[Chris Hibner]

Boy Aidan, that's a toughie. I really don't think you can write a band-aid rule very well without the rule being too subjective to officiate. I see it causing more controversy rather than less. What one official sees as acceptable, another will see as overly aggressive. It's easy to see when a robot tips, but it's difficult to say "that ramming was just too strong." Ken had some good ideas to add some quantification, but I still say it would be difficult to officiate.

I really think any non-aggression rule needs to be designed into the game. Therefore, I would like to suggest two potential new game features to cut down aggressive play.

Idea #1: non-contact zone
Some areas on the field (perhaps near the goals or near the scoring objects) have a different color of carpet. The area of the field with the colored carpet is the non-contact zone. It is illegal to contact a robot that is attempting to score or collect scoring objects in the non-contact zone. Each instance of contact will result in a X point penalty assessed to the non-scoring (or non-collecting) team.

Idea #2: Contact allowance
Each team has a total of N seconds worth of contact/defense time (the actual time can be better determined at a later date). One official is assigned to each team and they carry an electronic stopwatch that is tied to the official scoring system. When contact is initiated, the official starts the timer, when the robot backs away, the official stops the timer. Everyone would know how much contact/defense time is left for each robot by the "Defense Remaining" bar (like a bar graph) underneath their team number at the driver station. Once the bar shrinks to zero, the team is no longer allowed to play defense. The penalty is Y points per extra second of defense that is played (the extra defense time is kept track of by the official scoring system and by the official starting and stopping the official timer).