Paintball Gear
Paintball equipment is central to the sport of paintball, given its equipment-intensive nature. Although good equipment by no means guarantees a good player, a good player's ability can be seriously hampered by poor-quality equipment. In order to safely conduct a game of paintball, every player requires, at a minimum, a marker with propellant to fire the paint, a mask to protect the eyes and face, paintballs, and a loader to hold them. To ensure safety off the playing field, a barrel sock or plug is also considered compulsory.
Common additional equipment, depending on type of play, often includes gloves, a pack designed to comfortably carry pods containing extra paintballs, and a squeegee or swab for cleaning out the barrel in case a paintball breaks.
Markers
A paintball marker is the primary piece of equipment used in paintball to tag an opposing player. An expanding gas (usually carbon dioxide or high-pressure air) forces a paintball through the barrel at a muzzle velocity of approximately 300ft/s (90m/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. Nearly every commercial field has, and strictly enforces, a rule limiting the muzzle velocity of a paintball at or below 300ft/s.
The most technologically advanced paintball marker is the electropneumatic. Here, the trigger activates an electronic microswitch (or more recently, a magnetic or optical sensor) and information is passed to a computer-controlled solenoid valve which releases the propellant to drive the bolt forward and fire the paintball. This microcontroller operation makes the marker operate very quickly, and allows for extremely high rates of fire. These markers are the most expensive and are generally used for tournament play where rates of fire can reach and exceed 30 balls per second.
There is also a strong following of stock-class and "pump" players who use markers with a purposefully low rate of fire and ammo capacity. Pump markers require the player to recock or "pump" the marker before each shot, and stock-class markers have even more limitations on rate of fire and paintball capacity.
Some markers are designed to look like real guns, such as the Tippmann A-5 and X7 or the Smart Parts SP8 (based upon the German Heckler and Koch Prototype XM8 as well as much of the Armotech product line). These markers are called mil-sim, short for military simulation. They are used almost exclusively in woodsball and military scenario games, though with a few modifications the markers can be competitive in the speedball arena. The more expensive mil-sim markers tend to be considerably more rugged than most high-end speedball markers, but are heavier and tend to operate at slower rates of fire. Most also feature camouflage or black coloring (rather than the bright colors found on tournament markers), since stealth is of more value in the woodsball environment than that of the much smaller speedball arena. Some mil-sim markers use hoppers, though some use magazines similar to real-life automatic weapons. Many come with a shoulder stock and use a coiled remote line connected to a tank of propellant usually carried on the players back, in order to follow the mil-sim look and to lighten the marker up and make it more maneuverable.
Mil-sim markers are not without controversy, however. There have been several incidents in which mil-sim paintball players have been reported to the police as carrying actual firearms. This is becoming a serious problem with local law enforcement in cities where there is high mil-sim paintball activity, especially if the games are hosted away from paintball facilities (e.g. at a player's estate or an "outlaw" paintball location). Since the markers are nearly identical to real firearms, law enforcement has difficulty discerning the differences between real-life weapons and their paint-shooting counterparts, which, in a pre-combat situation, can be hazardous since the time allotted to identify the alleged armed target is minimal.
