Harnesses & Pods

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. more...

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In order to 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.

Types of equipment

Markers

A paintball marker is the primary piece of equipment used in the game of 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 (91m/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 fir* The fourth and most advanced type of semi-auto paintball marker is the electropneumatic. Here, the trigger trips an electronic microswitch (or more recently, a magnetic or optical sensor) and information is passed to a computer-controlled solenoid which releases the propellant to drive the bolt forward and fire the paintball, similar to the blow-forward design. This microcontroller operation makes the marker operate very quickly, and allows for extreme rates of fire. These markers are the most expensive (usually) of the four types 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 use a mostly self explanatory format, forcing the player to slide a pump back and forth to load each shot before fihe battlefield as your main marker can jam or run out of CO₂.

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 American Prototype XM8 as well as much of the Armotech product line, and as such are called mil-sim, short for military simulation. These are used almost exclusively in woodsball and military scenario games. The more expensive mil-sim markers tend to be considerably more reliable and more rugged than most high-end speedball markers, but are heavier and tend to operate at slower, more realistic rates of fire. Most are also painted camo or black in order to blend in with foliage or shadow better than a flashy marker, since stealth and flanking tactics are 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.

Read more at Wikipedia.org