RE: thereby encouraging the Brits to start hostilities as well ?

["John Guy" <john-at-tankcommand.org>]

Interesting thread all,

I think Frank is bang on the money, and the sheer pull factor of
paintball armed tanks is huge.
Frank is also correct in mentioning the difficulties involved in
developing workable battle scenarios, as this took us 3 months research
with the diddy little Tamiya Tanks, but believe me, its very, very
do-able, and our next objective is to expand what we do to other sites
(Any one in the US interested?) and to run a parallel larger scale
Paintball version too.
Like all things, as you guys have proved, you put enough thought into
something, and you come up with a solution (of sorts!!).
Cheers all

John Guy
Managing Director
TANK COMMAND Ltd
www.tankcommandltd.com  


-----Original Message-----
From: tanks-admin-at-rctankcombat.com [mailto:tanks-admin-at-rctankcombat.com]
On Behalf Of Frank Pittelli
Sent: 24 June 2004 14:36
To: tanks-at-rctankcombat.com
Subject: Re: thereby encouraging the Brits to start hostilities as well
?

paul needham wrote:
> 
> Mark and his friends have a different agenda to the RC Combat group.
> 
> But Mark does have a private 'testing ground' and has tried to have a 
> 'battle' with a umpire and rules , so maybe a opportunity to show off
a 
> paint ball tank does exist.
> 

Having read a number of articles written by Mark on the subject, I get 
the impression that he is playing both sides of the fence right now.  He

agrees that the club members should not shoot anything, but he's clearly

  promoting paintball combat for "corporate purposes".  In fact, he'd 
love to have some company start using his tanks in a "pay-for-play" 
business, like commercial paintball parks.  In short, he has a big 
conflict of interest between his business goals and his hobby goals.

That conflict will increase over time as he realizes that the kind of 
person attracted to a "pay-for-play" sport (15-30 yr old seeking quick 
satisfaction and lots of action) are almost the exact opposite of the 
average scale tank modeler (30-60 yr old seeking perfection and places 
to exhibit talent).  If he builds a commercial viable tank for the 
sport, it will not be anything like what he builds for the scale hobby. 
  And, since the profits from "pay-for-play" are potentially much larger

than the scale modeling world, his focus will continue to move away from

his existing customer base in order to stay in business.  Business ain't

easy.

I'm sure that companies will eventually find a way to make a profit from

our efforts, but for the foreseeable future I'm not sure if the business

fundamentals are there to make such efforts successful.  Too few 
players, too many technical complications, too many potential 
competitors, etc.  Besides, it's simply not enough to arm a tank with a 
paintball gun, the composition and flow of the game are just as 
important and such things take years of experience to get them right. 
That's why we continually tweak how the battles are waged on the field 
and we aren't afraid to try new things.  Prototyping the "sport" is just

as important as prototyping the equipment.  Clearly, 20 years of R/C 
warship battling gives us a good start, but the land game has it's own 
pecularities that need to be hammered out as well.

        Frank "Fun First, Profits Much Later, If Ever" Pittelli