[Pault]

I disagree. While there are definitely some benefits to FTC during the preseason, there are much better, more applicable things that your team could be doing with its time. The best thing that you can do during the preseason by far is build a practice robot. Everything that you learn will directly carry over to the build season. Also, it allows you to gauge your team capabilities. (For example, if your team has a weak CADing division, you should avoid complex mechanisms, or if your team struggles with machining, you should try to use as many COTS parts as possible).

The last, and coolest, benefit of a practice robot is that you get to test out new things. If your interested in mecanum or octocanum or butterfly drive or swerve, you can put it on your practice robot. If you have some crazy, out of the box idea that's never been done in FRC, you can go ahead and use it on a practice robot. Doing this kind of stuff for the first time on a competition robot is usually a horrible idea and will often end badly, but doing it on a practice robot allows you to see if it will work and get experience doing it so that you can then redo it on a competition robot confidently.