So I hang out with the field owner and his friends quite a lot just to talk shit before and after the games, and we got to the discussion of his rental offerings. Currently he has a bunch of M4’s and AK’s, forgot what brand but they’re pretty cheap. He’s done a very basic air seal mod on all of them and they perform well enough for kids and casuals. He does have a few slightly better models, off the top of my head an SLR, a PDX, some random AK variant and one custom build that he only rents out to people he trusts.
We got to the topic of a kind of business model where players can choose to put their blasters at his field and rent them out to other players for a proportionate fee, based on performance and/or aesthetics. The aim is to make use of all the blasters just sitting at home for a lot of the more “financially advantaged” players, while also offering a better experience to the more adult new comers.
So obviously more powerful or full metal blasters would be priced higher. This is for players that want to rent “nicer” blasters and are willing to pay for it. The income generated would be split between him and the owner of the blaster, but exactly what percentage was never concluded.
This business model starts to break down when we get into specifics, such as:
The blaster gets aesthetic damage
The blaster malfunctions not due to mishandling but just normal wear and tear of consumables such as tappet plate springs breaking
The blaster malfunctions due to mishandling and causes catastrophic failure, such as gear tooth breaking off but player continues to dry fire, chewing up internals
Case 1 is just an assumed risk for anyone willing to put up their blaster for rental. There could be a clear rule where a small fee is taken for visible scratches, with the final word down to the field owner.
Case 2 would be a running cost for the field owner and not the person loaning out the blaster.
The division of cost in case 3 then becomes more tricky, and the only safe way to play it would be to ask for a hefty deposit when renting the higher end blasters. However, then it becomes a case of having to disassemble the blaster to diagnose the problem to come up with a fair cost, which takes time and effort, or even a misjudgement in the problem.
Curious if there’s anything similar at your field and how the rules and regulations are done. Looking forward to all kinds of feedback, if this is a totally non viable idea or maybe someone has tried it already and failed.
Sounds reasonable in principle, but the blasters that are likely to withstand the abuse of trigger happy day trippers are going to be the ones that have had a lot of money and time spent on them… and that’s not the sort of blaster I’d want to let just anybody hammer away on.
Another thing to consider apart from mechanical failure is who wears the cost of replacement with actual physical breakage? If 120 kilo Nathan from Kennilworth commando rolls onto his (your) AK or M4 blaster at Donnybrook there’s a high chance that’ll be coming home in two or three pieces.
So it wouldn’t be something I’d want to do.
These things are like my babies… I tuck them in every night, read them a bedtime story and sing them a lullaby before lights out.
I guess the nature of the whole dynamic is what makes this tricky:
The owner that knows the value and worth of his/her blaster and treats it with care and doesn’t just mag dump all over the place, opposed to the “Nathan from Kennilworth” characters who’ve seen a couple too many Navy Seals episodes and wants to do some crazy moves, but also wants to “get his money’s worth” by going full auto.
Oh well, another idea that falls apart when human nature is taken into account.
Not necessarily a bad idea as such… It’s a concept with some merit.
That’s just my opinion. Others might have a different one and be happy to rent out their gear.
I base my opinion on what happens to my low tier blasters after a hour or so of my grandkids running amok with them in the backyard. They went through four blasters in an hour and I spent most of the next day pulling them down and repairing them.
These days I just throw whatever’s got a Gen 8 in it at them.
Good concept, with good intentions. Unfortunately rental blasters are abused as if they aren’t theirs, and if paying to borrow someone’s pride and joy doesn’t have appropriate penalty and deposit scheme it will definitely end in dispute between field owner, customer and blaster owner.
The best rental blasters realistically is one you can get parts cheap and easily for, has a decently sturdy build to resist mishaps, and ultimately is not to expensive to replace and use what’s left as parts.
Basically cost vs risk needs to be very carefully accounted for and weighed up.
While I do lend my blasters out to friends, and I also bring one or two I would happily lend out to someone who had a breakage and would go home otherwise… I have a load that I would not even let my responsible friends borrow, and these ones are in the “high performance high stress” build category. Now it is not that I am worried it would break. I’m confident my builds will last through an abusive session! It’s more that the person abusing it might be a twat with it and ruin others good time.
You don’t want a newby running a example 40rps build! They may not have the experience, empathy and respect for other players to run it responsibly.
Those traits come with field time, and the natural order is someone who invests either bulk time or money to get such a build will usually have those traits well developed as to not be “that guy” that’s ruining the experience for everyone else…
you especially don’t want other newcomers having their experience ruined early, as then they won’t stay in the hobby and sport long, and we need numbers. More meat for the grinder. But naturally people will come and go and come back to the hobby over time.
Tbh the SLR is a great rental blaster. Decent out of the box, sturdy enough, and if the gears strip you could put metal gears in and an 11v battery with an oring and a mild spring update, and have that as the “premium” rental.
