jph27 wrote:
Started up my first PCM15 career this week, with a Balkan focused created team. 2 riders each from Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Turkey - main stars being Polanc, Kump and Grosu - all between 66 and 72 in average. So far up to the end of May and on course for promotion to the PCT, despite competing mainly in Southern and Eastern European races. Budget keeps dropping by an alarming amount each month though, which I need to keep an eye on
jph27 wrote:
Started up my first PCM15 career this week, with a Balkan focused created team. 2 riders each from Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and Turkey - main stars being Polanc, Kump and Grosu - all between 66 and 72 in average. So far up to the end of May and on course for promotion to the PCT, despite competing mainly in Southern and Eastern European races. Budget keeps dropping by an alarming amount each month though, which I need to keep an eye on
Any update on this?
Been busy the last couple of weeks so not had much chance to advance on, appeared to have run out of budget though when I last played. Will probably edit the save to get back out of the red once I start up again, and then a move up to the PCT next season - signed Kiserlovski to try and increase our point scoring potential, and Grosu and Polanc are developing nicely.
Returned recently to PCM and as I've some problems converting the 2016 DB into PCM13, I've started a save on this one. Chosed to start with Cannondale.
I've put some rules. The schedule is similar to real life, we've to race in each country from where the sponsors come from, riders cannot do magic trips (like racing on France and the next day on the USA), etc. Just to make it more funny.
Talansky have a similar schedule to real life. He'll peak to Califórnia, ride tour de Suisse and then Vuelta. Uran will be the leader for Giro and late season races (he'll ride the Vuelta in search of form and to help Talansky). Pierre Roland will have a busy schedule in the first part of the season (PN, Catalunya and Basque) and then highest peak for the TDF. Other important riders will be Simon Clarke, Moreno Moser and Slagter (he won't take part on any GT and will have a free role throughout the season). Goals are to be at least top10 and a stage victory on the 3 GT.
Seems like a good team. Has anyone played with them? How did it went?
Ton1Mart1n wrote:
Seems like a good team. Great fun because you're always the underdog.
Never tried Cannondale but Lampre, which is also exicting
Absolutely. One of the reasons to choose them was that. Running with less pressure should give much more fun and let's see where this goes.
Just started the season at Tour de San Luis where we'll try to be as solid as possible with Craddock and Formolo. If I can get a top 10 I'll be happy. I'll try to win a stage as well.
Also, at the same time, at Down Under Simon Clarke will run for the GC. Top 10 is a minimum for the sponsors but I expect to better that.
Let's see where this goes!
I started a career with the Continental team Team Joker. I've just completed season 1 and we were promoted to Pro Continental and things look a bit weird...
First of all my sponsor has only given us 4 objectives for this season, and they're all rated 1 or 0,5 star. Secondly, only 10 races were scheduled for the entire season, among which only 1 in the first 3 months. I asked for an invitation for every race I could, but we were only invited to 7-8 of them (I don't expect to be invited to any World Tour races).
Is this normal or does this sound buggy? Are you less likely to be invited to races if you apply for all of them at the same time?
I'm not quite sure where to go from here as we don't really have any goals/objectives this season and it doesn't look like we'll race a lot... Any help is appreciated!
Tamijo wrote:
I dont think it matter with the goals, as long as you are not playing protur every good result counts, and you still got a few goals to focus on.
But it seems crazy that you only got 17 races unless your squad is very small.
I only had 11 riders in the Continental division, but in season 2 we have 16. That's why it's a huge problem if we can't get into more races. It's not going to be a lot of race days for each rider...
Unless I'm invited to any world tour races, which seem highly unlikely, I've worked out that if I divide the number of race days equally on my 16 riders, each rider will get under 40 (+ NC's)... That number seems a bit small... Well, lots of holidaying then I guess!
