member for a year, first post here 
hate to ressurect a thread, but I got to thinking about this thing today...
I think one problem is that there isn't one professional league that everyone can look to. There's no organizing body to lead the way. However, I think one thing that could be looked into is standardized code for each gun. It would take banning some things, and standardizing some parts... but here we go...
I think each manufacturer should have to sumbit one board design for each marker they wish to be eligable for the tournament series. IE. you have one board layout for intimidators, one for matrices, one for shockers, one for impulses, etc... And one set of standardized code for each gun.
Ban aftermarket boards. period. No team boards, no team settings. Everyone has to submit what they use, and every marker in the tournament of that make must have the exact same board. I'm sorry for aftermarket makers, but this would force companies to put in quality stock components, and eliminate the variability in "custom" software and boards. Abuse it, you lose it.
Each company only gets one board for each significantly different marker, thus, it wouldn't matter what kind of matrix you had, they only get ONE board, and one set of code.
Let the code be verified, and shown to be legal.
Also, make every company make it so that their boards can be flashed easily on location at the start of each game. Standardize the programming ports. I honestly don't feel that this should be too hard to accomplish. You can use a palm (available for the same price as a regular chrono), and the manufacturer supplied link program. One palm per field (maybe another for backup) should be adequate. It would be able to easily hold all the software required for tons of different markers.
The player walks up at the start of the game, gives their markers particular timings to the ref, who reflashes their board on the spot to the preapproved software. They then chrono, and we now KNOW that they don't have cheater boards in the gun.
I would also ban adjustable debounce. No question. We did fine without it for years, it stands to reason that we will do just fine without it now. The players have abused and misused it, so they now lose the right to use it. Each marker would have a "organization" approved standard debounce setting... and I'd make it high.
Standardize the trigger switches in all markers that use microswitches. Opticals will be a different matter, but from my experience it's not the opticals that are having so much switch bounce.
I personally would ban magentically returned triggers. I just find them WAY to easy to sweetspot, regardless of how they are set.
The vernier dials on the new angels would have to go, as well as any external trigger modification that didn't require tools. The locking system is too easy to cheat with. Same goes for max-flow tanks for that matter...
Buttons on your gun = teh banned. You now get TWO switches. An on/off, and one for the eye. Trigger programming = banz0red. I know it stinks, but if you want legal, this is how it's got to be. Switches would be inspected to verify that they are not a 3 point switch also.
I know this seems like a lot of heavy rules, but I only see it's main application being for Am division and up. At that point, if you want to compete, you will have to sacrifice some of the novelty and bells and whistles for the integrity of the game. I also think that if you at least institute this at a high level, lower levels will start to comply as well. Players won't be able to cheat their way to the top, because they know their crutch will be kicked out from under them when they get there.
There's more to it, but I really think that this could be done. It'd be a slight pain to set up, but after this you wouldn't need any fancy detection stuff... you'd know exactly what was on the field. BTW, I'd probably also make a freaking robot to measure pull weight and length so that when the ref is inspecting and reflashing the gun, if they thought the trigger violated the rules it could be verified quickly...
Ian
