Not wanting to let discussions on house rules, game setup and mechanics hijack our story threads, @Ripley and I agreed it would be a good idea to move the discussion to this section instead and invite you all to join in with feedback and opinions
I decided to start the thread as I currently have a (nearly) completed set of house rules and setup for my newest career in PCM 2015.
(edited for clarification) But please note:
1. I don't want this thread to be limited to my rules. They are just a starting point for (hopefully) many interesting discussion. So, even if you have no comments or feedback to the rules posted here, please feel free to share your own and/or bring up other guidelines for discussion.
2. These house rules are not meant to be house rules for the entire community or dictate how you play the game. If any of my rules can help make your game more fun, that's awesome, if all my rules are useless, that's fine too
Right, let's get started:
The Goal: Note: These are my personal goals for my current career. If your goals for your career are different, then some of my house rules may not work or make any sense to you. Just keep that in mind
1. To make the game more challenging
2. To be the Sports Director during races and not micromanage every rider
3. To make the game as realistic as possible within the limits of the game and as long as its still fun to play! (edited for clarification) I can have a tendency to take things a bit too far in search for realism and end up at a point where the game is not fun anymore, so point 3 here is basically saying that my rules can chase realism, but if they take away the fun, I'll remove them.
1. Game setup:
Difficulty: Normal This is because I play with all riders on Automatic throughout the race (see rule 7)
and I think a higher difficulty only gives the AI an unfair advantage over other AI riders (artificially increases their stats)
SQUAD RULES FOR CUSTOM CONTINENTAL TEAM
1. Picking Your Squad
1.1 Squad size:
Only 10 riders can be picked
1.2 Who to pick:
Riders must be chosen from Free Agents
1.3 Local Riders:
- All riders must be from the same region/province as the main sponsor. I.e. if the sponsor has its headquarters in Aosta Valley, all your riders must be from Aosta Valley. Exception/Possible Future Rule Change: It can be very difficult to find 10 riders from the same region, so I'm thinking about changing it to either a) At least 7/10 riders from same region as sponsor or b) all 10 riders must be from the same or neighboring province as the sponsor.
1.4 Strength of Squad:
The Overall Attribute Average* of all 10 riders can not be higher than 64.6 which equals a 1 star continental team.
*Overall Attribute Average = Add the Overall Attribute of all 10 riders and divide by 10
1.5 Minimum average age of squad and individual rider age: see 2.4
2. Squad Rules During Career
2.1 As a Custom Continental Team: See Rule 1.3 Local riders. As a Continental team: Maintain the ratio of riders from your sponsor's country and foreigners the team has when you start the career. In other words, if the Continental team you choose has a Swiss sponsor and 8 out of 10 riders are from Switzerland and 2 out of 10 are from Austria, the ratio should always be 80% Swiss riders and 20% Austrians. Optional: Only riders from the same region/province as where your sponsor has its headquarters
2.2 As a Pro Continental Team or A Continental Team with significantly increased wage budget and a clear goal of promotion:
2.2.1 All riders must be from my sponsors country + up to three countries that are important markets for my sponsor. These markets should be the closest countries to my sponsors home country.
2.2.2 At least 50% of all riders must be from my sponsors home country
2.3 As a World Tour team:
2.3.1 Riders can be from all over the world
2.3.2 If you have riders from several countries, the country with the highest number of riders must be your sponsor's home country. I.e. if you have an Italian sponsor and you have 6 frenchmen and 7 germans in your squad, you need to have at least 8 Italians.
[NEW] 2.4 Squad Minimum Average & Individual Rider Age
2.4.1 Continental Team:
Squad Average Age: min. 22.3 or 19.1*
Youngest Individual Rider Age: min. 18 years old** (no 16-17 year olds allowed) *Edit 4 April: I think this depends on what kind of team you want to set up. If you want a continental team fighting for promotion, I think 23 should be the rule, but if you're setting up more of a talent team (like Rabobank or Color Code) the average should be lowered. I think Color Code has the lowest average age at 19.1 so I think that should be the minimum.
**Edit 4 April: If you start a talent team/development team, the oldest riders should be no older than 22 (as the oldest riders are at Rabobank)
2.4.2 Pro Continental Team:
Squad Average Age: min. 24.4
Youngest Individual Rider Age: 19
2.4.3 World Tour Team:
Squad Average Age: 26.6
Youngest Individual Rider Age: 20
[NEW]2.5 Limits on Number of Young Riders in Squad
2.5.1 Continental Team:
Max. number of 18-19 year old's: 3/none* *Edit 4 April: Again, I think it depends on what kind of team you want to set up. If you want a continental team fighting for promotion, I think 3 should be the rule, but if you're setting up more of a talent team (like Rabobank or Color Code) 18 and 19 year olds should make up a large portion of your squad. Therefore, I don't think there should be a limit, but the average age should not be lower than 19.1 (Rule 1.1)
2.5.2 Pro Continental Team:
Max. number of 19 year old's: 2
Total max. number of 19-21 year old's: 5
2.5.3 World Tour Team:
Max. number of 20/21 year old's: either 1/2 or 0/3
Total max. number of 20-23 year old's: 5
[NEW] 2.6 Squad Overturn
Squad Size
Overturn/Increase
10-13 Riders
2
14-17 Riders
3
18-24 Riders
4
25+ Riders
5
Turnover/Increase means that you can either replace that number of riders on expiring contracts with new riders, keep all your riders and increase your squad size by that number, or do both.
