Lets see if we can get some sort of debate going on here. For those that were at Worthing, you may have seen the Featherweight final, we had only pushers and a couple with slow lifters in the final (I think due to some of the flippers breaking down before the fight), and we ended up with one of the most boring fights i have seen in a long time. Its difficult enough for the featherweights to make an impact in a heavyweight arena, and its getting harder to make the featherweight fights entertaining, we've already had to introduce Battleaxe, and in last weekends final we opened the pit from the start and had the flipper active (which we don't normally do in comp' fights) in an attempt to try and liven up the fight.

Therefore im proposing that for competitions, all robots must have an active weapon. This is something that has come up several times in the past. With the introduction of the 13.6kg weight limit a couple of years back, its easy enough. As its now getting to a point where if we have many more of the fights like the final at worthing, we would have to look at reducing the featherweight fights to one per show. I still think the feathers have a place in the show, people can relate more to the size of them, and can see them building such a thing, and with the likes of Explosion, LH2, LF2, TinyHurtz etc they do provide entertainment, but to have something like Thor and Iron Awe fighting and then going into 6/8 drill powered feathers, it just slows the whole show down.

I know people are going to say that beginners don't have the skills/money to fit a weapon, but simple weapons can be built easily and without much cost. Im not suggesting that they all go out and fit FP flippers. I don't know how the other EOs feel about it, and what they think. I would still allow machines without weapons to run in whiteboards, but the only other option i see is either dropping a featherweight fight (pushing more machines into the one fight) or letting the House Robot having more freedom (which basically more damage, being put on flipper ect), I try to be as reserved as possible with it at the moment but you have to remember, i have to look at it from and audiences point of view, at the end of the day they're paying for the arena to be there.

So let me know your thoughts, or see if this thread is going to die like nearly every other on this forum!

Alan