A New Project: Nerf Dart Characterization

So as many of you may know, I have taken up "nerfing" over the past year or so. It is so much fun and infinitely hackable! I highly recommend the hobby to anyone who still has a bit of their spirit left.

In the process of learning the hobby, I came across the YouTube videos of Coop772, a YouTube personality who takes a similar view to chronicling the foam-flinging hobby that I do to designing roleplaying games: simple, clean, objective systematic approaches to maximize subjective enjoyment of a hobby. I prefer his approach  rather than those video makers who prefer to discuss and dish current hype, use flawed methodologies, listen to themselves talk, or focus on getting themselves seen. While I look forward to and regularly tune in for his video updates, however, I have recently decided to take a suggestion he made in one of his his videos and do some testing myself. 

The Impetus

Recently, I rewarded myself with a Nerf Mega CycloneShock blaster after passing a professional certification exam, because I liked the whistling of the Mega darts as they flew and the solid "whack" sound they made when they hit a target. While playing with it, I was double wielding it with my Nerf Rival Kronos and was dramatically impacted by the horrible shot groupings and lack of precision of the Mega whistling ammunition. I said to myself, "If only there were Mega darts that were as accurate as my Rival ammunition". 

Afterward. I reviewed not only several of Coop772's videos, where I found the one that talked about the superiority of the Rival rounds (which is why I bought the Kronos in the first place) and third party (non-Nerf manufactured) darts as well as one that compared Nerf Mega and Nerf Elite darts (the gold standard for the sport), but a number of other videos to see if there were any such comparisons to address my concerns of the Mega dart imprecision. In Coop772's videos, the data was compelling and robust but sparse, while in the other videos, all I found were flawed methodologies, biased suppositions, and dataless conjectures. I found myself left for wanting a more complete statistical treatment of the subject. Finally, in one of his videos, Coop772 said to do so would take more time than he wished to spend on the topic and if I wanted such data, to do a study myself. I figured right then and there, in classic Hujraad fashion, since I have the means and time, why not? I decided to take his advice and apply a "HiBRID-style" philosophy and "Johaansen-style" intensity to a new project with my kids in the interest of contributing to the literature of foamsports. 

The Question

In order to start my project, I decided I needed to define the question I wanted to answer. After discussing it with the kids, we decided we wanted to answer the following question:

What is the probability of hitting one of our family members in the head with a Nerf dart from a spring-based blaster using each of the four main foam ammunition platforms at 5, 10, and 20 meters?

Why test so many platforms?

We started with the most robust data we could find to start as our initial foundation and settled on Coop772s studies. In summary, he states with significant empirical evidence that a number of other darts that are more empirically more accurate than the Nerf Elite darts: Nerf Accustrike darts, a third party dart referred to as a "Koosh Gen 3" dart, a dart from Air Zone known as the Precision Pro dart, and a third party dart modeled on the Nerf Accustrike darts referred to as an "Accufake". In addition to these foam darts, the accuracy of a plastic and rubber dart known as the BoomCo dart has also been noted by not only Coop772 but several other YouTubers, though it is not compatible with blasters designed for any of the Nerf dart platforms. 

In addition to these baseline assertions, Nerf has expanded their Mega darts line to create "Mega Accustrike" darts and a third party "Mega Accufake" dart has come to market. In the foam ball market, the hobby has generally settled on Headshot brand rounds as the Rival Round third party "dart" of choice, and Dart Zone has also come out with a competitive and compatible foam sphere ammunition as well. As these are relatively newer developments, these have not been treated statistically treated in the media either.

Since we use all of these different types of darts, we thought that once we knew the methodology for how to test one type of dart, we could go through and test all of them just for completion's sake with the same methodology. This seemed especially interesting because we occasionally play game variants in which we only allow one type of dart platform or we asssign special abilities to specific platforms, such as shield breaking or double-hits to Mega darts.

Why these distances? 

Because in a foam-combat situations, we decided these three ranges most closely match the three ranges we think of strategically while we are playing, and they also match the general design philosophy in the HiBRID game. Specifically, the Point Blank Range (5 m) almost guarantees a hit regardless of the dart, the Effective Range (10 m) is where the dart will have the most effect on the outcome, and Extreme Range (20m), where regardless of the precision of the dart, the distance is so great that it becomes all but impossible to hit a target. (While darts can go further than 60 feet,  a natural 20 on your task roll or a point of Ite' are the only things that will allow you to strike an opponent at that range anyway).

Stay Tuned...

We are going to first start by assembling and learning to use our equipment and defining initial methodologies and procedures. Once these are complete, we will further refine our study design and discuss our methods as we go. So, like I said, stay tuned...it should be an incredibly HiBRiD-esque ride...