Update: Any rider who's retiring after the season can be replaced in addition to the turnover number. So 1 rider retiring will not bring the turnover down by 1. This rule comes into effect from Season 1 with original teams, but not until Season 2 and beyond for custom teams (so you can't create a team of 40 year olds and replace them all after one season )
3. Training Camps
I never use training camps as I believe they give your team a boost for upcoming races and therefore an unfair advantage (at least on normal difficulty)
4. Staff
4.1 Always have at least:
1x Doctor
1x Scout
1x Coach per 8 riders (in a 10-man squad you need 2 coaches)
(edited for clarification) I believe 4.1 is an actual UCI regulation for WT and Pro Cont. teams but I like to use it for Continental teams as well.
4.2
- The Doctor must be hired before your team's first race of the season
- The Scout must be hired on the same day as Close Monitoring confirmation at the latest (edited 3 april)
- Coaches must be hired before confirming rider objectives.
First of all it forces me to use staff actively in my careers and secondly it limits how many riders I can pay with the 1 January money. A rider on minimum wage only costs €30K a year so if you start with €300K in cash, you could theoretically have 10 extra riders that aren't being covered by the Monthly Contribution. (currently removed based on Ripley's comment below)
5. Negotiation of Sponsor Objectives:
I always try to limit my negotiation of objectives as much as possible and my rule is that my negotiations cannot increase or decrease the monthly contribution by more than €1,000 per month.
6. Race Days per Rider
6.1 World Tour and Pro Continental Teams: Max. 85 days (which I believe is an actual UCI regulation)
6.2 Continental Teams: Max. 60 days
6.3 Riders aged 17 and 18: Max. 30-35 days
3D RACING:
The goal here is to ONLY be the Sports Director during races and not micromanage any riders at any point (with a couple of exceptions). Not only do I find it more realistic, but it's much more challenging as well. You have to actively use tactics before and during the race, you won't get a rider in the breakaway on every stage, you won't have a sprint train on every stage and it's much harder to protect any jersey's you may hold. Yes, it can be very frustrating at times when your riders aren't doing what you want them to, but that's part of the challenge of being the sports director and not in the peloton
7.EVERY rider on Automatic from start to finish
7.1 Exception: I'm allowed to control when a rider fetches water bottles to avoid scenarios where a rider tries to fetch water bottles with less than 15-20 kms left or if I see its a good time for it (i.e. if a rider has a crash and is at the back of the peloton, I might tell him to grab some bottles before he catches up with his teammates).
7.2 Exception: ITT's and TTT's where you can't set a rider to Automatic. [Update] From recent testing I've landed on that you can't set riders or teams to automatic during time trials. If you do nothing, they're on a default setting which never changes no matter what the stage looks like (4 kms or 44 kms, flat or hilly etc). So, for now, I'll continue to play these manually but I'll try to limit myself to setting an intensity level at the start and not touching it again for the rest of the time trial which means I probably have to use my helpers to figure out the right intensity level and then hope it works out for my TT specialists. At least that'll give me a small handicap.
8. National Championships;
8.1 NC's where the peloton is only 5-15 riders big and/or the big favorites don't have at least 3-4 teammates helping them:
- I'm not allowed to have a rider in the breakaway (can't use the 'Attack'/'Follow Attack' buttons)
- If no team is making an effort to reel in the breakaway, my team has to do it (even if I have to do it manually - just switch back to automatic as soon as the breakaway is reeled in).
8.2 In NC's with large pelotons and the top 2-3 favorites all have 3-4 helpers with them, the 2.1 rule does not apply and I treat it as a normal race (Rule 1)
9. World Championships
9.1 I'm forced by the game to make the team selection but I have to treat the selection as I would have done if I was in fact the leader of the National Team and not the sports director of my own team. In other words, my selection must be as unbiased and objective as possible and not select my own team's riders over better riders from other teams. For stories on PCMDaily I might post my selection ahead of time so that readers can be the judge of whether I've been objective or not.
9.2 If I decide to play the WC in 3D I'll do my best to win it. If I have a rider from my own team in the NC team, I have to be unbiased in my tactical choices as well (not making him the captain over a much better rider etc).
