[brettniles]

Who is to say that the cheaper cost of paintball manufacture is going to get passed on to us? No one. Manfacturers may be filling their pockets with the difference to pay for their new manufacture equipment.

The .50 ball is 26.5% smaller in diameter which equates to a 60.2% difference in volume, so it takes approx 60.2% less materials to make. Now fixed costs of making paintballs will remain constant, (overhead, employees, advertising, etc.). If we you are paying $50 a case now, you would hope to pay $20 a case under the new system. This is not going to happen. Why? Because we will all be paying for the paint manufacturer's new equipment to make the .50 balls. I am not an economist, but I would speculate that we would actually be paying more per cubic inch of raw material.


THE PHYSICS PART:
Somebody with a stronger background in physics needs to run the numbers for the flight of the new ball. I would think that we would be able to shoot at a higher velocity safely, because a paintball with less mass carries less energy. The ball will also slow more quickly in flight and at the same velocity as the .68 ball, not travel as far.

[Spock]

Originally Posted by brettniles

If we you are paying $50 a case now, you would hope to pay $20 a case under the new system.

No you wouldn't hope to pay that, because, as you said, there are fixed costs. But they will probably also be able to make about twice as many balls in a given amount of time using the same equipment modified to make .50 caliber balls. We can probably expect instead to pay about $10 more for a case of 4000 balls than we are currently paying for a case of 2000. That's assuming there is pretty strong competition among the manufacturers.

If only one company is making the stuff for whatever reason, they can pretty much set the price wherever they want, as long as it is good enough to get people to switch.

THE PHYSICS PART:
Somebody with a stronger background in physics needs to run the numbers for the flight of the new ball. I would think that we would be able to shoot at a higher velocity safely, because a paintball with less mass carries less energy. The ball will also slow more quickly in flight and at the same velocity as the .68 ball, not travel as far.

This has been discussed ad nauseum for the past few days.

Long story short, it's physically possible, assuming they are able to overcome some significant technical hurdles (such as making a more dense, non-toxic fill).

But it's pointless to speculate until we actually get to shoot some.

[Spyder Freak]

Originally Posted by brettniles

Who is to say that the cheaper cost of paintball manufacture is going to get passed on to us? No one. Manfacturers may be filling their pockets with the difference to pay for their new manufacture equipment.

The .50 ball is 26.5% smaller in diameter which equates to a 60.2% difference in volume, so it takes approx 60.2% less materials to make. Now fixed costs of making paintballs will remain constant, (overhead, employees, advertising, etc.). If we you are paying $50 a case now, you would hope to pay $20 a case under the new system. This is not going to happen. Why? Because we will all be paying for the paint manufacturer's new equipment to make the .50 balls. I am not an economist, but I would speculate that we would actually be paying more per cubic inch of raw material.


THE PHYSICS PART:
Somebody with a stronger background in physics needs to run the numbers for the flight of the new ball. I would think that we would be able to shoot at a higher velocity safely, because a paintball with less mass carries less energy. The ball will also slow more quickly in flight and at the same velocity as the .68 ball, not travel as far.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

Some people are just all to willing to just be like, "50 Caliber? Whatever works for them works for me."

Piss off!

This isn't a matter of someone being conservative or not, you just don't change an entire sport that's never had issues with 68 Caliber paint in it's past!!

[chris007]

It is about time players see what will happen when .50 cal comes out.

[wM_Pity]

if someone can send me actually data on the ball, i can run it through some equations compared to .68cal

[brycelarson]

There's a ton of good math on this over on MCB and the place I can't type. basically it comes down to density. If the .50 is 1.5 grams or heavier then it'll perform as well or better than .68. If it's lighter - then less well.

The ASTM standards refer to the max speed that paintball guns can shoot - and specifically say 300 fps. So, while the .50 might be safe at faster speeds due to lower mass - it doesn't matter - because all of hte safety equipment and insurance uses 300 fps as their key number.