Anyway, I'll continue on and see what happens. But I wanted to ask about something else as well
I thought I had understood the CQ points but apparently not. In the Continental division I would sometimes check the Results --> Rules --> Scale page to look up the race we were currently in or had just finished to work out how many points we earned on said race. It seemed very straight forward; You find the right category, let's say a 2.1 race, find the race in the list and check how many points you got for your overall finish in the different categories. I even understood how you earn points by wearing a specific jersey in stage races.
So, after our first race in PC, I did the same thing. We had just finished the Herald Sun Tour, which is a 2.1 race, with the following points earning achievements + CQ Rankings points;
General classification: 24th = 1 point
Mountain: 1st = 20 pts
Worn the Mountain classification jersey on at least 3 stages (we took it on stage 2 and wore it on stage 3-5) = 12 points per stage * 3 = 36
Now, my math sucks but as far as my calculator can figure out, that's a total of 57 points. But in the CQ rankings we only have 28.
So, my question is, are there different rules for Pro Conti teams? The only way I can arrive at 28 is if Pro Conti teams only get half the points Continental teams do in which case we didn't get any points for 24th, 10 for mountain jersey and 18 for wearing it on 3 stages.
Is this the case or are there any other rules I'm not aware of? And are there races where these rules don't apply?
The points table for the final results is correct, but not for mountains classification and wearing the jersey, the names are wrong. The 20, 10, 5, 3 is what the first 4 riders in each stage get. And 12, 7, 5, 3, 1 is what you get for the final mountain and sprint classification. And 6 points for every day you wear the leader's jersey and 2 points for wearing sprint or mountain.
So you got the 1 point for finishing 24th, you got 12 points for the mountain jersey and 2 points for every day the team wore the jersey. That's actually only 19 points. Maybe you were 3rd on one stage and 4th on another, that'd be 8 points. You can check all that by looking in your save game/database. STA_bonus_superprestige (or _CQ).
Ripley wrote:
The points table for the final results is correct, but not for mountains classification and wearing the jersey, the names are wrong. The 20, 10, 5, 3 is what the first 4 riders in each stage get. And 12, 7, 5, 3, 1 is what you get for the final mountain and sprint classification. And 6 points for every day you wear the leader's jersey and 2 points for wearing sprint or mountain.
So "Overall mountain standings" is actually the top 4 across the finish line on a single stage?
And "Yellow/KoM jersey wearer" is actually the final top 5 in sprint/KoM and not the overall GC at all?
Yeah, that's not confusing at all!
Ripley wrote:
So you got the 1 point for finishing 24th, you got 12 points for the mountain jersey and 2 points for every day the team wore the jersey. That's actually only 19 points. Maybe you were 3rd on one stage and 4th on another, that'd be 8 points. You can check all that by looking in your save game/database. STA_bonus_superprestige (or _CQ).
We got 8th on stage 4, but that's our only top 10 finish. Also finished 2nd overall on Points I just realized. My climber apparently picked up a lot of points while in breakaways
Thanks for clearing things up!
Btw, have you ever run into the previously mentioned problem of only getting 4 sponsor objectives in season 2 after being promoted from Pro Conti? I was wondering if it might have something to do with the sponsor not putting any objectives in the calendar that could interfere with WT races. Might also explain why they had only arranged 10 races for my 16 man squad...
You should apply for every WT race of the calendar. You never know where you can be invited to.
The problem for the low number of races might be that as your team is from Norway, the team is expected to ride only the Scandinavian races, which is something you should edit, putting a secondary country focus in the editor (in Teams).
Also you can add your team to any race you want in the editor in Team Races.
About the low number of sponsor objetives, i've never seen that before, but anyway you can add more sponsor objetives in Objetives
Aquarius97 wrote:
You should apply for every WT race of the calendar. You never know where you can be invited to.
The problem for the low number of races might be that as your team is from Norway, the team is expected to ride only the Scandinavian races, which is something you should edit, putting a secondary country focus in the editor (in Teams).
Also you can add your team to any race you want in the editor in Team Races.
