I've noticed over the past few weeks that, with the release of the 2016 expansion (which is AMAZINGLY done, oh by the way), the topic of rider progression has popped back up a few times. Obviously, with the introduction of Be-A-Pro mode this year, the old style "slider" progression is no longer around. This has inevitably led to a lot of questions in regards to the speed and nature of how riders evolve in career mode -- with many questions still unanswered. So, in my first real contribution to the community, I'm here to try and help get those answers.

I've done various testing over the vanilla/EP/2016 databases, and think I may have across a way to at least begin handling progression. Unsurprisingly you'll need an editor to make all of this work, I personally use the fast editor myself. The table you're focusing on is the main cyclist table, with two important columns to the far right: value_f_capital and value_f_gain. What I've realized is that Cyanide actually adjusted the progression model for all riders to match that of growth for your Be-A-Pro cyclist.

It's actually rather ingenious when you break it down. Much like in BAP, when a career is started, based on the riders overall, they are given a capital value. This number is directly related to their original overall, and represents a "level" if you will. Every level grown is an overall point increase, which I'll include below. The second column, the gain one, handles how quickly the level is well, gained. This value derives mostly from the riders potential -- 7 potential riders gain more points than 4 potential riders. So far it all makes sense, right? XD

Here's how it works in-game. Every week, or Sunday, each rider in the DB gains a number of "EXP points" equal to the gain value, which is added on to their capital value. Once that value exceeds the number for the next level, they grow an overall point, and grow in stats related to their training specialization. It's worth mentioning that, just like in BAP, the stats gained when "leveling-up" are entirely random. For example, if your rider is training in stage races it could be +2MO one time, but +1TT and +1HL another. As far as I know, this CANNOT be predetermined.

Now, how do you know when a rider is fixing to grow a level? Well I've also done the leg work on that as well. By scanning through the DB it's actually fairly simple to determine these level markers. Here's the upper tier for those who want it:

81 - ~7050
80 - 6400
79 - 5795
78- 5200
77 - 4690
76 - 4165
75 - 3725

If you want the full breakdown, I can post that later on. Essentially these values are your level up "markers." When a rider goes from below one to above one in a week, they gain that attribute point. It also means that for many riders, especially the elites, they'll never fully reach ALL of their possible maxes, which I like personally. So, there's how it works; now how can you control it? That is also actually fairly simple once you understand all of the above.

To speed up, or slow down, progression, all you have to do is adjust the gain column for a rider/riders. At its base the gain function varies between 10-21. That's between 10 points (for a weak rider) to 21 points (an elite rider) per week in growth. So, lets say you have a 78 overall rider who's JUST grown to 78. He's at just about 5200 XP points, and he's a good, but not great rider, so he's gaining 16 points a week. It's 595 points to grow to 79, the difference between 5795 and 5200. That would take him 595/16 weeks to grow that point, which is 38 weeks, or basically the entire calendar year from January to October.

If you find that growth is too fast for your liking, all you need to do is edit the gain values DOWN. Say you decide you want 60% slower growth, then you'd adjust his gain value to about 10 points. Now, it would take 60 weeks for him to grow to 79. Conversely, if growth is too slow, edit gain values UP. A 50% increase would mean his gain is now 24 points, and he'd level up in just 25 weeks. So there it is! That's how you can control rider progression in PCM 15, just like you would in BAP. A mass editor, say the excel editor, should let you adjust values in bulk to make it a quick and easy process. If you have any questions, feel free to fire away!

I wonder, did you notice if the weekly gain is constant for each rider, or depends on some outer variables and chance? Also do you know if the decrease of stats is governed in a similar way?

The weekly gain is constant for the year, and is recalculated on the turnover of December to January every season. That being said, it is constant during the year, and is mainly derived from a riders potential. There may be a SMALL bonus applied to younger/lower overall riders, but that is much up in the air. Mostly though each potential point, for the base gain values, occupy about 1.5 points from the low-end to the high end. For example, 1 potential riders tend to flux between 10-11 gain points, and 7 potential riders from 19.5-21 gain points. As far as I know, you cant manipulate gain outside of changing the final value.

