[nathan_hui]

I would argue that it depends on the background of the team. FTC is a great way to get started in competitive robotics. It provides a less stressful version of FRC with significantly lower complexity and associated costs, while permitting a similar team structure and organization, albeit at a smaller scale. However, FTC needs to be operated properly in order to be a proper stepping stone to FRC. FTC needs to emphasize disciplined design, teamwork, and organization in order to be an effective stepping stone for FRC. One of the biggest problems with FTC is that because it is so simple, hacked solutions actually work. That generally doesn't hold for FRC due to the complexity of the challenge and the involved systems. Teamwork is essential, even though FTC is small. A sufficiently skilled worker can make an FTC robot in under a week. But in order for FTC to be effective to the students, they need to be able to enforce a top-down design structure for their robot - that's generally the same structure that FRC will use (or rather, it's what successful teams would ideally use). Organization is also important, even though with FTC there's not really a stop build date. Organization helps the FTC team get more design iterations in, and disciplines them to the rigors of the 6 week build of FRC.

That said, FTC is not necessarily the be all end all solution to training for FRC. Again, echoing previous posts, actually building a robot is essential to getting team members up to speed. If one were to structure a team such that first years and a select set of upperclassmen spent the entire year building and learning different FRC designs/skills/systems/etc, and then the first years were then promoted to being part of the build team, that would also give the students the experience and skill set needed to field an effective FRC team (assuming, of course, that said set of upperclassmen were capable of actually teaching and organizing the students). If we develop this system further and establish a sort of mentor/upperclassman mentor/underclassman trainee structure, where rookie students are mentored by skilled upperclassmen who were then mentored by the actual mentors (sort of how an Air Force ROTC squadron is organized, with the cadre mentoring the wing leadership and professional cadets, who in turn lead and mentor the general military cadets), we have a self-sustaining system that adequately prepares students for leadership and design roles within FRC.

Overall, integrating FTC into an effective training pipeline for FRC is probably the best thing to do, if FTC needs to be a part of the pipeline. Otherwise, FTC takes away at least a year of FRC specific training, unless summers are adequately used, in which case again, FTC needs to be well integrated so that the transitions between years are smooth and well used.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm speaking on the assumption that students will progress through at least a full season of FTC before ever starting FRC, not jumping from FTC to FRC in a single year.