10. Rare cases where the game messes up in an unrealistic way
In rare cases you'll have a stage (usually mountain stages) where it looks like the entire peloton just stops chasing and the breakaway in front wins the stage by 10-15 minutes, which can completely ruin an entire stage race. This is, I assume, a broken game mechanic as I can't imagine this is how Cyanide wanted it work and a stage like that is also highly unrealistic.
So, to stop having stage races ruined by a broken game mechanic, I'm allowed to quit and restart the race if this occurs.
Two important things to note here though:
1. It has to clearly be a broken game mechanic for me to restart. That means that
1) I have to check who is in the breakaway and where they are in the standings (sometimes breakaways can win by a lot because they're 20-30 minutes behind in the GC) and
2) it must be a rider in front who could take the GC jersey and a peloton who's not working at all. I can't restart if my team isn't strong enough or if the breakaway wins by 1-3 minutes, which could happen.
2. I have to restart a stage if this occurs even if its my own rider in the breakaway. It's unrealistic and game-breaking either way so I can't make my own rider an exception to the rule just because I can win
11. In general: Never exploit poor/broken game mechanics
In other words, never cheat.
------- Some thoughts on Automatic mode:
I've done some testing over the last month or so with this setup (every rider in Automatic mode from start to finish) and my experiences with it in PCM 2015 has been so good that I've started a career (and a story) using it. Here are some of the things I've tested and found out so far, but since I'm using this setup now, I'm constantly testing it further.
1. Sprint trains: I'm not sure exactly how the game calculates which teams should set up a sprint train, but I had a sprint train set up by my 1 star continental test team (not the one I'm currently playing with) in a 2.2 race so it is definitely possible on Automatic mode.
2. Fetching Bottles; I haven't had the problem with my captain going to fetch water bottles in a long time which makes me believe that problem is very small. In fact, in my current 1 star continental team I rarely ever have to click on the bottle icon because my riders usually figure it out themselves. The only time I do click on the bottle icon is due to tactical considerations as mentioned in the house rules.
3. Protecting the polkadot jersey (Mountain classification); this has been an issue and a major source of frustration while testing and I might have to come up with an additional rule in the future. The problem is that your rider in the polkadot jersey doesn't seem to know and doesn't seem to have any interest in protecting it. So, if a challenger for the polkadot jersey attacks and goes in the breakaway, my rider never seems to counter attack or even care that he's about to lose the jersey. I need to test some more though to figure out how big of a problem this is and what kind of rule I need.
Update: According to Ripley the AI doesn't protect jersey's either, so I won't make any rules here as that would give me an unfair advantage. If your rider is wearing the polkadot jersey, he'll be at the front of the peloton at the start so he'll at least have a decent chance of getting in the breakaway just using tactics and automatic mode
Other tips:
4. Getting a rider in a breakaway:
- Set the rider as helper and choose either 'Follow Attacks' - in which case your rider might get away with the other attackers, reel in the attackers so you'll have another chance to attack or may just sit there doing nothing - or 'Attack', in which case your rider might attack right from the start (as helper) or he might wait until the midway point (helper/free rider).
- What I usually do is pause the race before the riders start pedaling and set whoever I have at/towards the front of the peloton as helpers with 'Follow Attack'/'Attack'.
- If you set a helper who's in the middle or at the back of the peloton to 'Follow Attack'/'Attack', he usually won't do anything because he can't get through the crowd.
- I'm also curious if the 'Follow Attacks' command relieves helpers of their other duties. I had a race where one of the helpers immediately switched from protecting the captain to staying in the peloton (far behind the captain btw) when I switched from 'Do not attack' to 'Follow attacks'. But I haven't been able to replicate it so it might have been just a weird one time thing.
I also recommend checking out @TiemenD's 'Automatic mode - tips, tricks & sharing experience' thread for more tips but if its okay with everyone we'll gather all discussions on house rules and game setup here.
Edited by Ollie23 on 09-04-2017 20:51
You always struck me as a planner and now you've outdone yourself! Here's a first feedback:
- Reconsider the title. a) The Big House is a slang term for prison and b) you are talking about your very own setup while house rules sort of implies setting rules for the whole PCM community.
- 4.1 (actually 4.3): Probably unnecessary to mention. You can't actually hire further riders once the season starts, I believe.
- However, you can run into the opposite problem as the career progresses and your budget grows significantly (next season). The limit on how much you can spend is based on the current, not the future budget. I feel it's ok to "cheat" (by increasing the current wage of a rider or two with an editor) to make up for it. On the other hand, without the trick the difficulty increases further, though it is a bit frustrating.
- 7.2: Automatic is actually the default setting for ITTs (also TTTs, I think, not sure, haven't played one in years).