And regression...ugh. Like pretty much everyone else on the Daily I haven't been able to discern what controls regression this year. It almost seems entirely random. I've looked throughout the database for some kind of consistent data, but it's just not there. That coupled with the fact that it appears to be age independent, and different riders regress each career, and at various stages, I'm still baffled. :/

Do you think this is enough proove that # race days has no influence on the rider progression?

And what do you mean with 78- 5200? Do you mean the average of the most important ratings is 78? For example CL, HL and TT for stage race riders?

Honestly, no, I don't think race days play a part in progression. I've seen nothing that correlates the two. In regards to your second question the "78 - 5200" relates to a rough estimate of where the value_f_capital number needs to be in order to grow your rider from 77 overall to 78. Individual stats themselves are randomly raised (based on training style) to accommodate.

Now, it's worth mentioning I've done some additional testing since the original post just to delve a bit deeper. I have IN A WAY determined how regression works. It's actually just like progression. The problem is the variable is still unknown to me. And I scoured the DB to find an entry that solves the mystery -- but couldn't. To explain; progression AND regression are both worked through the value_f_gain column. However, there is a coefficient that is applied to the riders gain value the determines weekly advancement.

From my testing this coefficient varies between -1.3 and 1.3. How its selected, or where it's generated though, I have no idea. If we can find the coefficient than we have all the numbers. I believe the final column, training style, may hold a piece. This column works from 0-199, 1000-1199 and 2000-2199. Almost EVERY rider with a training style of 2000+ either had a progression of zero or regressed.

It's akin, I believe, the old 1-5 scale that determined how many days between overall bumps in previous PCM games. Unfortunately the numbers themselves don't link to anywhere else in the DB. So there's all you need to know. Or at least, all I've got...

I`d like to add my 2 cents to this r&d topic, hopefully it`ll give some extra insight.

First off, I was thoroughly confused by your ratings of 75-81 - it took some time (and the comment of koningco) to realize you meant the average rating, so not related to the particular stats, but as an overall value. The one which seemed to indicate how good you were but not what you are good at. I always wondered what the rating value was for, now I understand they use it for the levelup-marks.

Anyway, to get to my stuff ... I noticed the value_f_capital has been reduced to 0 for some riders, which probably means that the regression has been complete. A little research shows that those are mostly riders who are of age 32 or higher - which might also indicate regression. A good number of them also have the box 'Will retire' ticked. I can confirm that all of them also have a >2000 value_i_training, but perhaps the nullification of the value_f_capital indicates when a rider decides to retire. There are a few who have the box ticked while their value hasn`t gone down to 0 though, so that left me confused.

Maybe it's because I use a different database, but in my game the weekly gain is not always the same as the f_gain variable. For some riders it is the same but some of my captains and youngest increase more than their f_gain, on the other side riders who are close to their max potential and olders riders increase less than the f_gain variable per week. Maybe the relationship with the coach or good results in races also influence that a rider may increase faster or slower than his f_gain.

I am curious which other turning points you found in the value_f_capital variable. I think this gives me a reliable prediction of when I can expect the next skill increases. I found turning points myself between 3993 and 4034 and between 1870 and 1912. I would also like to know these turning points for lower values like 1900, because this can predict how long it takes to train a rider to his max potential.

@Gentleman I guess you don't have riders with 0 value_f_capital in your team, otherwise you are doing something wrong.

I try to be competitive, so I generally don`t extend their contracts when I see they`re declining. But I`ve only recently started to look at this topic, so I`ve never paid much attention to the underlying mechanics.
Stephan Schumacher has a capital of 0 here, which translates to a flat of 51, a MO of 52, a TT of 56, and so on. Considering how he`s been a fairly decent rider, this is a case of not being able to stop despite him not being a competitive rider for a long time.