About the low number of sponsor objetives, i've never seen that before, but anyway you can add more sponsor objetives in Objetives
I understand more and more that I really need to learn how to use an editor... Is there a simple guide somewhere for a complete newbie? I mean, I don't even know where to find/download the editor
Picked up Mollema, Monfort, Keukelaire, and some role riders for 2016 and only lost Van Asbroeck to Lotto Soudal.
Year 2, I was simulating some of the less important races, and noted that my sprinters don't ever get closer than 20th. I don't think the team is trying to win the race. Even races where my sprinter (like Hofland) is a favorite...He still finishes in the main field pack like 35th or so.
I understand more and more that I really need to learn how to use an editor... Is there a simple guide somewhere for a complete newbie? I mean, I don't even know where to find/download the editor
1. No, I haven't ever seen so few objectives, I find it a bit worrying, let's hope it's a one-off glitch.
2. Same goes for the few registered races, I've always found the game registers me for an appropiate number depending on my squad size.
Maybe it would be worth loading a weekly save from December and to go into the new season again, see if anything changes. If not, maybe use an editor to make small changes, like changing your country of origin, though I don't think that matters.
3. Editors: Personally, I use Lachi's Editor with my PCM 14. There's also the Fast Editor, you find both in the PCM 16 download area. You load your save game, database in fact (.cdb), into the editor. You find your current save in documents/PCM/users/name/database/solo/name (shortened for my convenience). After editing the file I recommend saving it under a new name, just in case.
When you load a save into the editor you have access to a ton of tables, in Fast Editor you see them all on the left, in Lachi's you select one from a drop-down menu. It's a bit daunting at first, though the labels are fairly self-explanatory.
For example, DYN_sponsor shows you all the sponsors and how long their contracts run, if you don't like teams being renamed all the time, simply give the original sponsors long contracts in gene_i_contract_end. That's why in my 8 Up career in 2027 all the other teams still have their original names.
Or, as Aquarius pointed out, for objectives you select the table DYN_objectif. I've never done it, so I don't know the value_f_dotation which I guess sets the number of stars, just copy a number from one of the other objectives and see what happens when you load the (new) save game.
Ripley wrote:
1. No, I haven't ever seen so few objectives, I find it a bit worrying, let's hope it's a one-off glitch.
2. Same goes for the few registered races, I've always found the game registers me for an appropiate number depending on my squad size.
Maybe it would be worth loading a weekly save from December and to go into the new season again, see if anything changes. If not, maybe use an editor to make small changes, like changing your country of origin, though I don't think that matters.
I started a new career with the same team, won promotion in season 1 again but put together a much more balanced team for season 2 (just in case that could influence these issues) and did some testing. I reloaded a weekly save from December to see the differences in number of objectives and the initial race calendar + after asking for invitations to every race available.
Short summary of my findings after 4 attempts:
Spoiler
Squad size: 15 riders
Objectives:
- Got between 11 and 13 objectives each attempt (no attempt with only 4 objectives. Yey!)
- At least 1 objective was the Norwegian NC ITT
- On the 4th attempt both the Norwegian and Danish NC ITT were objectives
1 January Race Schedule Races scheduled:
- With the sole exception of attempt 1, the only races scheduled by the sponsor were the objectives. The exception in attempt 1 was the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, which is a one-day race.
Race days numbers:
1. Total number of race days ranged from 35 (attempt 3) to 52 (attempt 1).
2. Race days per rider ranged from 16.1 (att 3) to 23.7 (att 1)
Races Added to Schedule by Invitations Added Races:
- We received between 11 (att 1) and 20 (att 3) invitations.
- We received invitations to basically exactly the same races each time (unless it was already an objective) with no noticeable variation.
# of Race Days Added:
- The invitations added between 68 (att 1) and 109 (att 3) race days to our calendar.
- This added between 30.7 (att 1) and 50.2 (att 3) race days per rider.
