Test have come in very uniform and conclusive: between my new foam (from home depot) and my old foam that I used last war (also from home depot, just several months earlier) there is uniformly a 5ft-10ft drop in range with the new foam whether used as Slugs or Domes, or fired Singled or Hopper'd. Slugs uniformly drop the range about 30ft-50ft. So, using my old foam, hot glue domes, and a singled barrel, I'm hitting about 130ft-150ft. When using the newer foam, made as Slugs, out of an 8inch clip hopper or so, I'm uniformly hitting about 70ft-90ft.
I would hope you don't take offense to this, but quite simply: You failed at making slugs. Slugs fly 120' or so out of range whore blasters; the occasional stupidly-overpowered airgun can throw one 130' give or take.
That being said, the discussion about the evils of slugs has been had here and doesn't need to be reiterated. I'm not requesting that folks abide by the rules; rather, if they don't, they don't play. This is going to be a spectacular event and I don't want anyone to miss out.
Keep in mind that these ranges were eyeball'd (I had previously tape measured from my driveway to points on my street, and I have a pretty good idea of distance) so some accuracy of results is lost there. Also, my street is on a minor incline, so ranges should be a bit better on perfect flat. Furthermore, the new foam isn't all that great compared to what I was using at the last war I went to. I will eagerly wait upon sampling a slug or two of the community bin for making comparisons with my own, this should give some data to compare to for future reference.
At any rate, I take no offense as I'm still learning the basics about slugs and still testing barrels lengths/dart fits/foam brands/etc and I certainly have some work to do yet. As to the so called "evils" of slugs, as far as I'm concerned, as long as I can hit ~100ft with a mid-sized hopper I'm content; this is
Nerf after all, not airsoft/paintball/retarded-fanboy-FPS-game. The results I posted were not intended to be in the negative; rather, just more data to go on. I'd be happy to hear anyone else's range data for their slugs and/or other darts and the effects of using various types/brands of foam.
Again, i take no offense, I have no problem with Slugs, and my data posted was merely data, not a rant or protest of slugs.
Oh, and I had fun safely shooting my 7yr old brother with them; I couldn't do that with domes LOL.