One of my captains has just reached the age of 32 though and unless he`s going to be asking outrageous amounts of money, I might just keep him around and see what happens to him in the database. His training value has already exceeded 2000, so I`ll try keeping an eye on him to see when his capital starts declining.

As for your remark with the coach, that is an interesting one. I would expect a Legendary coach to have at least some positive influence on the f_gain, whereas a regional coach to have a lot less positive influence.

One addition, I said that one rider (Hofland) increased his skill between 3993 and 4034, but I just found out that his average increased from 75,07 to 75,33. He improved his sprinting skill but his average didn't go over 75, so there are smaller steps which can make a difference on key skills between the numbers you posted.

I don't have enough data yet, but possibly a rider improves every time he reaches a 100 points border on value_f_capital (so skill increases at 4000, 4100 and 4200 for Hofland)

What do you think is the overall best setting for the evolution of attributes? From 0.0 to 0.5, and for "best" I mean the most realistic one, that keeps a realistic decline for the older riders and a realistic growth for the younger ones...

In PCM15 there isn`t a 'slider' for these coefficients anymore. We haven`t been able to decipher how the older riders decline either ...
Perhaps you`re playing a different version of the game?

Sorry for the radio silence the last few days, I've been extra busy with work. To address a couple of points made: no Mirko, that evolution of attributed slider is no longer around here in PCM16, as Gentleman pointed out. Hence all of these efforts to determine how progression and regression do work this year.

I'm glad to see that we've at least started to find out some consistencies such as the training style leading to regression or retirement when at levels greater than 2000. Now if we could only nail down what affects it. I've noticed certain riders in careers whose training styles will change after increasing or decreasing points, which makes me wonder what it could be based on. I have to imagine the trainers play a part. It would be nonsensical to have a rider progress at the same rate with a legendary trainer who is only working with four others as that same rider working with a regional trainer who's working with 12 riders. Especially given their pay difference in regard to salary. Unfortunately I haven't yet had time to test this variable out fully. It is something I'd like to look at up next though.

Finally, there was a mention of growth not equaling the number given by the gain column. THAT is our missing variable to "unlocking" pro-/regression. This number adjusts the gain value by anywhere from a factor of -1.3 to +1.3. For example, say Alaphillpe is on a gain of 20 even. If his growth is being adjust by a factor of 1.2 (fairly fast) then each week he's actually adding 24 points to his capital value column each week. Once again, after the rider grows an OVR point, these numbers re-randomize.

Ultimately, without Cyanide's direct help, we might ever be able to fully "control" the progression and regression of all the riders, but I have been able to adjust isolated cases. Like say, Contador starting a career off regressing. By checking those final columns and using the info outlined in my first two posts, you can edit the values and prevent him from declining immediately. Just depends on what you specially are looking for in your play through. Hopefully we as a community can continue to make progress on this though -- I always do enjoy a challenge!

Good stuff, I was just wondering about how this worked when I saw this thread. So I played with it a little. Mostly confirmed what was described above. When the DB is first loaded in a game the initial capital values are very tightly correlated with the riders average stat value. But how it then changes is much more complicated.

There are really a bunch of unknowns still in the working of the gain value that controls how each rider reaches the next level in the capital value. Most of this has been highlighted by teamdoubledragon but thought I would recap what I saw.

1. The gain value itself is set somehow, it is correlated with potential but there is a fair amount of variation at each potential level. I think there is a slight bias upwards with age, suggesting older riders might be set to decrease faster. I only looked at one week could probably verify that with more work. But something else is influencing this value (although it might be random), so that is one unknown.

2. The amount of the gain value applied each week also varies, I found a range of 1.6 to -1.6 times the DB value. So slightly wider than noted above. This is correlated with age. The table in the spoiler shows the average amount applied at each age for one week, pretty clearly the default is 1 through age 24 then it trends down and turns negative above 30, it doesn't get to -1 until the late thirties. But there is variance in these averages and clearly riders can get a much higher or lower than average bump, this is a second unknown.



