fundamental issues in paintball that if we hit the reset button today, we'd fix
1. vertical feed. this is the dumbest thing since FWD. i know how we got it. it makes sense. we went from gravity feed, to agitated with gravity feed, to now almost everything is force feed. and during that transition, we wanted things to be backwards comparable with everything. but here is the fundamental truth: NO ONE SHOOTING AT 10+ BPS IS USING GRAVITY ANYMORE
there is simply no need, to have vertical feed for most guns anymore. if you want to shoot spheres at high rates of fire, which most folks do, then there is no need for vertical feed.
and there is every advantage, be it weight, weight disruption, capacity, speed, target profile etc etc etc etc etc to getting that damned hopper off the top of the gun.
why not?
the paintball player will reject it for being too weird.
2. the paintball itself. its the shittiest ballistic shape ever. if i told someone outside of paintball that we shoot large, spherical, light balls at each other, and spend thousands of dollars to do it consistently and accurately, they would laugh me out of the room. its fucking stupid, sorry, it just is.
there are SO MANY different ways to fundamentally solve the accuracy and range problems here. First strikes are just the tip of the iceberg, designed will too many compromises. why 68 cal? why 1:1 aspect ratio? to be backwards comparable with round balls! its stupid. starting from a blank sheet of paper, you could design SUCH A BETTER AMMUNITION ITS NOT EVEN FUNNY.
why can't we do this?
the paintball player would reject it, because it would mean throwing out 99% of paintball fields and strategy because those fields, and that strategy, was designed around a gun with terrible accuracy and range.
name you own, lets get the brainstorming going. im not talking about little design issues like the DP dump valve being the worst gun design of all time, im talking about issues that we spend hundreds and thousands of man hours to solve a problem that we gave ourselves and we are so short sighted we cannot see past our own fundamental problems.