Uhm, first off: Europcar is the only one team that has the strenghts for a World Tour team. If you say that it's not fair to 17 other teams than it's also not fair to use Europcar as evidence for your custom rider policy. It ends up merely being a scapegoat. All other Pro Continental teams do not have riders like Rolland, Gaudin or Voeckler. Secondly, they already have this strength at PCT level. It's weird for them to become weaker by promoting to World Tour level, a point where they actually need the strenght of a fully competitive squad, somewhere where they should become more attractive for custom riders. In the end, some people just play this game smarter than others and luigi and Jesleyh play it very smart...

Maybe there's another solution though? Ratings of the team's strength and an adjustment of their custom rider slots. Obviously a team like SKY doesn't need custom riders while your FDJ team, Euskaltel - Euskadi (Gorka Nieve... *cough*) or VCD could easily use one or two more open custom rider slots.

EDIT: Actually that system would be easy as hell. Each new season, you simply look at the stars of each team without their custom riders and then by game's assessment of their strength, you go from one or two slots up to 6 custom rider slots. In return, if someone signs Froome or Sagan, they lose of course a slot as the quality of the team increases.

An additional idea, but not necessary: I'd also say that custom riders will be treated as real riders after some time in the peloton or in the team, like after the first season. For example, when they turn 24 and thus can be considered as more or less developed riders. Or they are counted as a "real rider" of the team in their second or third season and count toward the team's strength. In any case, at some point they also count towards the overall stars of each team, while the original assessment of available custom rider slots should be made upon the original team strength at the start of EPIC.

2ND EDIT: Just started PCM and checked the teams (including the custom riders). This could look like that for example. :
Top Tier teams like Astana, SKY, BMC: 2 slots
Mid-Level teams like Cannondale, AG2R La Mondiale, FDJ, Europcar: 3 slots
Lower level teams like Euskaltel, Lampre, Caja Rural, Androni, NetApp: 4 slots
Lowest level like CCC, Bretagne: 5 slots

Erm, sorry - what?! We don't get consistent Top 10 results here either, and we sure as hell didn't even come close to a Top 10 overall in a WT race.

Here, feel free to check, mate.

Custom Riders are not there to be OP powerhouses, they are there to support a team as a leader. The reason that CT teams can have 6 is that they are weaker in general and that's a decision you should have made when choosing a team. Whether to have a weaker team with strong custom riders or have a stronger team with custom riders who may be leaders or Super Domestiques.

Not a bad idea Shonak

Where would the Rocking Oger be?

Probably at 3 or 4 slots. Europcar would have 4 slots too I assume because they have brought in big quality with their custom riders. I think the available slots in the first season should be determined upon the original strength of the squad without custom riders.

That's a great idea Shonak. Hopefully our evil overlord will share our enthusiasm

In my opinion CT teams should not have more than 4. A conti team could get into a GT with 4 strong climbers and stage racers and will be far more competitive than they should be.

Well, teams like CCC and Bretagne (I'm not sure if they are even managed honestly) do have a giant disadvantage and they'd need any help they can get through custom riders.

There's also a fair point of transfers that comes into this as well: Since teams will have to adress their own strength, they might have to drop one or two leaders of the second tier (e.g. SKY releases Porte) if they want to hire a custom rider. Thus other teams can sign a new "super-rider" but maybe have to drop a custom rider themselves. Basically if you motivate such a system, it could mean that team manager can shape their teams much more to their liking. A World Tour team can have several custom riders and still be competitive, while another team manager (that maybe doesn't care so much about his HQ) just has a bandwagon of strong riders, who do his bidding.

Keep also in mind that super-rider like Froome, Contador or Quintana will most likely always have an edge over custom riders, since team manager can invest points into them as well (at least that's how I understand it). Plus: It'd take several seasons until a custom rider can really be described to be of one of the best I think.