3. Once a change in the capital value reaches a threshold a riders stats are adjusted. But this can vary a lot from -18 to +16 (across all stats) in the week I studied. This also correlates with age with the biggest positives going to the youngest riders. I also think it might correlate with potential but would have to look at more weeks. But don't think these factors explain everything, so a third potential unknown.

4. Once a rider changes level the gain value changes as well. I think this has a t least two drivers (1)older riders might have a bias upwards, so that once they start declining they will gradually decline quicker and quicker and (2) the change is inversely related with the old value so that low gain values will tend to increase and vice versa. Which will serve to normalize the growth rates, this would make sense if the value is set randomly originally (see 1). But not sure these explain everything so another unknown.

Could probably solidify some of these relationships if i looked at multiple weeks but not sure I will get to that so thought I would share what I did. Also agree the influence of training values would be a place to explore.

I am pretty sure the relationships between the set value in the DB of value_f_gain and the applied value in any week are multiplicative. If that is the case you could prevent a rider from ever changing stats (at least through this mechanic) by setting the value_f_gain to zero. Haven't tested that and no guarantee it doesn't crash something.

Nice going, teamdoubledragon & Ulrich Ulriksen!

Something I completely overlooked (and I`m probably the only one ) is the fact that the AVG (the progression threshold, tdd made a nice list in the first post) can be found in the DB as value_f_current_evaluation. And then you can see how far up/down the next level the rider is.
Just thought I`d point it out.

And it`s not related to this issue, but heck ... sometimes you find something and it would be a pity not to share.

current_f_stage_score


Is gene_i_ptmap the missing coefficient?


@teamdoubledragon I also noticed this. A couple of my riders suddenly switched from ground-breaking to modern or traditional all of a sudden, without any real indication why.
I have 3 of them (>2000) in my team and all 3 have that particular training style, or have switched to that. I recall having other older riders with a traditional style, but never realized that it might have a connection. I merely thought that older riders have grown up by using traditional training styles and therefore prefered them. Now it actually looks like riders prefer a more traditional training style when they get older.
Tom Dumoulin has just switched to that, so when I saw he had >2000 I made that connection.

Which brings me to the following:
Considering there are 3 variations according to your research

This might just as well refer to these three different training styles. I`ve done some research here for my own team and indeed, everyone with a modern training style has a value_i_training between 1000-1999. And all >2000 are traditional.
So that explains the three different ranges. Which doesn`t prove too complimentory for all traditional trainers if it means they won`t progress anymore

Trainer effectivity


Err ... I noticed I have been rambling again and have started to figure out all kind of columns. I`ll stop now before I`m posting database diagrams

Ahh!! This is great stuff! I can't believe the training style was so obviously missed! This is a great find. While it may rule the column out as the missing link to progression and regression specifically, it does give us further insight into how the function works as a whole.

Obviously the trajectory of ground-breaking to modern and then finally to traditional helps determine where on the growth path your riders are. At least generally speaking. I think perhaps the biggest bummer is that while we have discerned a great deal of "usually's" a determined "always" still eludes us. Thanks so much for the continued help though! I'll definitely look into the gene_i_ptmap column more the next time I have an opportunity.

In response to a couple of your great points Ulrich, I have indeed been able to prevent riders from progressing and regressing by setting their gain value to 0. Which only serves to prove your point that this missing variable is indeed a multiplicative value. If that helped us narrow it down some XD. I too had also noticed that upon each OVR point changed that the gain value adjusts. For example, I had Nils Politt starting a career off at 71 OVR. The very first his OVR increased to 73 thanks to reaching a capital threshold. His original gain was 18.xxx, and I believe it was factored at 1.3 times. Following his overall jump, his gain had changed to 19.xxx and the factor was different as well.

