What is hit factor?

Answer 1

Calculating the Hit factor on a stage – how this effects you It is important to understand how the scoring system works in IPSC. If you are a competitor trying to get the most from your current ability, you can gain from this understanding. It will tell you if you should focus more on speed or points on any particular stage, and, should you pick up that miss you see or not. Here’s how the points are given: For example, we take a 16 rounds stage worth 80 points maximum (16 x 5 points for an A hit). Max shoots this stage in 12.00 seconds. He shoots 12 A’s and 4 C’s. The points he scores are: 12x5 + 4x4 = 76 points. Since he shot it in 12.00 seconds, his stage hit-factor is: 76/12.00 = 6.3333. Jerry shoots this stage in 10.5 seconds. He shoots 10 A’s and 6 C’s. The points he scores are: 10x5 + 6x4 = 74 points. Since he shot it in 10.50 seconds, his stage hit-factor is: 74/10.50 = 7.0476 Now, assuming there are only these two shooters in the match: Jerry has won this stage, because his stage hit-factor is higher than Max’s. Because he has won the stage, he gets the full stage match points, 80 in this case. (These match points are not be confused with the points we used earlier to calculate his hit factor). So Jerry get 80.00 points for this stage. Note that even though he shot six C’s, in the end these cost him no points, as he still won the stage and got the full 80 points Max gets match points for the stage, based on his performance compared to the stage winner, Jerry. So Max gets (6.3333/7.0476) x80points = 71.89 match points. Since Max shot 89.86% of Jerry (6.3333/7.0476), he gets 89.86% of the possible points of the stage. Not that although Max only shot 4 C’s, he is loosing more than 8 stage points to Jerry, because of his slower time. Is this manner, you calculate all the points won by each shooter on each stage, add them up – and you will get the total amount of points each shooter has won. In this example, after a 6-stage match, Jerry has 456.34 points, and Max has 422.22 points. This means that Jerry has won the match, and he automatically gets the score of 100.00% in the match. Max gets (422.2200/456.3456)=92.52%. They list the competitors in each stage by category, so when calculating the stage points, your score is compared only to the stage winner in your category/division on that stage. That is why you cannot compare the results between a Standard and Open shooter at the end of a match. They are scored in a separate field of competitors. So, now that you understand how this works, how does it benefit you: There is an advantage to knowing what the hit factor is on a stage before you shoot it. You can calculate the hit factor before you shoot by checking what the times on the stage were for shooters whom you know to be at your level. Or, you can estimate how long each part of the stage will take you to shoot and move, and add it all up. Once you have an estimate of the time you will shoot, and you know the maximum points on the stage, you can guess what a good hit factor will be for you on the stage. Once you have calculated, that on a particular 60 points stage, the time you expect to shoot is 15 seconds, you know that you for this stage has a hit factor of about 60/15=4.00 Now that you know that this is a 4.0 hit factor stage for you, this means that each second time on this stage is worth 4 points. Or, if you prefer, that each point is worth 0.25 of a second. With this information you know that: * If you can gain one extra point on a target by shooting 2 A’s rather than one A one C, by shooting a split of .40sec, instead of .30sec on that target – you should slow down and shoot the slower split! It will cost you 0.10 of a second, but, you have calculated that that 1 point is worth 0.25 second! * You can calculate the price of a miss in time: a miss costs you 15 points. In this case – 15 points is 3.75 seconds (15points x 0.25sec). This tells you that if it takes you less than 3.75 seconds to pick up a miss, you should do it. You will get a better hit factor, hence more match points. This is useful info to have before you shoot, in case your gun runs empty on the last shot. * In some cases, this will tell you if you should wait for another pass of a bobber or a moving target. If you know it will take 2 seconds for the bobber to come back, by knowing the hit factor you will know if it’s worth waiting for it to pick up a possible miss or D, or should you just go on. * When the hit factor is low, the stage is “point heavy” which means you should slow down a little and really go for all A’s. When the hit factor is very high – speed carries more importance. How much is “very high” – depends mostly on your individual shooting level. Knowing the hit factor will enable you to make decisions in advance, before you shoot, as to how you want to shoot the stage. This can be useful information in telling you how aggressively you want to shoot. Should you blaze through the targets, and accept C’s and a possible D, or should you slow a little and shoot only A’s.