- Polkadot jersey protection in 3D mode: Probably, if you want to remain on equal footing with the AI teams, you'll just have to ignore it. I don't see the AI teams protecting the jersey.
A general point: You highlight "still fun to play", but it could be argued that using automatic mode - and thus participating less/not at all in 3D mode - takes away a lot of fun. Reading your post does certainly makes me want to play on automatic again, something I've kept in the back of my mind anyway. But I have to admit the last/only time I played on automatic I gave up after a couple of seasons, the itch was too great to get involved again, not because I wanted better results, but just to be doing something.
Ripley wrote:
You always struck me as a planner and now you've outdone yourself! Here's a first feedback:
- Reconsider the title. a) The Big House is a slang term for prison and b) you are talking about your very own setup while house rules sort of implies setting rules for the whole PCM community.
Yeah, the title was always something I was going to change but I ran out of time yesterday and completely forgot about it Any good title suggestions?
I wanted to post my current setup and house rules, but I don't want this thread to be limited to that. I agree that the term House rules can easily be understood as general rules for the entire community and that's not my intention, so I'll change that.
Ripley wrote:
- 4.1 (actually 4.3): Probably unnecessary to mention. You can't actually hire further riders once the season starts, I believe.
- However, you can run into the opposite problem as the career progresses and your budget grows significantly (next season). The limit on how much you can spend is based on the current, not the future budget. I feel it's ok to "cheat" (by increasing the current wage of a rider or two with an editor) to make up for it. On the other hand, without the trick the difficulty increases further, though it is a bit frustrating.
As I wrote in the first post, explaining things properly is a weakness of mine
No, you can't hire riders at the start of the season so this was mainly aimed at season 2 and beyond, but I was not aware of the game mechanics you mention here. My thinking here in terms of realism and challenge was to try to limit the number of riders and their salaries to the wage budget set by your sponsor(s) and not spend the 1 January cash injection on rider salaries at all.
But I was not aware of the game mechanics you mention which, if I understand you correctly, means that when you're negotiating contracts with riders in the transfer period, you're limited to signing riders within your current budget without the game taking into consideration any increase in budget next season? In PCM 2014 I was able to sign 2 new riders in season 1, bringing my total up to 12 riders for season 2, despite still being on the minimum wage budget. Has this been changed in PCM 2015?
Of course, if the game stops you from signing riders for next season beyond your current wage budget, this rule is obsolete.
Ripley wrote:
- 7.2: Automatic is actually the default setting for ITTs (also TTTs, I think, not sure, haven't played one in years).
So, if I watch the race in 3D but don't touch anything, they'll race as if they're on Automatic? Will they increase/decrease effort depending on the stage as well?
Ripley wrote:
- Polkadot jersey protection in 3D mode: Probably, if you want to remain on equal footing with the AI teams, you'll just have to ignore it. I don't see the AI teams protecting the jersey.
Is this a problem with all jersey's or just the polkadot?
Your rider in the polkadot will start at the front of the peloton so you'll at least have a decent chance of getting that rider in a breakaway. If the AI doesn't protect the polkadot either, then I'll leave it on Automatic and won't make any extra rules. Thanks for the info!
Ripley wrote:
A general point: You highlight "still fun to play", but it could be argued that using automatic mode - and thus participating less/not at all in 3D mode - takes away a lot of fun. Reading your post does certainly makes me want to play on automatic again, something I've kept in the back of my mind anyway. But I have to admit the last/only time I played on automatic I gave up after a couple of seasons, the itch was too great to get involved again, not because I wanted better results, but just to be doing something.
I wrote that in regards to chasing realism. I know from my own experience that I can get so caught up in trying to make a game as realistic as possible that it becomes more work than fun. So, if I notice that certain rules or guidelines I use for the sake of realism are taking the fun out of it, I'll drop them.
As to your comment I think this depends a lot on how you like to play the game. If the fun in the game for you is to participate and play the races, then I understand just sitting back and watching race after race quickly becomes boring. But if you prefer only the management aspect of the game and not having any control over your riders other than the tactics screen, automatic mode increases the fun instead of taking it away, as that's where the fun is
I'm not making the argument though that playing on full automatic increases realism - for that the tactics screen and options are too limited. But I would argue it makes the game much more challenging.
Transfer budget: I talked about this several times, possibly even in your story thread. You are presented with two numbers when trying to (re-)sign riders, "authorised wage bill" and "budget allocated for next season". The latter is what should matter, but you can only spend what is authorised and that depends on your current salaries (but at least it is more than your current salaries).
- Automatic ITT: Just try it with a single race. Every rider uses a different approach/effort, some run out of energy long before the finish line, others cross the line with energy to spare. Maybe just a randon element thrown in by the developer?
