[FTC5110]

The question should really have been "Is the international branching of FIRST a good thing?" and the answer is yes.

High costs aside FRC is a bad fit for many countries because it's constrained to a 6 week build season that can align with summer holiday periods and only STEM converts will give up their family/friends time. Every year a small group of us in New Zealand run through the same question; should we start an FRC team this year? The answer always ends up being a pretty solid no. High school students are inspired by FTC & VRC just as much as those involved in FRC and as a mentor having done the analysis many times there is close to zero justification for FRC aside from "bigger is better". With all the changes in FTC there is scope for real engineering approaching that of FRC.

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

A lot of STEM competitions default to an international scope, and I don't think FIRST and FRC should divert from that. FRC is a competition where economies of scale come in to play (the failed Brazil event, the slow march out in the East, and the fits and false starts to have an event in Europe) whereas the scale of FTC, VRC, FLL, IQ, and their cousins can get a field and parts (and completed robots and their teams) distributed across oceans at a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a cost.

Spot on. Growth in FTC, VRC, FLL & IQ outstrips FRC every year and there's a reason for that.

The robots are just vehicles taking kids on a ride to STEMville.