It is that time of year again, with approximately 3 months until the new game is released, and this year PCM.daily have been given the first interview about the game!

The interview is with Clément Pinget, and reveals the first real bits of information about what we can expect in Pro Cycling Manager 2014. The main conclusions are below, or you can click here to read the full interview.

Career Mode

The career mode has been one of the main areas of focus for improvement this year, and two systems have been developed from scratch. The first involves equipment, and allows you to sign contracts with suppliers and participate in research and development programmes for new parts. The second involves the contracts and transfers system. The realism of transfers have been improved - in terms of both salary levels and the nationality focus of a team - and players will have more choices available when dealing with this part of the game.

Tutorials

It has been many years since there was a demo for the game, and this looks set to be partly addressed in the form of two tutorial levels. One will be aimed at total beginners, but the other will be geared towards more advanced players and will help to highlight the changes that have been made between 2013 and 2014.

Gameplay

The main change here relates to an automatic mode where it seems that you can let the AI take control over part of your team - to allow you to focus only on the important riders. It will also be possible to give multiple orders to a rider at the same time. So while a rider is collecting water bottles for the team, you can tell him to go straight to relaying once that task has been completed.

Daily Form

The impact of daily form looks set to be greater this year, which will lead to some more unpredictable results - an outsider could achieve a big result if he has a great daily form for that race. How the daily form is generated has also been changed - with a rider's recovery and the weather conditions being important factors. In career mode, rider illness will also lead to a rider receiving low daily form for a few days in a row.

Resistance Stat

As many people noticed, the Resistance stat had become irrelevant after changes to PCM2013. This has been addressed for this year's game.

Stage Editor

A new feature will allow climbs or route sectors to be inserted straight into a .zcts file, without the need to map them out every single time. Already nearly 60 famous climbs or places have been recreated from France and Italy, including the likes of Alpe d'Huez and Mont Ventoux. This could be a great time saving feature for stage makers.

Long Term Plans

Beyond PCM 2014, there is a hope to improve the ease in which the game can be modded, in particular with the installation of different database - making it possible for the game to work with multiple different databases at the same time. Cyclocross is also in the minds of those working on the game, having been a popular suggestion for many years.

More news to come

There will be improvements to the multiplayer mode, and other changes to the career mode, as well as news about new features for the console version of the game. But further information on this will have to wait for now!

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.