- Jersey protection: I fear the AI isn't all that clever. If a rider reaches the last 2 km before a summit and there are still points available, he'll go for it. Just like sprinters go for intermediate sprints. You'd have to check automatic mode and your settings if ticking the box "sprint for climber's jersey" even makes a difference. But an AI rider who has the jersey and is leading by, say, 20 points, won't know if the next stage offers 3 points or 80 points, while the player is well aware of that.
- Automatic in general: I was just pointing out the obvious, I think. Definitely it increases the challenge and I'm all for that and looking at the way I play it definitely increases realism as well (though I keep telling myself "I've seen Movistar attacking with the whole team early in a stage". But you become less involved, you more or less just watch rather than play, and some players will find that unacceptable, even if they crave for a challenge and realism.
Not me, necessarily, though before PCM 14 there was no automatic mode, I had to play (and win). To quote an infamous politician: "We're gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning and you'll say please, please, it's too much winning, we can't take it anymore." That's how readers of my stories feel.
Transfer budget: I talked about this several times, possibly even in your story thread. You are presented with two numbers when trying to (re-)sign riders, "authorised wage bill" and "budget allocated for next season". The latter is what should matter, but you can only spend what is authorised and that depends on your current salaries (but at least it is more than your current salaries).
I was looking all over the forum for our discussion about this earlier. I thought it was in my story thread as well, but could not find it anywhere before I posted. Now I've finally found it! It was in its own thread and slightly hidden But your explanation of the contract screen during the transfer period is really good so I'm wondering if it would be ok if I copy your answer over to this thread? Either that or you could copy it over yourself (or rewrite it) and include your workaround for it? I think it's a really handy guide to have easily accessible
Ripley wrote:
- Automatic in general: I was just pointing out the obvious, I think. Definitely it increases the challenge and I'm all for that and looking at the way I play it definitely increases realism as well (though I keep telling myself "I've seen Movistar attacking with the whole team early in a stage". But you become less involved, you more or less just watch rather than play, and some players will find that unacceptable, even if they crave for a challenge and realism.
Yeah, I agree with you on that. For a manager game its really light on the tactics so there's very little variation in what you can do and there are a lot of options missing (telling your team where to sit in the peloton, when to attack, how to set up a sprint train etc). I'm probably in the minority when it comes to how I play
Ollie23 wrote:
I'm wondering if it would be ok if I copy your answer over to this thread? Either that or you could copy it over yourself (or rewrite it) and include your workaround for it? I think it's a really handy guide to have easily accessible
Of course you can, but I'd recommend against it. Don't get too bogged down with tiny details. If you want to write an interesting story rather than play and beat a video game, you'll have to restrain yourself (without making it obvious, breaking the illusion).
For example, even with your current rules, you'll quickly have a team with AVG 69+, because a rider with AVG 69 doesn't cost more than one with AVG 60 and if you have the choice between two riders with AVG 69 and one is 34 and the other 22 years old, you'll pick the 22 year old who can still improve. You could add to your rules something like "a new rider can only have an AVG +1 more than the rider he is replacing" and write in your story "For this transfer I refer to rule 2.4.7". But it's probably better to write "We decided to hire an older rider hoping his experience rubs off on the young guys." Even though that's total BS knowing the game mechanics of PCM.
Ripley wrote:
Of course you can, but I'd recommend against it. Don't get too bogged down with tiny details. If you want to write an interesting story rather than play and beat a video game, you'll have to restrain yourself (without making it obvious, breaking the illusion).
For example, even with your current rules, you'll quickly have a team with AVG 69+, because a rider with AVG 69 doesn't cost more than one with AVG 60 and if you have the choice between two riders with AVG 69 and one is 34 and the other 22 years old, you'll pick the 22 year old who can still improve. You could add to your rules something like "a new rider can only have an AVG +1 more than the rider he is replacing" and write in your story "For this transfer I refer to rule 2.4.7". But it's probably better to write "We decided to hire an older rider hoping his experience rubs off on the young guys." Even though that's total BS knowing the game mechanics of PCM.
I've realized through my own testing and heard from you and others on this forum that its very easy to build a very strong team in a few years which, in my own opinion and my own games, becomes boring very quickly and I end up scrapping it and starting over. I want to have a more realistic progression of the game, a more realistic squad at all times and so on. So, it might seem like I have a ton of rules to keep track of and a lot of details to micromanage, but I don't have that experience when I play the game at all so I don't mind having some clear rules to guide my decisions and help keep the game realistic and challenging.
