First to Fire

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If you've ever been in the NM&R Chatroom talking about the Speedswarm with me, you've probably been victim to my criticism of this blaster in general.  I'll be the first to admit, I've been hard on this blaster... maybe more than I should be.  We're all entitled to our opinions, but I decided to look a little deeper at my disgust for the Speedswarm and have found that it really affects more than this single blaster.  It comes down to one major factor that negates any of the positive aspects of blasters like the Speedswarm: LAG.  Not convinced?  Read on.


In pretty much any shooting game, be it with Nerf, Laser Tag, Paintball, or even videogames like First Person Shooters, lag is bad.  From the time that you react to pull the trigger, if the device doesn't react the second you do, you suddenly have a wall between your own reaction time and your intended target.  If your target is stationary, lag doesn't really have that much of a negative effect on your performance.  However, if you're trying to hit a moving target (of which you should already be leading to account for that) and it lags, it becomes increasingly difficult to hit your intended target.

In the Nerf Games I've had, be it indoor or outdoor (though almost all of mine are indoor), I've found that a player with a quick reaction time will always beat one with a slower draw, regardless of the blaster.  Our house rules are a 1 hit kill, so in a fight between a fully loaded Hail Fire and a Jolt, it doesn't matter how many darts the Elite blaster can dish out if the user with the Jolt manages to hit them first.

In blasters like the Speedswarm, Swarmfire, Vulcan, and Stampede, the pull of the trigger activates the motor.  Let's assume you're dealing with a stock blaster, no voltage mods or anything like that.  The trigger pull only starts the sequence of the motor priming and then firing.  This means that when you pull the trigger, which is generally caused by a reaction that you have to seeing your target, there's additional time to account for because of the lag between the trigger being pulled and the firing sequence completing to actually launch the dart.  This effect isn't as prevalent in Flywheel-based blasters as long as your trigger pull is quick and strong.

In the fast-paced games I have played with Nerf blasters, speed is always the key.  I have seen players be wildly successful with single-fire blasters even when they are outmatched in firepower by something like a Stampede or Vulcan.  It doesn't matter how much ammo you can dish out at once if your first shot doesn't beat your opponent's.  I have often wondered about doing a mod with a Stampede to have it chamber the first round when a clip is inserted to avoid this kind of lag, but manually-primed blasters still work better for reaction speed since the dart is released the second your trigger is pulled.  This is why the advantage of being "First to Fire" is so important to me.  The Speedswarm, of the blasters I have mentioned that suffer from this lag, is the slowest of them.  This lies at the heart of my distaste for this blaster.  Like I've said before, if you can manage to work with a blaster like that, more power to you.  However, in my experience, the edge of connecting your reaction time directly to the firing of that dart will always reign supreme.