Water Fight Training Thread

Topics about water war tactics, water war planning, and past water war stories.
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martianshark
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Water Fight Training Thread

Post by martianshark » Wed Apr 07, 2010 4:04 am

What should I do for training?
At this moment we have no information on this.
I decided to start a topic on training. Post any ideas you have. Your ideas will be added.

trap shooting

Nerf sells an automatic trap shooter to practice shooting nerf guns with. You can practice taking tap shots at the disks with a water gun, but you'll have to be careful not to get the launcher too wet. You could also throw/shoot water balloons at the disks. You could record how good you're getting by keeping track of how many disks you hit. Also, if you don't have a trap shooter, you can have someone toss frisbees into the air.

simple target shooting

Just tape a target to a wall and try taking tap shots at it/throwing water balloons at it.

buckets

You could try shooting a water gun into a bucket. Progress could be recorded by how full the bucket is.

Sham-Wow

Attatch a Sham Wow or some other kind of cloth to a wall. Take a certain number of tap shots/water balloon throws at it. Wring it out into a measuring cup to measure how well you did.

scrimmage

Have your team seperate into two groups and have a practice battle.

dueling

One on one, level ground, identical weapons, one-hit-kills. This will help you practice aiming and dodging.

moving target

You can simulate a moving target by running past a target while taking a shot.

physical training

Practice sprinting to improve your speed and dodging.

destroy the target

It's like shooting a target, but the idea is to destroy it. Be sure it's made out of paper.
TheTyphoon wrote:If you haven't got a duelling partner around, try these:

- Learn to condition yourself to cold. Water is always going to have the "chill" effect if you get hit, so saying you ever get into a Soakfest that doesn't utilise OHK's, and relies on people retreating from sheer unwillingness to fight anymore, you'll need to make sure you can keep going once everyone else is shiverring. Simply soak yourself with a hose and stand there, in the wind. Yes, it'll be awful and freezing, but you'll be a lot more hardy than other people if you repeat this a few times, because you'll know what it's like and what to expect.

- Quick shooting. Find somewhere with plenty of walls and put paper targets at different points, some further away than others. Number them randomly.Then snap from target to target, tap firing, tap pumping.

- Learn the range and effectiveness of your usual Primary Blaster.Seriously. Checking it out on iSoaker.com really isn't enough. Sure you might know that it's 10m normal, 11m at 45 degrees angled, but that doesn't help because in a battle, you don't have a tape measure. Learn what kind of range you can achieve with your gun by what it looks like from your eyes' perspective. Then you'll know instantly in a combat situation whether you can or can't hit something.

- Simple physical workout. Do a jog, a bit of weight lifting, and plenty of sprinting. Do this once a week throughout the summer to reach good fitness.

Don't know of anything else really. You could try just throwing water balloons too, and finding out how you can throw them at maximum range.
Last edited by martianshark on Sun May 30, 2010 8:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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cantab
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Re: Water Fight Training Thread

Post by cantab » Wed Apr 07, 2010 5:50 pm

IMHO best way is duelling. One on one, level ground, identical weapons, one-hit-kills. That way you'll practice aiming and dodging.
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soakernerd
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Re: Water Fight Training Thread

Post by soakernerd » Wed Apr 07, 2010 6:12 pm

How do you simulate hitting a moving target?
I usually run past the target while taking the shot.

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C-A_99
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Re: Water Fight Training Thread

Post by C-A_99 » Wed Apr 07, 2010 6:50 pm

Dueling is no doubt the best way for water warfare specific training. Just running around and shooting targets really doesn't help. The other aspect of training is physical; practice sprinting to improve your speed and dodging.

Lastly is "tactical sense" or "situational awareness." It is your ability to both sneak around and work as a team; to know which actions to take and how to direct your team. This has been described many times before as "water warfare in the mind" and DX's tactical theory has many articles on it. You usually apply these ideas in a war without thinking about the fact that you are doing so.

For training outside of having duels, simulation wars, etc. there's not much you can do other than physical training and teaching how blasters work (practicing with many various blasters will help those who've never fired any before, but that can be learned quickly unlike real marksmanship).

I personally skip training altogether for everyone and just stick to the wars. For most people, their first war would be sufficient training, and small things like lack of knowing how to prime a CPS's internals has not made anyone lose a war. (though there was a time where one team was armed mostly with XP's and Arctic Shocks, and the Arctic Shock typically gets squirt gun range if you do not pre-pressurize it or pump it to full pressure; this can easily be avoided by simply avoiding those types of blasters.)

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martianshark
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Re: Water Fight Training Thread

Post by martianshark » Wed Apr 07, 2010 7:06 pm

I think that practicing shooting targets would help with your aim, but dueling and exercise is definitely a good idea.

Can the FAQ question be answered now? Maybe someone should make an article about this. Or it can just give a link to here.

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isoaker_com
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Re: Water Fight Training Thread

Post by isoaker_com » Wed Apr 07, 2010 7:43 pm

Lots of info already posted here as well as here for tactics, theory, and training ideas.