That’s a good point. Playing with all “veterans” is usually the most chill experience because nobody is gonna full auto your face, everyone respects the bang bang rule and people usually just walk off together if they get into a face to face situation.
I guess it comes down to what level of modding. For lack of a better example, it would be something like car modding - Stage 1, Stage 2 etc. Parts are cheap in China, I buy several at a time, and entry level motors are also cheap. It’s just the case of finding those people that have done Stage 1 or 2 mods on their blaster then made the jump to a Stage 3 or 4 on new ones, and are willing to lend out their old blasters. The other scenario would be the “veterans” with like 50 to 100 blasters and are just assembling frankenstein blasters with the boxes and boxes of spare parts they have.
I guess it’s up to the field owner and how he wants to do it. In the end might not be worth the hassle since there’s an active second hand market in China and really it’s just kids and corporate team building people using the rentals. I was just curious if there was something like this already and I could take some notes.
Thanks for all the replies, a lot of different angles to consider.
Great to see you back with a very deep topic! Wish you be a blaster tech now!
True most blasters for rentals are JM or CYMA, they are cheap and easy to repair. If the more expensive blasters are to be rent, I think of the way Bride rents wedding dress, the rental price is high, and the owner needs to check in detail before letting the customer go, haha!
I’d be going for a deposit, which really would depend on what is likely to happen if broken to cover the expense.
Example,
A metal blaster is generally not going to break externally, but will scratch. So then rental fee would cover a paint job. Also work out an hour labour to service the blaster every say 4-6 games.
But if it has higher performing internals, I would also cover the cost of a lipo battery, gears and a piston plus an hour labour to fit them as the deposit. Now a well built blaster with decent components running within its limits is never going to break these, BUT, if running ultra hard gels and one jams, and the inexperienced user tries to clear it with pulling the trigger, generally pistons will break, and gears can be damaged. So covering that in the deposit is essential.
Also if a lipo is killed by inexperience you want to cover that.
Basically, rental fee would cover service every 4-6 games and some paint damage from wear and tear.
Deposit to cover a battery, piston and gears and labour to fit plus service. That would also cover anything else, and the chance of breaking everything at once is low.
That way if it is broken by user error it is covered, and wear and tear is covered. You want the risk to be outweighed by the costs otherwise the owner of the blaster is not going to consider it.
The best rental blaster for general purpose is one you can fix quickly, and with cheap and available parts. Also the best battery for a rental is a li-ion, as they have far less risk of being killed from over draining. Again, you want to protect yourself from the risk of inexperience, but also allow care free fun.
What’s the price like in china for a hpa set up? Buffer tube set up with co2 so no line interference or tank to carry. LDT spring mags with 3d printed spring compressor for easy fills.
As a business owner for 35+ years, a Paintball player for many years, and then getting lost down the rabbit hole as a Gelbaster enthusiast, player, custom builder business for my customers… I have a good proposal for what would be a great business plan to get set up for what you are looking for… but I will need a few days and quite a few beers to write the necessary novel length reply
Will endeavour to go buy a block of Bush Chooks in the next couple of days and set aside the time to one thumb text a reply on this thread
A bit background info here. gas powered including HPA is not allowed in China. After Kublai P1 launched, there are a wave of prosecution happened. A few boss went to the jail etc.
As AKGelblaster mentioned, no gas allowed in China, only AEG, with a limit of 80 mps, that’s why people go for high rps builds like 40, 50 or even higher.
Cost of a decent rifle I would say starts around 1500 RMB, with a 7075 gearbox and nylon body, using budget internals like the entry level brushless motor from Solink. Higher end would be around 4 to 6k, and most of that is going into the full metal body, especially ones from the more Gucci sellers that only make like 50 sets and stop the production.
Hahaha thank you, will be receiving my stuff tomorrow, all the tools have arrived. I just opened my SLR for fun and it’s already a bit daunting, but hopefully I’ll get the hang of it.
That is true that people will abuse the rentals, but we still think maybe there’s an opportunity just running the most bomb proof setup like keeping rps under 30, mps around 70 etc. These guys have a LOT of blasters just sitting at home and they just got a full time tech so when he gets some time, might be able to get some up and running. Just last weekend was their soft opening at their new location and a bunch of high school kids came. They definitely looked disappointed when they saw the kind of blasters we regulars were running when they were all using the rentals.
Anyway, I guess this game still has some sort of budget requirement, as with most activities. At least it’s not as high as like golf or something.
You bring up an excellent point, which is the question of what gels are they running. We also talked about this and as the nicer gels are usually more expensive, the rental should ideally just be ok being fed the normal field gels, but that was not really concluded since others said what kind of performance are you gonna get with running crappy gels.
Perhaps some blasters run the normal gels and some run higher end gels, with the higher end gels being a paid for consumable like at paintball fields, cuz currently the normal field gels are bottomless.
