Post by X on Mar 12, 2015 10:11:14 GMT -5
Hello everyone! I recently purchased a Polarstar and I didn't realize the joule cap was actually at the end of the 20 foot category (1.55j ~400 w/20g)). I thought it was at 500 FPS. So before you say oh god here we go again. I'm not calling for event hosts to change rules at the moment. I've talked with Mosin and Pagan on Facebook to get an idea of what the concerns are and why the limits are in place. After talking with them I understand the concerns and I completely agree! So now your thinking "ooook?". Well the concerns seem to boil down to 2 major things that separate the Polarstar and the AEG. There was a big thread on this last year and the primary issue has been overkill. By this I mean the Polarstars ability to lay waste to players even on semi auto. This is primarily why the Polarstars have been effectively banned from the semi auto only (50ft MED) category. So I thought to myself how can I fix this?
I contacted Polarstar to bring this to their attention. I also asked them if they could implement a feature in firmware that could limit the polarstars ability to lay down ridiculous rates of fire in semi auto. There response is given below.
Hi John,
Thanks for contacting us. The rF setting actually is global for both semi and full auto fire. However, at stock settings, turning the rF all of the way up to the max of 50 will only limit the engine to 11 rounds a second. You could also increase your dr setting which is your return to battery delay (how long the system ways to fire from the point the nozzle is released to return forward and chamber the round). With the rF and dr maxed out at 50 it will limit the engine to 8 rounds a second max in semi auto.
Under default settings, and if you have a really quick trigger finger, you can probably pump out between 9 and 10 rounds a second but that really takes some practice to achieve. Therefore setting the FCU as explained above can technically limit how fast you can fire on semi but it may only affect a small percentage of people.
You could technically increase your dN setting as well (how long the nozzle is held back) and you could probably knock it down to 7 rounds a second. However, depending on how much resistance your hop-up bucking provides, this could potentially lead to double feeding.
Unfortunately we designed this system to outperform other systems, not to be held to the same standards. Therefore by design it is supposed to be able to shoot faster and didn't put anything in place to limit semi auto fire.
Please let us know if you have any other questions!
They also sent a second email regarding the firmware change...
I replied to your first email a little bit ago but wanted to touch on one other thing. Due to the concern with players abusing the ability to fire without any trigger delay regardless of the muzzle velocity, we are planning on implementing a ROF cap for semi and auto modes into the FCU of the new F1 system. It will most likely not make it into the initial launch but will be implemented later, possibly in the Blue Tooth FCU, along with several other new features.
Eventually new firmware will most likely be written for the Fusion Engine FCU but, since the F1 is the current focus for R&D, we would be introducing the updates for its FCU first.
So it sounds like currently the the Polarstar can be tuned down to 9 RPS. Perhaps there is a way to verify this at chrono to make sure people are not in overkill mode. In the future, their firmware will have the ability to cap RoF in both semi and auto.
The other concern is Joule creep. Pagan has solved this by forcing the Polarstar users to chrono with the BB they plan on playing with. Spot checks are performed using a refs BB to make sure there's no funny business. This seems to be the simplest solution to the problem. This problem got me thinking that if one could measure the force of a particular impact and then calculate the energy of the projectile then that would completely eliminate the issue. It would also make it so we didn't have to use .20s at chrono. This would have the effect of reducing chrono wait times (since you would just use your own BBs) and it would also level the playing field for all rifles. I'm currently in the research phase of creating such a device. This is something that's a bit of pipe dream though, so I'm not making any promises. The next phase will be testing various proof of concepts. I know this could be done, but it would have to be affordable to be made widely available. That second part I'm not sure of.
Anyway, feel free to discuss your thoughts on this. Again, I'm not trying to change the rules as of right now, although I feel it could be done safely given the ability to turn down the RoF, I know that's not the popular opinion right now and that Polarstar users will have to prove some of these concepts out before any sort of change could take place.
I contacted Polarstar to bring this to their attention. I also asked them if they could implement a feature in firmware that could limit the polarstars ability to lay down ridiculous rates of fire in semi auto. There response is given below.
Hi John,
Thanks for contacting us. The rF setting actually is global for both semi and full auto fire. However, at stock settings, turning the rF all of the way up to the max of 50 will only limit the engine to 11 rounds a second. You could also increase your dr setting which is your return to battery delay (how long the system ways to fire from the point the nozzle is released to return forward and chamber the round). With the rF and dr maxed out at 50 it will limit the engine to 8 rounds a second max in semi auto.
Under default settings, and if you have a really quick trigger finger, you can probably pump out between 9 and 10 rounds a second but that really takes some practice to achieve. Therefore setting the FCU as explained above can technically limit how fast you can fire on semi but it may only affect a small percentage of people.
You could technically increase your dN setting as well (how long the nozzle is held back) and you could probably knock it down to 7 rounds a second. However, depending on how much resistance your hop-up bucking provides, this could potentially lead to double feeding.
Unfortunately we designed this system to outperform other systems, not to be held to the same standards. Therefore by design it is supposed to be able to shoot faster and didn't put anything in place to limit semi auto fire.
Please let us know if you have any other questions!
They also sent a second email regarding the firmware change...
I replied to your first email a little bit ago but wanted to touch on one other thing. Due to the concern with players abusing the ability to fire without any trigger delay regardless of the muzzle velocity, we are planning on implementing a ROF cap for semi and auto modes into the FCU of the new F1 system. It will most likely not make it into the initial launch but will be implemented later, possibly in the Blue Tooth FCU, along with several other new features.
Eventually new firmware will most likely be written for the Fusion Engine FCU but, since the F1 is the current focus for R&D, we would be introducing the updates for its FCU first.
So it sounds like currently the the Polarstar can be tuned down to 9 RPS. Perhaps there is a way to verify this at chrono to make sure people are not in overkill mode. In the future, their firmware will have the ability to cap RoF in both semi and auto.
The other concern is Joule creep. Pagan has solved this by forcing the Polarstar users to chrono with the BB they plan on playing with. Spot checks are performed using a refs BB to make sure there's no funny business. This seems to be the simplest solution to the problem. This problem got me thinking that if one could measure the force of a particular impact and then calculate the energy of the projectile then that would completely eliminate the issue. It would also make it so we didn't have to use .20s at chrono. This would have the effect of reducing chrono wait times (since you would just use your own BBs) and it would also level the playing field for all rifles. I'm currently in the research phase of creating such a device. This is something that's a bit of pipe dream though, so I'm not making any promises. The next phase will be testing various proof of concepts. I know this could be done, but it would have to be affordable to be made widely available. That second part I'm not sure of.
Anyway, feel free to discuss your thoughts on this. Again, I'm not trying to change the rules as of right now, although I feel it could be done safely given the ability to turn down the RoF, I know that's not the popular opinion right now and that Polarstar users will have to prove some of these concepts out before any sort of change could take place.