[gabrielau23]

Originally Posted by pwnageNick

I've been watching this thread, and I was going to just observe, but I decided I would throw my perspective in. I'm not going to comment or add on to anything else anyone has said.

...

Here's where I'll get blunt. Is FTC/VEX an inferior competition? Yes. It is. And I think we all know it is. If it wasn't then we wouldn't be having this conversation. It doesn't take a students educational experience as far. And if you want to talk about culture change, I've never seen someone look at an FTC/VEX robot, and audibly say wow unless it was expanding to be huge (*couch* *cough* Bowled Over *cough* *cough*). But when a random person or someone from a potential sponsor sees an FRC match in person, that makes them want to get involved. Just the way it is. Bigger is better for attracting people when it comes to competition robots driving around.

tl;dr

-Is FTC/VEX a fantastic tool that can help students learn and get engaged in STEM and prepare them for a career in some kind of engineering, etc.? Yes.

-Does FTC/VEX help better prepare students and set them up to succeed more in FRC? Yes.

-Can students learn as many skills in FTC/VEX as FRC? Depends on the resources of the FRC team, but in the high majority of cases: No.

-Is FTC/VEX an inferior competition to FRC? Yes.

-Is FTC/VEX more affordable/accessible/scale-able? Definitely


^^ That last point is what's important. The FRC teams out there who get a kitbot drive on the field with very little or nothing else on the robot perhaps should be competing in FTC/VEX because it would most likely fit their resource allotment better and would allow their students to learn more from the experience.

In addition to that, there are some FTC/VEX programs out there who have tens of thousands of dollars in their FTC/VEX programs, and at some point it could be smart to start an FRC team so that you can move kids through to FRC after a couple years of VEX to further expand their learning experience.

As a side note, I personally think that VEX is a better options for teams stretching resources as opposed to FTC. I also think it allows for more flexible design choices, but that's a separate discussion that could easily be argued either way.

Sorry for the long post, I'll go back to keeping my rants to myself. And of course, everything I wrote is my own personal opinion on the topic.

-Nick

Absolutely agreed with everything here.