Paintball equipment
An expanding gas (usually carbon dioxide or high-pressure air) forces a paintball through the barrel at a muzzle velocity of approximately 90 m/s (300 ft/s).
This velocity is sufficient for most paintballs to break upon impact at a distance, but not so fast as to cause tissue damage beyond mild bruising.
This can cause damage to internal seals and O-Rings, and can "freeze" some markers, putting it out of commission for some time while it warms back up.
This is because when the playing area is warm, the normally unregulated CO2 will expand more rapidly from the liquid form, causing the marker to fire at a higher velocity.
When the temperature is lower, either a cool day, or from rapid firing of the marker, the expansion within the tank occurs more slowly, causing a decrease in the velocity of the subsequent shots.
The cooling effect of rapid discharge of CO2 causes the temperature of the liquid CO2 to drop dramatically, resulting in a significant loss in overall pressure.
CO2, on the other hand, must be separated from other gases before bottling, usually through super-cooling air to the condensation point of each gas, a process that requires far more sophisticated and expensive equipment when adding regulators to prevent liquid 'splash' and to avoid a sag in pressure.
[3] To reduce fogging of lenses while playing, some masks include electric fans that remove humidity and dry the lens.
This is especially useful for situations that require wearing the mask for extended periods of time, such as wood play, large games, or being a referee.
Most of these hoppers maintain a constant tension on the ball stack to ensure that once a paintball is fired, a new one immediately takes its place.
The 'Warp' loader uses an electric motor to rotate two silicone discs with ball-shaped divots, which add each ball to a stack headed down the feed tube into the chamber.
In most designs, each clip is preloaded (typically before a match begins) with paintballs which are stacked under constant pressure to ensure a continuous feed of balls into the chamber.
Paintballs, also simply called "paint", are spherical gelatin capsules containing primarily polyethylene glycol, other non-toxic and water-soluble substances, and dye.
Paintballs are made of materials found in food items, and are edible but taste disagreeable as they tend to dry up the mouth.
[4] The use of polyethylene glycol (a laxative) in the fill can also cause gastrointestinal distress in individuals who eat a number of paintballs; therefore, they should be kept out of reach of young children.
When dropped on the ground, groundwater or condensation may swell the paintball, which could cause a jam in the barrel or rupture and foul the internal workings of the marker.
Generally speaking, paintballs of greater price are subjected to more stringent manufacturing processes, quality checks, and standards, making their size and shape more consistent.
Better paintballs also tend to have thinner shells to improve the frequency of breaking on impact rather than bouncing, and thicker, more opaque fills that are more visible and harder to wipe off.
For speedball, however, the small field and artificial obstacles make camouflage ineffective; players, therefore, will often choose to wear a brightly colored team uniform for ease of identification.
In woodsball, the rough terrain and uneven, often muddy ground makes footwear with good grip and plenty of ankle support a necessity.
Speedball players, therefore, tend to wear athletic shoes with soft cleats designed for field sports, such as soccer or football.
Most players use it to assist with balancing the marker, or to reduce its total length to make it more maneuverable (particularly if it has an extremely long barrel).
In both cases, a harness with pods allows a player to have a portable supply of paint, without weighing down his or her marker with an enormous hopper.
Harnesses for speedball tend to consist of a bellyband with sleeves in the back for the pods, and are designed to carry widely varying amounts of paint while maintaining a small profile.
Because they require removal of the bolt or barrel, they are slower to use than a rod squeegee; however, being composed mainly of a flexible cable, they can be easily coiled up into a very compact size.
A "Battle Swab" is used commonly in speedball for extremely quick cleaning; a double-ended stick with soft absorbent fur is simply shoved down the length of the barrel to remove any performance-hindering paint or shell.
Some large-scale scenarios use military-issue smoke grenades, but for recreational use, smaller commercial 'smokes' are preferred (due mainly to cost and convenience).
These are effectively black-powder fireworks which explode with a loud bang, but have a sufficiently small blast to be thrown at opposing players with reasonable safety (provided they do not attempt to pick them up).
Paintball tanks are a wide variety of vehicles sometimes used in woodsball events to eliminate large numbers of opponents by using protection and superior firepower.
A number of companies offer experience days featuring an opportunity to drive a "tank" (often actually an armoured personnel carrier) fitted with a paintball "gun".