Anyway, you're absolutely right about it being easy to build an overpowered team even with the current set of rules. I realized that yesterday evening while testing some more in my test career with Team Joker. Around June the sponsor was very happy with our results so far and I wanted to expand the 11 man roster for season 2 to 15 or 16 riders to deal with the schedule (which was difficult with only 11). Two riders in my team were on expiring contracts (1 retiring) so I ended up signing 7 new riders. I did have to raise my offer to €3,5K for two riders and £3K for 1, but that gives me a team next year with 4 riders at 70, 6 at 69, 2 at 68, 1 at 67, 2 at 66 and 1 at 65. In other words, the strongest team in the division by far.
So, I did some research today and came up with some suggestions for some additional rules that should help keep my squad more realistic at all times.
Data on AGE in Continental, Pro Continental and World Tour teams:
Database: PCMDaily 2.0
Spoiler
1. Continental Teams - 1 star teams only*
Average Age: 23.7
Youngest Squad: 21.9 (followed by 22.4, 22.6, 23.0 and 23.7)
Oldest Squad: 25.1 (followed by 25.1, 24.5, 24.3, 24.1 and 24.0)
Youngest rider: 18 years old
Average number of teen riders per squad: 1.7 *I excluded SEG (academy team), Rabobank (Development team) and Color Code (talent team with only riders between 18 and 22)
2. Pro Continental Teams - 1.5-2.5 star teams only
Average Age: 26.3
Youngest Squad: 24.1 (followed by 24.3, 24.8)
Oldest Squad: 29.0 (followed by 28.4, 26.9, 26.5, 25.8)
Youngest Rider: 18 (but only 5 18 year olds in the entire division, and three of them were on the same team)
3. World Tour Teams - All
Average Age: 27.7
Youngest Squad: 26.2 (followed by 26.8, 26.9, 27.0)
Oldest Squad: 29.4
Youngest Rider: 20
Based on the data behind the spoiler and my experiences with Team Joker, I came up with 2 rules on age and 1 rule on squad turnover. Let me know what you think
1. Squad Minimum Average & Individual Rider Age
1.1 Continental Team:
Squad Average Age: min. 22.3 or 19.1*
Youngest Individual Rider Age: min. 18 years old** (no 16-17 year olds allowed) *Edit 4 April: I think this depends on what kind of team you want to set up. If you want a continental team fighting for promotion, I think 23 should be the rule, but if you're setting up more of a talent team (like Rabobank or Color Code) the average should be lowered. I think Color Code has the lowest average age at 19.1 so I think that should be the minimum.
**Edit 4 April: If you start a talent team/development team, the oldest riders should be no older than 22 (as the oldest riders are at Rabobank)
1.2 Pro Continental Team:
Squad Average Age: min. 24.4
Youngest Individual Rider Age: 19
1.3 World Tour Team:
Squad Average Age: 26.6
Youngest Individual Rider Age: 20
2. Limits on Number of Young Riders in Squad
2.1 Continental Team:
Max. number of 18-19 year old's: 3/none* *Edit 4 April: Again, I think it depends on what kind of team you want to set up. If you want a continental team fighting for promotion, I think 3 should be the rule, but if you're setting up more of a talent team (like Rabobank or Color Code) 18 and 19 year olds should make up a large portion of your squad. Therefore, I don't think there should be a limit, but the average age should not be lower than 19.1 (Rule 1.1)
2.2 Pro Continental Team:
Max. number of 19 year old's: 2
Total max. number of 19-21 year old's: 5
2.3 World Tour Team:
Max. number of 20/21 year old's: either 1/2 or 0/3
Total max. number of 20-23 year old's: 5
Why?
First of all, to make it more difficult to assemble a squad of only young, super talented riders. There's basically an age limit on how young your riders can be and the youngest allowed age group is limited to only 2 or 3. This ensures that you can't sign all the young talented riders and they should (hopefully) spread more evenly across teams.
Secondly, you can't have a team of nothing but youngsters but you have to rely on older, more experienced riders as well. It means you can't always let the 30 year old leave and sign a 19 year old instead. The veterans have much more value to the team, as they should have in my opinion.
Thirdly, by increasing the minimum average age based on division, it should hopefully reflect how the 28+ year olds are crucial to the World Tour Teams, while in the Continental teams they can get away with being a lot younger. The weakness in the game, as you point out Ripley, is that a 69 OVR 17 year old is just as important/good as a 69 OVR 30 year old since the experience of the latter has no effect in the game. This rule should ensure that the veterans have a much more important role. As a World Tour team you might have to fight for that 30 year old instead of signing the 22 year old
3. Squad Overturn Why?
Here the goal is to slow down progression by limiting the amount of riders than can be replaced per season and how quickly you can increase your squad size. This is to prevent what I did with Team Joker but also to make the road to the World Tour a bit longer.
Squad Size
Overturn/Increase
10-13 Riders
2
14-17 Riders
3
18-24 Riders
4
25+ Riders
5
Turnover/Increase means that you can either replace that number of riders on expiring contracts with new riders, keep all your riders and increase your squad size by that number, or do both.
