Pro Cycling Manager 2014 review of the new features this year
Cyanide has again stepped up in this years edition of Pro Cycling Manager making several changes and new additions.
Interface
The first thing you will notice is the new interface, it is in general darker and more tidied up.
In career mode or when picking teams, for a stage race or classic, you have now a big maillot of the team you picked on the right hand side of the screen.
Also in career mode the tabs on the top of the screen moved to the middle and are slimmer which gives more of the impression of a side overloaded and the other side too empty.
Equipment
New in this year is that you now have to sign contracts with equipment manufacturers.
There are 3 groups: frames, wheels and groupset.
When the season is about to end and you haven't a contract for next year, several manufacturers make you offers.
But it isn't just money they offer some manufacturer allow you access to R&D, research and development.
This allows you to develop frames and wheels.
You have 4 options for developing a frame or wheel:
minor changes, major changes, redesigning and developing a new part.
But you can do only 1 task per manufacturer.
Each task takes it's time, minor changes might lead to some minor changes but doesn't take too long whilst developing something new takes a lot of time.
But don't take it as a guarantee that any change will be a positive one, developed parts can change to the worse and might be then sent back to make further changes.
After a prototype has been done you can test it during a race that allows you to see if anything has changed in the right or wrong direction after enough testing time.
When you are ok with the changes then you can accept the part and it will be now replacing the old part.
Also new are the part attributes:
Aerodynamics: for sprint, prologue and time trial stages
Lightness: for hilly and mountain stages
Comfort: for cobbled stages
Reliability: bad reliability can lead to more punctures and falls
Feeling: good for the riders satisfaction/feeling
Contracts and Transfers
For this year Cyanide has made it harder to get everyone you want but made also the transfer season more important and interesting with making more news.
If you have riders with running out contracts they will be now more aggressively followed by the AI teams. If he has several offers and yours, even if you match what he thinks he is worth, is not good enough the rider will leave your team.
Also riders from other teams may now offer themselves to you when they still don't have a contract and it's late.
Tutorial
The tutorial is new and guides you now around the game/career mode.
This is especially good for new players of the game but there is also a tutorial in career mode explaining the new features for experienced players.
3D mode graphics
In terms of graphics it was already known that Cyanide has added english buildings.
Especially for the London stage at the Tour you can notice the typical english row homes or landmarks like the Buckingham Palace or the Palace of Westminster also known as the Houses of Parliament.
In terms of racing there are 2 new additions the automatic mode and the next order tab.
Automatic mode
You will notice that even when playing the stage yourself, you have a strategy tab before the race and during the race.
You can tick then what the riders position in a team is (leader, helper, sprinter, free role) and then what they should do:
Ride for the stage, ride if in a breakaway, attack, follow attacks and do not attack.
As you can see in the picture before this is the strategy tab in-game just press space for the menu.
Here Devenyns is the leader of the team in the race, the 5 riders are domestiques, Kittel is the main sprinter and Geschke and Degenkolb have a free role in the team.
You might notice on the left hand side that I gave for some riders the automatic mode. This is the new button on the right side beside the energy gel.
Some of the helpers will protect your leader and one will get some bottles of they are running out of water in the bottles.
As the 5 helpers have all the same tasks, they will stay with the leader and protecting him.
Next order
Now when attacking or fetching water bottles you will notice that on the right side of the rider a tab comes up.
For example when fetching water bottles you can click the tab and press attack, that leads into that after he has given everyone in your team the water bottles he will attack immediately.
Here Ludvigsson attacks, now you can click on the right side of the task he is doing at the moment (attacking) you see another tab opened with currently short relays with 70% of effort.
You can now click for example the free effort button and set the effort you want him to do.
After he attacked he would now ride on a free effort of 70%.
Miscellaneous
Daily form seems to have more of a influence of what a rider can achieve in the race or stage.
I saw during the Tour de France a stage win for Sam Bennett of NetApp outsprinting the likes of Degenkolb and Kittel.
And during Paris-Roubaix playing with Belkin, Flens had an enourmous day (+5) even though he was just a domestique for this race with COB around 67.
He held himself a long time at the group of the favourites and their best helpers but had to go slower because the tempo was at the end too high.
But still even though he was more than 4-5 minutes behind the winner he was for Belkin the 3rd best rider behind Vanmarcke and Boom whilst being just the 5th best cobbler for the team.
Riders can get now a bit sick/injured during the career mode. That doesn't mean they out of the race or can't be used but they will be worse and can get seriously sick. These riders will have a small red cross beside their fitness. Before a stage race you can also now take a team doctor with you.
The podium ceremony and scenery has changed leading into a better TV like presentation especially for the Tour de France.
Also if you like to have more money from the race organisers, there is in the options now a added option for the prize money coefficient to make it easier or harder for you to get money from wins or winning a classification.
And at the multiplayer mode you now can host a race without opening ports.
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