Balancing teams... I can be of big help here!
For the MFS i attempted to create more balance in the teams, and i can say it is tough. Where that is a Quick-Sim league i was mainly looking at the top-tier of riders so in my system (yes i did some math) they had a large weighting.

I don't have my base numbers saved anywhere so can only look at my MFS adjusted ones. The top team (in this case Orica) is more than twice as good as the worst (unsurprisingly Euskaltel). The middle teams are Garmin and Katusha, just behind Saxo and just ahead of ALM, ARG, LAM, MOV and IAM.
Obviously that is after i'd messed with the teams a bit but not too much.

I am happy to share my method with Ollfadh if he ever wanted to input some sort of scaling system for custom riders and teams.
Though i can say this, if Novo were to have 6 riders, then even teams like Caja Rural would be down to 2-3 riders and all WT teams down to 1.

I do agree with you Shonak but you said that thry can build a team how they like. I, forexample, want to keep Androni as an Italian/Venezuela (South America) squad. Thus resulting in a team which will probably be slghtly weaker but I do not really care about how strong my team is as long as I am enjoying it.
I know Im getting off topic completely but riders should be taken into a team to strengthen a team and not change it completely. Enjoythe team you have, improve the team but do not turn it into a team where all riders are of different nationality because you will not enjoy it.

I have other ways to compensate. For example the goals: better teams will get harder goals. Ask OPQS

Another thing I'll introduce at the end of the season is a draft, where the lowest rank team has the first draft pick.

But in the end, some teams are stronger than others and that just fine.

@TMM: Obviously Novo Nordisk is a outsider that gets 6 slots (if someone is actually crazy enough to chose them) but that doesn't mean that they will have 6 custom riders. Honestly, any one sending their rider to them has already lost.

I'd be interested in course in how you rated the teams. We can't really use the MFS strengths for EPIC though because I think there were lots of transfer going on in MFS, no? Otherwise I don't really understand how OGE could be rated as the top team. In any case, a simple look at the original DB w/o custom riders and looking at the stars should work too (although it's far from a perfect strength-assessment).

@LLS: Yeah, I agree. But ultimately, it's up to the team manager how he wants to build his squad. Just like people play PCM differently (some with weak CT teams, others with Team SKY), there are also different approaches of managing a team. The most important thing is to have fun.

@Shonak
As i said i don't have the base numbers fom an unedited db, but this is all before the transfer period, and yes Orica are the strongest team.
Simple process really. An 80+ ride is worth 5 points, a 78-79 5pts, a 76-77 rider 3pts, a 75 rider 2pts and a 74 rider 1pt.
Add up all the points and you get a result. Orica (27), KAT (18), EUS (13)

@Ollfardh
Uh-oh.
Europcar should better suck in the next races then

Yay I'm by far the strongest team

Anyway, Ollfardh, I assume you are racing the continental championships, but I wouldn't mind.

@Shonak
Indeed, managers must have fun and enjoy wat they are doing. However that may be

Ian Butler will be our guest-reporter for the continental championships, if that's what you mean

Mr Ollfardh
For signings how do we confirm them?

Of course better teams get harder goals. That goes without saying. I'd consider anything else rather pointless.
But I don't understand what exactly goals have to do with the 3D races themselves. And more importantly, what exactly do they have to do with custom riders? And they certainly don't really influence the teams strength. They just determine on which races we want and have to focus. And if we achieve them, we get some points. So yeah, okay, that's how we might end up boosting some riders, but that's not enough to compensate the loss of riders. In any case, it doesn't really level the playing field since stronger teams will just have the same chances of fulfilling their goals than weaker ones. Well, they probabl have it maybe even easier. OPQ can win easily Ronde, while NetApp already will struggle with a stage win in Bayern Rundfahrt.



Alright. Well, not really happy about that system. Where do the drafts come from? Is it basically a pool of riders that other teams don't want to have anymore?



Yes. And teams will remain stronger. But I don't really see anything bad in opening up the game for people.