Also, one curious mention to the example. You'll notice in this situation Politt jumped TWO OVR points. Especially with younger, high-potential, but low OVR riders, it's not uncommon to see talents increase by multiple points at once. Which I thought was a neat little feature. Doesn't really solve anything, just another observation. Perhaps this weekend I'll have some time to delve into our new findings and see what else we pull from this research. Thanks for all your efforts!

I wonder if that is somehow related to this thread. A sort of hidden stat which gets triggered if a youngster does well in a particular area, and his stats suddenly jump. It would give the idea of giving young riders in a team the opportunity to ride harder races a very nice touch, imho.
Since we`re looking for a hidden stat in progression/regression, this sort of fits this thread too

I'm by no means saying that isn't a possibility, but I feel like in that specific example it's an unlikely possibility due to the fact it was literally the FIRST week of the career, which contains no races and I hadn't set up any camps of any kind. Still though, taking a look at that thread, it does pique my interest in regards to Cyanide perhaps putting a couple of stats/columns in that we simply can't control to keep things variable. I mean it keeps things from being stagnant. Just like that randomization of stat caps each time a career is started. Plus not every "7 potential" rider in the real world always pans out. So perhaps this is all intentional on their part to increase replayability. Just a thought...

I will start a new career on Continental level. Do you guys have any reliable list of capital thresholds which I can use for this lower level (the list in the first post looks for World Tour).

I have noticed myself that riders up to 500 value_f_capital improve their skills every 100 points (200, 300, 400). Above 500 they grow slower, for example on 1900 (but no increase on 2000 and 2100).

I am not only looking for thresholds where the average skill increase, but mainly to identify when I can expect individual skills (like climbing and sprinting) to improve. One point of a key skill can make a difference on the every level, so that's why I am looking for. On World Tour level this could answer questions like will Quintana have a chance to improve his climbing before the Giro starts?

See spoiler below, derived these from one week of changes it is less reliable higher up as there are less riders. Ones underlined I am guessing, others I feel good about, as every rider who crossed the "yes" threshold changed stats.

Crossing this threshold will trigger a stat increase but you can't guarantee what stat that we know of, so can't predict Quintana will gain mountain. However, it is correlated with the training value (see below) so if you have him training on mountain the odds are better.






OVR (I think you are referring to value_f_current) is a calculated value off the stats. It certainly used to be, and while I think they changed the calculation method it probably still is. So a rider can go up 2 points if they get a particularly big stat gain when they level up. I saw stat gains of up to 18 points, which would translate easily into a 2 point overall gain. And that kind of gain only occurs for young riders. So I think this is just a consequence of a big gain in the process not a designed feature.

Took a quick look at gene_i_ptmap. There are only about a dozen values and they are distributed roughly evenly in terms of riders. gene_i fields generally seem to be descriptive fields about that row in the db's status. Don't think it is our multiplier.

One other item the stat gain is definitely correlated to the training type, something noted in the original post. The fkIDWorkplan correlates to the table STA_training_exercise, which has weights for each of the active stat for each of the 7 workplans which correlate with the rider styles. When a rider gains they are much more likely to gain in the values noted in this table than in the other values. Although they can have some gain in other values, I suspect there is some random chance of that. Not news but wanted to note the mechanism. So training in that type will help you gain stats in that type but not sure how it will work if you try and train a sprinter as a climber. Would guess that will dilute the gain.

Crossing the thresholds still gives you stat gains based on your training, aka fkIDWorkplan (Stage Races, Climber, Northern Classics, etc.) as Ulrich already mentioned, so they should be fairly reliable to determine.