:cool:
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C-A_99
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Re: Water Fight Training Thread

Post by C-A_99 » Wed Apr 07, 2010 7:48 pm

The main point of this thread is that the FAQ part was not filled in. I'll add something in as soon as I can. I've been going through the FAQ's lately but didn't finish updating them.

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zeda.beta
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Re: Water Fight Training Thread

Post by zeda.beta » Thu Apr 08, 2010 9:19 pm

I would say dueling, but it can sometimes be hard to find someone that has free time when you need to practice.
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martianshark
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Re: Water Fight Training Thread

Post by martianshark » Tue Apr 13, 2010 8:05 pm

I shot some targets yesterday and ended up destroying the targets. Maybe that should be a kind of practice.

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TheTyphoon
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Re: Water Fight Training Thread

Post by TheTyphoon » Sun May 30, 2010 7:42 pm

If you haven't got a duelling partner around, try these:

- Learn to condition yourself to cold. Water is always going to have the "chill" effect if you get hit, so saying you ever get into a Soakfest that doesn't utilise OHK's, and relies on people retreating from sheer unwillingness to fight anymore, you'll need to make sure you can keep going once everyone else is shiverring. Simply soak yourself with a hose and stand there, in the wind. Yes, it'll be awful and freezing, but you'll be a lot more hardy than other people if you repeat this a few times, because you'll know what it's like and what to expect.

- Quick shooting. Find somewhere with plenty of walls and put paper targets at different points, some further away than others. Number them randomly.Then snap from target to target, tap firing, tap pumping.

- Learn the range and effectiveness of your usual Primary Blaster.Seriously. Checking it out on iSoaker.com really isn't enough. Sure you might know that it's 10m normal, 11m at 45 degrees angled, but that doesn't help because in a battle, you don't have a tape measure. Learn what kind of range you can achieve with your gun by what it looks like from your eyes' perspective. Then you'll know instantly in a combat situation whether you can or can't hit something.

- Simple physical workout. Do a jog, a bit of weight lifting, and plenty of sprinting. Do this once a week throughout the summer to reach good fitness.

Don't know of anything else really. You could try just throwing water balloons too, and finding out how you can throw them at maximum range.
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martianshark
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Re: Water Fight Training Thread

Post by martianshark » Sun May 30, 2010 8:40 pm

Those are good ideas.

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DX
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Re: Water Fight Training Thread

Post by DX » Mon May 31, 2010 5:48 am

I've always thought that water warfare is best learned through doing. Teach a new player the basics - how to use their gun and the such. Then, put them in a live environment and see what happens. Yes, they may make mistakes, but never underestimate the power of emulation and its effects. New players will naturally emulate the actions of vets, which accelerates their skill development far beyond normal pace. A total newbie can become a team's leading scorer after a single war. I think that Dan Gillis posted 4 or 5 kills for the RM in his first war.

Basically, nothing trains a player quite like the real deal. A training exercise without real pressure just isn't the same. The heat of the moment, the building adrenaline, that stuff applies pressure that naturally incites players to perform at their best level. However, knowledge is also power. I still hold today that water wars (for score) are closer-related to chess and football than to Nerf and other shooting hobbies. Chess at the highest level is a battle of knowledge. Water warfare often becomes one as well. Sometimes the best counter for an opponent's tactic is obscure. You have to know as many options as possible so you can choose the best and still have plan Bs, Cs, and Ds. Creativity also helps - sometimes the opponent takes an action that is original and undocumented. You might have to throw together an original counter, with very little time to think about it.

If you want to practice a tactic, fight a skirmish or full war and put yourself in a position to use that tactic and see how it works out. Same goes for trying out shooting techniques, counters, dodging, other soakers, etc. Some things, like an experimental tactic, just have to be used live, else their effectiveness cannot be accurately gauged.
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lollerdude98
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Re: Water Fight Training Thread

Post by lollerdude98 » Wed Jun 16, 2010 1:10 am

You could also condition yourself for water warfare by taking cold showers. Works for me, and you last a whole lot longer in soakfests.

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C-A_99
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Re: Water Fight Training Thread

Post by C-A_99 » Wed Jun 16, 2010 3:39 am

Cold showers would just give me a 2-3 week long colds and horrible sinus problems. Since I'm pretty sensitive to the cold, I don't war unless it's at least 70° out. Though I don't go as far as to be a coward and cancel wars just because of rainy weather, and nobody skips wars to rain alone. (Only if it's too cold.) Anyone who's had any reasonable experience with soakfests won't be helped at all by cold showers anyway, unless the soakfest takes place in cold weather. (Either it'll increase your tolerance to cold or give you pneumonia and kill you and I'm betting on the latter.)

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lollerdude98
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Re: Water Fight Training Thread

Post by lollerdude98 » Fri Jun 18, 2010 8:41 pm

Well, just start at a mildly cold water in the summer, then go down degree by degree, until cold water is reached. Besides, If you ease yourself into it, you wont have an sinus problems. Cold showers are actually scientifically proven to be good for you health too.

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