1 or multiple procedurals

[38supPat]

Thats a true enough statement. For the record, I've been doing this for over 18 years now, I have set up and ran Level I, II, and III matches, several club leagues and RO'd many of the same. The problem tends to be course designers attach their ego to theor stages and get very offended if you try to point out changes or issues they might come up against. In fact I was sent, along with an RM to a club, that will remain nameless, to look over their stages and search out any problems. Before we were done, they were ready to ban us from the property. And in case you think we might have been asses or just nit picking, one course of fire was on a range they declared a 270 degree range as it was an L shaped bay with a left leg on it. From the left port in the left leg of that bay, you were effectively shooting back up range....in fact if you aimed at the targets in that port and looked just a little more to the left you were looking in the door of the stat shack.

[Flexmoney]

My point to all this really though is, if you set up a stage, use physical barriers to stop movement, not penalty lines that cause this kind of arguement. The MD in question claimed he put it there because he was out of walls. No problem, walls are not the only kind of physical barrier. a coulple of target stands with caution tape, a barrel and some rope tied to the door frame, a little white picket fence. Anything higher than 2' off the ground will discourage impractical movement.

Ideally, true physical barriers would be the preferred method...for sure.

However, what they did was perfectly legal...within the IPSC rules.

And, if a shooter could circumvent that by taking a single procedural...and being ahead for doing so...there is a problem.

Clearly, we'd like to see stages with cool props...like doors. But, you won't see them at the local level if they have to build a house to make sure somebody goes through the door...and it takes an extra hour and all the props. (and, if there is an "easy" fix...get there 10 minutes sooner and fix it )

[38supPat]

Thats pretty much my point and why I wanted clarification. I see it as a faulty course that should only be assessed one procedural. Something could have been changed to make it less of an advantage, but we should not tack penalties on to a bad course of fire to try to fix it.

[38supPat]

I'll give another couple of examples of things that were bad ideas on courses. One had the shooter (indoor range club match) having to wheel a mop in a bucket into a taped off square on the ground that was no bigger around than the 4 wheels on the bucket. All four wheels had to be in the square before the shooter could draw. This took some shooters a long time to accomplish making it more important to the stage than the shooting and a completely rediculous requirement. I dropped the mop on the start signal and just shot the stage....I was more than 20 sec ahead of the shooters that pushed the bucket. Well worth the single procedural I got for not following the course description.

Same club later put on a stage where you had to carry a bucket of water and put it in a taped off box on the ground, to prevent gaming the stage they added the rule that spilling the water was a DQable offence for creating an unsafe condition on the range (I did not attend that one or there would have been one hell of an arguement about that.

[Flexmoney]

Why would you run around the door?

Because it is a "significant advantage" to do so, right?

Trying to make it into just one penalty is an effort to make it into a manageable strategy for shooting the stage...which would negate the prop.

[Nik Habicht]

In reality, I seldom see the "significant" part applied. If there is any advantage...seems we jump right to the advantage being seen as significant.

Considering this finish at the 2007 US Production Nationals:

1 Dave Sevigny 117 TY42164 GM Production Minor No No 1767.5842 100.00%

2 Max Michel Jr 368 A26022 U Production Minor No No 1767.4430 99.99%

is there really such a thing as an insignificant advantage, given how tight the margin of victory turned out to be?

[38supPat]

Why would you run around the door?

Because it is a "significant advantage" to do so, right?

Trying to make it into just one penalty is an effort to make it into a manageable strategy for shooting the stage...which would negate the prop.

I guess I have to reread the rules, but is it a significant advantage on the shots, or the stage. No direct advantage on the target, they are not easier to see or shoot because of running around, but it is an advantage on the stage as a whole.

[Flexmoney]

is there really such a thing as an insignificant advantage...

Sure. For example:

Take a shooter that shoots while faulting a line...laterally. Say that...they aren't closer to the targets, they aren't at a better angle, they aren't in a more stable shooting position...they are just faulting the line. There is an advantage, because they didn't have to worry about their feet as much as others did when setting up in the position for the first shot. But, there is no advantage on any other shots made while faulting that line.

[Skizeks]

1Penalty

The only significant advantage was when the shooter did not go through the door.

Weather you went through the door or not you still had to shoot the targets from the same position as the rest of the shooters, no advantage gained.

I don't see how I could as the RO give a procedural penalty to a shooter for doing the same thing as all the other shooters, they all have to shoot the targets from the same position.

So-1 procedural for not going through the door. The arb. forms are on the desk.

I haven't read anything here yet to change that call!!

[Flexmoney]

.. you still had to shoot the targets from the same position as the rest of the shooters, no advantage gained.

It's not a penalty for shooting easier. It's under IPSC 10.2.2 --- for failing to follow the procedure.

It similar to IPSC 10.2.4 (failure to do a mandatory reload), which...while doesn't make the shooting easier...is a per shot penalty.

IPSC 2.2.1.2 tells us that a line may be used to "simulate the use of physical barriers and/or cover". And, the book also tells us the lines go to infinity.

So, what we are looking at here is somebody that can walk through walls.

I am all for gaming, but that's not gaming.

If someone circumvents the WSB in such a manner and gains an advantage on getting to T3 & T4 (for instance), then I would award the per shot penalties as taken on those two targets.

That's all I got on this one (my two cents worth). We took this in depth on the USPSA forum, for anybody that is so inclined to slug through it. I think I posted a link, earlier.

[38supPat]

Thats probably the best solution to keep it from happening, I'd still prefer to see a physical boundry of some type put up rather than trying to put enough penalties on the board to make it not worth it...