PCM.daily banner
28-03-2024 16:02
PCM.daily
Users Online
· Guests Online: 32

· Members Online: 1
Tamijo

· Total Members: 158,820
· Newest Member: saracruz8952
Articles Hierarchy
Articles Home » PCM 06: General Articles » How to do a great time trial
How to do a great time trial
In PCM1, it was almost impossible. In PCM2, it has become easier, but yet, it takes some time to understand it. With this guide, you'll be on your way to do a great time trial.
We all remember the old ITT system from PCM1. A lot of unhandy sliders, a lot of numbers, which were difficult to find your way through. Cyanide noticed that they had made the system too complicated, and in PCM2006, they remade it from scratch, but they did in fact use something from Cycling Manager, the first game in the series, which is quite a surprise. Ye' olde lightbulb.

The interface!



Now, the ITT system is like scratching you're back. You can look at it, and then you can use it. In the start, you'll see a list of all you're riders, and a lot of grey boxes, all on the left side of the screen. There are only one slider, controlling how your rider's effort, a bar showing your energy (The blue one) and a bar showing how much road you have left to eat, before you reach goal (The white bar).

There are also a lightbulb, and three boxes with some numbers.

The Lightbulb: It's a bit like cartoons, where the lightbulb turns on, when the character gets an idea, but in PCM, it's actually the other way around. When the lightbulb is on, which is also is when your rider is on the startramp, the AI (the computer's mind / intelligens) will take full control of your rider his effort. When the lightbulb is off, you control the riders effort.

Kilometres Per Hour: The box next to the lightbulb, shows how fast your rider is pushing the pedals around. Not very useful actually, but allways good to look at if you are a bit bored.

Heart-Frequency: This might become more handy as the frequency can tell you, whether the rider is having a relaxing time, or is getting acid in all of his legs. Try to keep it as low as possible. Around 160 is good!

Effort-percentage: Probably the most important, this shows whether your rider is giving his all, or is just taking a ride in the park. The information is very usefull, as you need to compare to heartrate and distance left. If you are good at ITT'ing, you will suddenly hit the spot, and you can drive home, having used all of you're energy, right as you cross the line. The perfect ITT.



In the left side of the screen, there's also a stopwatch, and if you click this, you can see how good you're rider are, and what time he got, both when he has crossed the finishlines, and out on the road. This can be a good pinpoint on whether he rode to fast at the beginning, and faded in the ending, or whether he used a little to few of he's rescources in the beginning of the race.



On top of you're screen, you can see a very long bar, and it shows who's in the lead. It might become handy, if you are in a close competition, but if you're not, you should rather not just look at it. It's not that interesting. But still, if you have good riders, it's handy.

So how to ride a good ITT?

As mentioned before, riding a good ITT in PCM2006 is rather easy. You just have to look at the two bars, showing energy compared to racing left. But it may cheat you.

On the very long ITT's, the one you might know from Tour De France, which can easily be over 50 km. long are by far the easiest of them all to ride. You just have to find a nice percentage for you're rider, and that's pretty much all. In the end, you can either slow down or speed up a bit, and when you cross the line, you should have been doing a perfect job. It's very easy, and it's just about trying it once, to get the best out of it.

The shorter ITT's, around 10-20 kilometres are a bit harder to figure, as you don't have much time to regulate. You will have to be more focused and less relaxed, as it can suddenly go all wrong. But still, it should be easy enough, after a few riders finding the perfect percentage. Sometimes, the ITT's are so short, that you can simply just use 100% on your best riders, and if it was a little to much, then you can slow down in the end.

The hardest of them all, are the short, hilly ITT's. You might remember the start of the Giro d'Italia, 2006, in Seraing? It was short, but with a nasty hill in the middle. These are the most tricky. 'Course when you hit the top of the hill, it's not a very wise idea to have much energy left to use. Therefore, you will need to use a lot of energy, alot, and then just recover it on you're way down. It'll maybe take few riders to figure out, but sooner or later, you will get the hang of it.

That's pretty much everything there is to say about Individual TimeTrialling in PCM2006. Left to say is, that it is just about trying it out. If it won't work for you the first time, don't get frustrated, just relax, and try again.

But, if you after a few tryes still can't get the damn thing to work, then you're welcome to ask me or another member of the crew, and we'll see what we can do.







Comments
#1 | puman on 23. March 2007 12:30
Yes just a matter of trying a couple of times and find the right % for your riders.. a good start % is around 70-75% if you have alot of riders out on the same time.
Set of at 73% and let the rider "gain" some blue bar befor you ajust it up or down.
#2 | shadow80 on 14. November 2007 20:06
For 2007, I've found it most effective to find out the gradients of the hills and set the maximum efforts for the steepest grades and I'm usually able to get top 50 finishes for mediocre TTists and top 5s for decent TTs. And of course, conversely, on the downhills, you set the efforts lower because gravity does the job for you.
#3 | ReschNicolai on 24. July 2008 14:41
tt is the easiest to win.
Post Comment
Please Login to Post a Comment.
Ratings
Rating is available to Members only.

Please login or register to vote.

No Ratings have been Posted.
Login
Username

Password



Not a member yet?
Click here to register.

Forgotten your password?
Request a new one here.
Latest content
Screenshots
Boogerd in Amstel
Boogerd in Amstel
PCM06: General PCM-screenshots
Fantasy Betting
Current bets:
No bets available.
Best gamblers:
bullet fighti... 15,176 PCM$
bullet df_Trek 14,174 PCM$
bullet Marcovdw 11,945 PCM$
bullet jseadog1 10,452 PCM$
bullet baseba... 8,939 PCM$

bullet Main Fantasy Betting page
bullet Rankings: Top 100
ManGame Betting
Current bets:
No bets available.
Best gamblers:
bullet Ollfardh 19,790 PCM$
bullet df_Trek 12,220 PCM$
bullet Marcovdw 11,400 PCM$
bullet jseadog1 10,400 PCM$
bullet baseball... 6,032 PCM$

bullet Main MG Betting page
bullet Get weekly MG PCM$
bullet Rankings: Top 100
Render time: 0.53 seconds