Quote:
Originally Posted by JaneYoung
That's painting with a little too wide of a stroke. BEST takes a lot of effort and a lot planning in order to compete well on local and regional level. Now, with the National Championship as an added incentive/opportunity - it takes careful budget planning and team preparation. It is also wise to have skilled technical mentors and non-technical mentors working with the team.
Same thing with FLL and FTC. Careful planning has to be a part of the competition package. If your point is that it can be on a smaller scale because of no registration fees or less expensive registration fees compared to FRC - I would agree with that part of it to some extent. The business plan, organization, team development, and financial stability is part of the package of being a competitive robotics team.
|
Sweeping generalizations are one of my hallmarks. It takes team planning effort, budgets, skills to be successful in any robot competition. But those events don't require it at a level that FRC does. For $1200-1500 I can put together an amazing VEX team, go to a few competitions and be very happy. For another $500 I can go to Worlds (if the robot is good enough). That money does not scratch the surface of FRC. I can build a robot team with a few roboteers and another parent, not happening with FRC.
I don't want to derail your thread to get into a cost thing, I wanted to expand on rsisks its more than building a robot. Because of the cost in time and money FRC is a full time "business" effort. The Have are haves because they recognize that and work on it.