Super Soaker Central

I have a couple ideas to defend yourself in a water war.

1. Umbrellas make good shields.
2. You can use nets to catch water balloons thrown at you and then throw them back.

Are these ideas any good?

They're okay. We already knew about umbrellas being good shields, but the net sounds interesting.

Actually, this reminds me of one of my friends, he has this thing called a Diablo (it's like two dowels attached by a string). They throw this thing up and catch it on their strings.

Similar idea right?

Umbrellas are nice because they are light and can be "deployed" when they can't be carried. However, they seem to be quite susceptible to water balloon damage and I don't think I could recommend them.

Someone around here used Lacrosse sticks once for throwing water balloons. (only works if you play Lacrosse or have practiced using it) You could also catch water balloons with them.

That said, I've used neither umbrellas nor Lax. sticks. I personally prefer dodging into cover and dodging water balloons (which is not difficult) but I may look into (as in try out) the use of shields sometime.

Lax sticks are a good idea. the thing i would be worried about is if you don't catch the balloon gently, it will pop.
as for shields, last war (an informal blockparty soakfest) I used an old tennis racket with the case on. it was water-proof and clipped onto my belt.

Even if the balloon pops while trying to catch with a lax stick, most of the payload will miss and you'll probably end up with just a few droplets.

All of these nets will definately pop the balloon, because they force it to suddenly deaccelerate. The force will cause the balloon to rupture. Unless the net is designed to move with the projectile, so it gradually decreases the speed.
-Zeda

The net will not pop the balloon if you catch it carefully and skillfully, but it's tricky to do. Best thing that happens is that you get an extra water balloon. Worst thing is getting a few droplets on yourself. No big deal unless you're playing 1HK, but then you might as well just dodge the balloons.

Umbrellas are indeed good. When allowed of course - they can become dominating and thus get banned. (I heard once when they were allowed in Assassins one person's immediate response to being attacked was invariably to draw two umbrellas). If possible look for ones that open with a button push. And if you want to be really fancy, find a way to fire through it.

Hehe you might be able to put a gun down the tube in the middle. Maybe I'll work on an umbrella homemade.

There was a photoshopped pic somewhere showing a water gun umbrella though I can't remember how it even looked. I think it was done as a joke.

A simple water gun may be able to be built into an umbrella. It's also possible to connect the PC to a tube that goes around or inside the umbrella to get to the outside, then have a nozzle at the end of the tube, though that will completely ruin laminar flow.

You could just duct tape the umbrella handle to the blaster, and make a small hole in the fabric for the nozzle. Wouldn't fold very neatly, but would work.

I'd rather go with the gun down the tube idea. It's cooler.

how about a piston gun? maybe some sort of super small SC? using 3/4"PVC? it might not work, but you could probably replace the center tube with some sort of piston, either manual or air powered

Yeah, that's a good idea, but I would probably make it a Stream Machine type piston gun.

This may also require small diameter tubing because most umbrellas don't use rods bigger than 1/2".

This is almost starting to sound like a gimmick-like gun that could be done by Hasbro. The umbrella design has many advantages over standard shield blaster designs. That said, most umbrellas are fairly long, may have the durability issue I mentioned with water balloons, and seem difficult to block with. However, they seem to deploy so fast you could pull one out to block a stream before it hits you.

Attaching an entire water gun as part of an umbrella instead of just making an umbrella with a built-in piston gun would probably work as well. There seems to be numerous ways to do this; one is to go for a design based on the SC Power Pak by having a backpack pre-filled with pressurized water (held via CPS or air pressure if there's enough extra room for the compressed air; a higher air to water ratio means considerably less dropoff), and all you'd need is a tube from the backpack to a nozzle on the umbrella. Other designs include having the umbrella handle as a pump to pressurize an onboard PC hanging on, but that would be difficult and would have to be built.

Perhaps a simple DIY solution to consider is to simply duct tape the umbrella to your soaker's pump handle, while cutting a hole to let the nozzle shoot through. This would probably only work if the umbrella's transparent or it'd be impossible to see a thing. Plus the pump handle can break unless it's a tracked pump.