Update: Any rider who's retiring after the season can be replaced in addition to the turnover number. So 1 rider retiring will not bring the turnover down by 1. This rule comes into effect from Season 1 with original teams, but not until Season 2 and beyond for custom teams (so you can't create a team of 40 year olds and replace them all after one season )
I.e. If I have a squad of 10 riders and 5 are on expiring contracts I have the following options:
1) resign 3 riders and replace the other 2 with new riders
2) resign all 5 riders and not sign any new riders
3) resign all 5 riders + 2 new riders to increase my squad size to 12
4) resign 3 riders + 4 new riders to increase my squad size to 12
This means that you can't just let 8 riders in the 62-66 OVR range go in one season and replace them and you can't increase your squad size from 10 to 18 in one year. You might even be forced to resign a 64 OVR. And with the rule on minimum average age he might be 30 years old!
With this rule, here is the fastest possible progression of your squad size
Season 1: 10 Riders
Season 2: 12
Season 3: 14
Season 4: 17
Season 5: 20
Season 6: 24
Season 7: 28
Season 8: 30
Chances are the road to the World Tour will be a lot longer now as both increasing squad size and improving the strength of your squad should be a lot more difficult.
But please keep in mind that this is a first draft or rules that haven't been tested yet, so things may change based on my own testing or your comments/feedback.
Edited by Ollie23 on 04-04-2017 21:20
I haven't considered all your new rules about squad and transfers, but I offer the idea which I've finally stuck to in my current career (not that it helped much...), don't sign U23 riders (directly from the U23, which you can do on the 25th of July) or at least if you do, don't reload if they are useless. Reason being, no matter how good they are, they take a 3 year contract at the minimum wage. I've found riders up to AVG 75. Many of these riders won't be picked up and become free riders and a year later you can hire them from the normal list (on the 21st of June) and then they'll ask for a realistic wage.
As for NCs: While CQ points still count (for promotion to Conti and later WT level) I decided this time to simply simulate them all. Your restrictions sound fine, too, but my idea is simpler.
Ripley wrote:
I haven't considered all your new rules about squad and transfers, but I offer the idea which I've finally stuck to in my current career (not that it helped much...), don't sign U23 riders (directly from the U23, which you can do on the 25th of July) or at least if you do, don't reload if they are useless. Reason being, no matter how good they are, they take a 3 year contract at the minimum wage. I've found riders up to AVG 75. Many of these riders won't be picked up and become free riders and a year later you can hire them from the normal list (on the 21st of June) and then they'll ask for a realistic wage.
I'm fairly sure you can change this down to a 1 year contract if you are worried about the wage being unrealistic, you could just sign them for 1 year at first then resign them longer term on a more appropriate wage after that first season. I cant remember if that was on 14 or 15 that I was able to do it though but you definitely could offer a 1 year contract to under 23 riders on one of the 2.
sammyt93 wrote:
I'm fairly sure you can change this down to a 1 year contract if you are worried about the wage being unrealistic...
Right again, Sammy. The U23 riders always offer 3 year contracts but you can reduce that. Still, for the sake of Ollie's challenge, it's a slight problem. You can end up with a rider up to AVG 75 earning only 2.5k, while you should be paying him much more.
Ripley wrote:
I haven't considered all your new rules about squad and transfers, but I offer the idea which I've finally stuck to in my current career (not that it helped much...), don't sign U23 riders (directly from the U23, which you can do on the 25th of July) or at least if you do, don't reload if they are useless. Reason being, no matter how good they are, they take a 3 year contract at the minimum wage. I've found riders up to AVG 75. Many of these riders won't be picked up and become free riders and a year later you can hire them from the normal list (on the 21st of June) and then they'll ask for a realistic wage.
That's a good shout! Basically, only sign riders you know the OVR of? I'm not even sure where you sign U23 riders from - don't think I ever have - but if you can get a 75 OVR for 3 years at minimum wage then yeah, that's something to stay away from. Great idea!
Ripley wrote:
As for NCs: While CQ points still count (for promotion to Conti and later WT level) I decided this time to simply simulate them all. Your restrictions sound fine, too, but my idea is simpler.
Yeah, I might end up just simulating them myself as well, but I wanted to come up with some guidelines for those who like to play them (realistically). But I definitely don't want to exploit NC's for easy CQ points so thanks for the heads up on that one
I've done some more testing with full automatic and have found a need for an additional guideline. The problem I'm having is my rider in a breakaway not following the instructions in the tactics screen, specifically the two buttons telling your rider whether you want him to sprint for points/mountain points. Maybe I've completely missed what those two buttons are for; they seemed rather self-explanatory but after learning from Ripley that not even the rules stated in the game are particularly accurate, I'm not assuming anything
I've had riders in the breakaway who sprint with both buttons checked and who sprint with both buttons unchecked, and I've had riders not sprint with both buttons checked and not sprint with both buttons unchecked. Basically, they don't seem to matter or there are other mechanics at work that I don't know about.
