I raised this as an issue a couple of years back (seemed more recent than that!) and it certainly prompted some debate:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2812

The overall impression I got was that;

a) there were a lot of people supporting it, but not as many as those against it
b) enforcing an active weapon rule could not be done by the FRA as it goes against one of the FRA's core aims (promoting the sport of robotic combat in all shapes and forms, or words to that effect) and that it should be left to the discretion of the EO whether they implement an active weapon policy.

My position on the matter remains the same; I am all for a active weapon rule for featherweights that applies for competitions only. By that, I mean if you want to enter the UK Featherweight Championships, your robot has to have a weapon. If you want to fight in whiteboards, you don't need to have a weapon.

I classed whiteboards as all fights at Roaming Robots and Robots Live! events as I've never really thought of the FW fights at these events as being competitions (at least not compared to full-combat championships) but if you run separate competition and whiteboard events then the rule could always apply to the competition side of fights, as you have proposed Alan. At the end of the day, you're the EO and it's your job to make the show interesting enough to entice the viewing public to pay up, so you're free to make that call.

Then there are the arguments that you can stick a servo on a FW with a toothpick on it and call it a weapon. Hope that stance doesn't arise in this debate as, frankly, it's a crap and out-dated way to look at such a proposal and I would hope that the roboteering community would be above that.

And just to clarify, I consider robots like Seraph to have active weapons (that goes for horizontal thwackbots as well). And I also accept that a robot like 540 was exciting to watch despite not having a weapon. But my opinion still stands.