If you want to know if Quintana will have a chance to upgrade his MO stat before the Giro, you first need to realize that he can only upgrade until he reaches his max. MO. If you want to force that last MO stat to be upgraded, you need to see which training plan gives you the most chance. If his REC and TT is maxed out, but his MO isn`t, training plan Stage Races should give you a high probability. For the actual distribution, look at the BaP - each training regime shows you what the probability for a stat upgrade is (for instance Climber focuses on 3x MO, 1x HIL, 2x ACC, 2x END or something similar). If all those other stats are peaked, then there is only one place left where they can be distributed

I did notice that lots of riders improve vastly on their MO stats, probably due to them being trained as Climber, which translates in my (DB15) DB that there are a lot of riders capable of tackling the mountains. This also means that there are only very few riders who are proficient in TT. I`m in 2019 now and aside from the regular known riders who are doing well in the GT, I`m not seeing any talent with high MO ( >75) and decent TT ( > 70). I`m keeping my eyes open to see if the AI shifts training styles later on, otherwise it`ll be a little silly to see 50+ riders with 77 MO and only 5 with a higher than 70 TT.


If that is true, then it might be that our approach might be a bit off. At the moment we base our stat jumps on the fact that the OVR changes, therefore distributing stats to all kinds of categories.
But if the OVR isn`t anything but a calculated value based on the stats, then it`s not so useful to link our stat gains to OVR, as a switch from 67 -> 68 OVR might translate in either a stat gain (yet to be distributed) over 2 categories (i.e. 7 points total over SP and ACC, which might actually switch the OVR to 69 instead of 68, due to them being core stats) or over 5 categories (i.e. 7 points over FL, HIL, COB, ACC, FTR), which translates to a single OVR point raise.

If we approach a threshold, it might be worth to look at how many 'points' will be distributed instead of looking at the OVR as a value, as I doubt a FL stat gain will be counted as much as a MO stat in a calculation for a good Stage Racer.

A pity I didn`t realize that earlier, because in earlier years I always kept track of all my riders` stats on a monthly basis, to see which stats have improved and which didn`t - but I don`t have that much time anymore, so I decided to do it only on the first day of the year. I`m still pretty disappointed with the possibilities of seeing progression by rider type in that graph in-game, rather than it being broken down into stats. Or perhaps I`m just too much of a control freak


It`s actually a little more complicated than that. The SP stat for a sprinter is higher ranked than the SP stat for a climber. So if your sprinter has a 79/79 for SP/ACC, then you train him as a climber, his MO will probably go up, but there is a fair chance that your SP will actually go down.
Happened to my sprinter when he reached 80/80, so I panicked a little when he suddenly went down to 79/80

iirc there used to be a nice little overview somewhere, but you can look it up just by going into BaP and see how many arrows are associated with each stat for each training/workplan. The calculation will be based on that, so it could easily be possible that 3 MO points gained equals out 1 SP point. It`ll allow you to make a more round rider, but he will lose his edge in a specialisation because of that.

I think teamdoubledragon said it, but elite riders will not get to their full potential because the thresholds are set up so that they simply cannot reach all their maximum stats. After carefully monitoring some of my riders and adjusting their training, I came to the conclusion that this may or may not be possible. Some riders have nearly reached all their limits, while others have gotten all the core and backup stats, while neglecting some less common ones. Some of it has to do with losing core stats when training backup/other stats, but others simply have such high limits that you simply cannot get 4x a 83 limit by not shifting around 3 times with training - and by then you probably have reached the 2000 traditional training and stopped progressing entirely.

It still makes me wonder why some riders progress slowly, while others progress faster. If I compare Wilco Kelderman with Bob Jungels for instance, I`m seeing the former progress his value_f_capital up to 5900 before switching to traditional training, whereas the latter is already up to 8400 and still training modern. They only differ a year-and-a-half in age, so the difference shouldn`t be this large - especially when comparing their stats, which are pretty similar (see spoiler-tag, for people who don`t mind seeing how they can end up).



So I`m wondering why Jungels has almost twice as much value_f_capital than Kelderman, despite a minor age difference. I thought it ought to be determined by the potential and value_f_gain, but that doesn`t explain this much of a gap in that column.
Did anyone else notice these larger value_f_gains, since they don`t match up with the thresholds mentioned in the first post by teamdoubledragon?
But why are all those other riders having so much higher value_f_capitals without having these high OVR ratings? It almost looks like the established riders have to comply with different rules than talents/newly generated riders.