Guideline: If I see that the rider is not following my instruction (box unchecked/checked), I can take control of him until after the sprint.
I try to wait as long as possible before taking control of him though as I want to make absolutely sure he's ignoring instructions so I sometimes end up not winning the sprints, which is fine. I don't want to exploit this guideline to win every sprint so I might narrow this guideline down a bit more to something like I'm only allowed to take control if he's not following instructions and within the last 500 meters of the sprint. But I have to test some more before doing so.
I feel like this is different from say having your riders in the peloton ignoring the "Attack/Follow attack" command as I think there are a lot of other factors at play (not being at the front of the peloton, having stronger teams around you etc). Playing on automatic can be frustrating at times but having buttons that seemingly don't even work is just unnecessary frustration that I think it's fine to avoid. You still have to rely on the automatic mode and the tactics to actually get the rider in the breakaway so it's not a guideline that means you are going to win every sprint from now on.
I tried playing the NC road race in Norway (a hilly stage btw) with my rules and it failed miserably. Twice. I found out I had to set my team at the front as soon as the breakaway went so we could control the gap and keep it under 9 hours, which wears out your riders during the race. Then, when we tried to close the gap, which was only around 2 minutes, it was almost impossible to gain any time on the trio in front without setting a very high pace, which of course made all my riders exhausted and unable to prevent other attacks or even catch the breakaway properly. Some riders who couldn't deal with the combination of high pace and hills started to drop off the back of the peloton as well, so the entire race just became one big mess and I quit halfway through both attempts.
So, yeah, simulation seems to be the way to go
Anyway, I wanted to ask you @Ripley if you've ever tried playing a career with no scouting and random potentials (and, obviously, without checking potentials in an editor)? Here's my thinking:
You'll know the potentials of your riders at the start of the career, which is fine as it's ok to have a little bit of help figuring out who to build your team around, but if you get rid of your scout(s) and don't hire any more of them you shouldn't be able to see any other potentials in the game, right?
I do see some positives in terms of challenge and realism playing without any potentials, but let me say that I haven't tested it out yet so I'm not making any guidelines or anything yet.
First of all I've never really liked that you can see a rider's potential because it dictates too much which riders you sign and who you get rid of. It's easy to build a squad of nothing but 4-8 potential riders and in a couple of years you'll have a fantastic team. With no scouts and no potentials you can still get an idea of which riders have a high potential as you can pay attention to their improvements or lack thereof.
Secondly, will I sign the 18 year old 65 OVR rider instead of the 68 OVR 28-year old who can help me right away? If I know the 18-year old's potential is 5-8 or 4-7 then yes, probably. And it's safe to sign him to a three year deal as well. But if I don't know his potential, it's a gamble as he's not good enough to help us out right away and he might not improve at all during the season. So, it's more likely that I'll sign the rider who can help me out right away, which I think is realistic. Same goes for riders in my squad with expiring contracts. If they're not great but still useful team members it's more likely that I'll resign them rather than gamble on someone else I don't know the potential of.
This doesn't mean I'll never sign 18-19 year olds. On the contrary, I think I'll always keep 1-2 spots in my team for young riders who could turn out to be huge talents. But to be on the safe side, I'll probably only sign them to a 1 year deal, maybe 2 if their OVR is high, so that I can get rid of them if they don't improve at all in a season (which I would assume means a low potential). And if they do improve greatly in one season, which indicates a good potential, I can resign them but 1) I won't know if the rider has hit his peak already or if he can improve even more so it will still be either a gamble or signing him for his current abilities to help the team, and 2) it's not guaranteed that I can keep hold of him if he improves greatly and there's a fight for his signature, so it'll be much more difficult to hold on to all the young talented riders.
Also, if you sign a young rider who you know have a 5-8 potential you'll have an expectation of him turning into a great rider so when he does, that's just meeting expectations. But if you have no idea how good a young rider can become but you decide to gamble on him and he turns out to be really great, imagine how satisfying that will be!
Yeah, I might end up just simulating them myself as well, but I wanted to come up with some guidelines for those who like to play them (realistically). But I definitely don't want to exploit NC's for easy CQ points so thanks for the heads up on that one
You can remove the points that NC awards to CQ Ranking in the editor.
In STA_bonus_superprestige, you only have to delete the National Championship rows, and NC won't give you any CQ point, and you can be free to play them
)
Any good title suggestions? 
. But you become less involved, you more or less just watch rather than play, and some players will find that unacceptable, even if they crave for a challenge and realism. 
