[Bucky]

My most recent gratification in stage design was a stage I designed for an indoor match. Once I got done setting it up, I could not for the life of me figure out how to shoot it. After watching others shoot it, I changed my mind. When I finally figure it out, I coached my wife to shoot it one way (Open) and I did it another (Limited-10) - AND it was more the skill / experience level that made me advise her differently, than the difference of division.

The best advice I have is to NOT think of how a stage will be shot when you are designing it. Try to focus on the individual targets as well as the target arrays and where and how they can be engaged. Then put it all together. Hopefully, you'll be wondering - "How the heck am I going to do this???"