Revamped Automag Classic, Part 2

The changes I've made to the components surrounding the Automag would make it cheaper, lighter, and arguably more functional (three things I was told were impossible). Sure, there is the "quality" argument. So I have to make the quality counter-argument: if I reduced the quality, how much did I reduce it by? How much "quality" was lost by removing the retarded ass wings? Say an aluminum rail has a lifetime of X. I reduced the lifetime by what? Half? What if the rail lifetime is 50 years? Do you care when you can hop right back onto Shapeways and print a second one up after 25 years? Do you know how much a fucking decently milled aluminum rail costs, particularly if you include the anno?

How does that argument pan out against the original composite frames, which are still in use today? How much quality was lost switching from the aluminum single-finger triggers to the composite ones? Because we all know that people love those composite frames (don't forget the plastic triggers too!) and continue to use them to this day. Except for the fact that they didn't have an option for double triggers, so people resorted to shitty hack jobs. Something which I addressed.

It should be somewhat obvious by now: those guys are fucking talking out of their asses.

If a user wants to throw money at the heavy duty (and decorative) aluminum upgrade parts, by all means, let them. Otherwise, a perfectly functional low cost alternative is available.  That’s how you make money.  This seems to be something that a few manufacturers don't understand. Maybe that's why "there's no money to be made in paintball."

Anyways, I'd like to do the same with the valve. It obviously won't be plastic, but I think that modern production methods as well as, quite frankly, not making the fucking thing out of stainless steel (hey dickhead -- how much "quality" was lost going from stainless steel to aluminum?), will bring the cost down. I'd love to take the design, hand it off to a machine shop, and get a price for a run. And then make a few changes and see how that affects price. But I can't. I don't have the design. Nobody but AGD does.

What I think should happen is that the Automag design should be opened up, or licensed in some similar fashion. I do value IP, so I think that the community should consider getting together and paying off whoever needs to be paid off to release the design. That allows either a large manufacturer to give it a shot, or maybe a small group of individuals to commission small runs of stuff, as we have seen a lot of in paintball. Or something like what I did, which was just draw up non-critical parts and just have a 3d print shop make them. I mean, if there's "no money to be made in paintball", and the owners clearly don't give a shit about any of this anymore, why wouldn't they take their money now and let the next sucker have a crack at it? There is just something not mentally right going on with the involved parties.

I've mentioned this idea, notably on AO, and some fucking shithead keeps trying to shut the discussion down. He has no interest in Automags or anything else. He has no business data, no manufacturing data, no technical data... absolutely fucking nothing. The only thing he has is some anecdotal stories from nearly 2 decades ago. Really, he only seems interested in being an apologist mouthpiece for TK's really shitty decisions. I'd call him a fucking shill like the others, but that's being too kind.

But he IS interested in some fruity fucking project that involves gluing superfluous steampunk bullshit to his gun. That's real fucking interesting. Fucking LARPers. Or hey you know what would be great? A forum for discussing religion!

WHAT THE FUCK?

Is this guy fucking for real? I'm over here proposing what should be obvious, trying to improve stuff, drawing shit, getting stuff made, and actually testing it, and he's doing WHAT? Why the fuck am I even addressing him? Fuck him. Throw him on the ignore list where he belongs.

But what does the community do? It fucking sends money to ... I want to say "buy" the forum, but they didn't even do that. They just paid for its relocation. FUCKING RETARDED.

It's fucking foolish to contribute to saving AO when we should be trying to buy the IP for the Automag and find a way to open or license it out somehow. All of those guys just threw their fucking money at a bunch of nothing. They won't even export the fucking forum databases for some unknown reason. I mean, it's the data that the community wants to protect, so why not fucking export the tables? If he had offered exported media of the databases as kind of a perk for donation, I would understand. But this was just fucking layers of stupid upon stupid.

I think we'll have to simply accept the death of the Automag as a foregone conclusion, which some people seem more than happy to help usher along.