by Jerm_G » Sun Apr 15, 2012 10:55 am
Good on you for looking at doing this. If done correctly you could be very successful. Splat Action has been around for a long time now and done well. If you want your project to last it almost has to be run like a business. You have to build a plan, identify cost projections, marketing plans, who you’re going to provide your services too and so on. It's extremely time consuming but critical that your planning is done correctly. I would recommend looking at looking at three areas. Paintball, airsoft, and law enforcement training. Having property of that size means there is a potential for double duty or at least the construction of a couple of firearms ranges (depending on local ordinances) for law enforcement use to bring in revenue when the other rec sports are down.
As for construction, your basic field needs to have three areas. These being parking, staging and play areas. Each has to be planned out with capacity in mind. Designing a field that allows up to 400 players is great. Not so great if you can’t park more than 50 cars or don't have the infrastructure to process those players, get them signed up and ensure they have paid. Some of this seems common sense but its all issues that have come up in the past. Most seems trivial, like having a gravel parking area that holds all the vehicles for your players. But being that I have spent my time at some of the events pushing cars that are stuck in the mud, this is an issue. Toilets have even been an issue. I’ve been to a fair share of events that have not had enough shitters to accommodate the players.
As for the field, good ones are designed around the upper amount of expected players. They are also designed to funnel a majority of the traffic to a centralized area, while still allowing room to maneuver around the main area of engagement. This allows for the reroute of traffic flow, and limiting the possibility of a bottleneck. In vehicle traffic control and in military planning, this is typically done through the use of terrain and structure. People are lazy and will take the route of least resistance. Hamburger Hill at Spat Action is a good example of that. Most will take the roads around it. Few try to fight up and over it.
As for fortifications and structures, sand bags, earth berms, broken down cars and plywood go along ways. One of the places field planners fail is they make their structures too small to be used as a building. If the thing has one room and only fits 4 people, it’s not a building. It's now an above ground bunker. Designing structures that allow for room clearing and MOUT operations drastically increases the playability of the "town". These can be open structures but should have some gravel in them to prevent slippage increase safety. These larger, multi room structures also assist event hosts in planning Mil-sim events. Currently it is a phony pony to find a place event planners can host an event that allows for MOUT operations without going to the National Guard and asking permission to use their training areas.
I could go on and on but I'm not, so I leave it with this. Safety is first and paramount in field development. Having year round access to the field for emergency vehicles is important. Having dangerous material removed from barriers (windows on cars as an example), gravel in key areas and structures that are built with safety in mind are all key. At the end of the day you can have the best field in the world, provide all the awsomeness one could hope for and loose it all in a heartbeat with a single law suit. So whatever your plans are, make sure you take steps to limit that happening to you.
"Sometimes it is entirely appropriate to kill a fly with a sledge hammer." -Major I.L. Holdridge USMC
Sometime in May