Total Numbers (1 January + Invitations)
- Attempt 1: 120 race days – 54,3 Race Days per Rider
- Attempt 2: 143 race days – 66,2 Race Days per Rider
- Attempt 3: 144 race days – 66,3 Race Days per Rider
- Attempt 4: 113 race days – 51,3 Race Days per Rider
Some Notes on the data:
- First of all, only having 4 objectives seems to be a one time glitch and not a consistent problem.
- Being a Pro Conti team you're not invited to any .2 races outside your own country. For a Norwegian team you can therefore only take part in two .2 races, one of them colliding with a Norwegian 2.HC race.
- The objectives were slightly different from attempt to attempt although at least 5-6 of them were always the same.
- As mentioned, the objectives are the only races scheduled by your sponsor (with 1 exception)
- Some of the races we were invited to collide with other races so the numbers listed under the spoiler are maximum numbers. In all attempts I would have to cut down due to multiple races scheduled on the same day.
- The objectives are the only races scheduled and (can) lead(s) to some ridiculous race calendars, often with 1-2 months with no racing between objectives.
- Among the invitations, we were consistently invited to the exact same races over and over again with very little variation, almost like its a very limited list of races you're allowed to be invited to and all other races are impossible to get in to.
- We were mainly invited to longer stage races, between 8 and 13 stages, which is good for the amount of race days they add, but also come with issues like schedules with multiple long stage races grouped together in a short period of time, often overlapping objectives; no racing (and therefore no rhythm) ahead of important objectives and long periods with no racing at all. I.e. Tour of Qinghai Lake (13 stages) is immediately followed by Vuelta a Portugal (11 stages) and both overlap sponsor objectives and therefore don't function as a warm up for objectives. Long stage races also creates difficulties trying to spread the race days evenly among your riders.
Solution?
I think the most obvious thing to do if you're stuck with the same scheduling issues is to load a weekly save from December and hope for a better calendar. I guess the next step would be to use an editor like you say, Ripley, but wouldn't it be very tempting or easy to make a calendar that's a bit too perfect?
Of course, you can just accept what you're given, which I'm going to try in my test career, but I can see this leading to a very unrealistic and boring schedule that is only going to give you headaches.
I loaded up a weekly save from June in season 1 and I'm going to build a team of just 12 riders (and still hopefully win promotion) and see how that affects schedule, objectives and planning.
At least those 4 objectives were a glitch you could get past. As for the races scheduled: I believe 16 is the magic number and thus 15 the worst. If you have (at least) 16 riders the game will schedule concurrent races, but not with fewer riders.
I loaded a weekly save from December from my current career, 2nd season, new in Conti Pro, but with 18 riders. On January 1st, I count 101 racing days excluding NCs/WC. Assuming 8 riders per race that's 45 race days for every rider.
Ripley wrote:
At least those 4 objectives were a glitch you could get past. As for the races scheduled: I believe 16 is the magic number and thus 15 the worst. If you have (at least) 16 riders the game will schedule concurrent races, but not with fewer riders.
I loaded a weekly save from December from my current career, 2nd season, new in Conti Pro, but with 18 riders. On January 1st, I count 101 racing days excluding NCs/WC. Assuming 8 riders per race that's 45 race days for every rider.
Ah okay. So if you win promotion you should either have a squad of 10-12 or 16? I'm gonna test that out as well as I believe I had 16 riders when I only got 4 objectives. Maybe that's what triggers the bug...
Edit: That was quickly done so I'll attach the results here instead of making a double post.
Found a weekly Team Joker save, signed 18 players for season 2 and went to January 1st three times (results were fairly consistent so no need for further attempts I think).
Total Race Days per Rider after Invites (18 riders / 16 riders):
Attempt 1: 42.3 / 47.6
Attempt 2: 51.6 / 58.1
Attempt 3: 57.5 / 64.7
- We got all 15 objectives in all three attempts
- In attempt 1 and 3 we only had 2 races scheduled that weren't objectives, but attempt 2 showed that it is possible to get more than that (8).
- The highest number of race days on January 1 was 92 (att 2) but attempt 1 and 3 were as low as 59 and 66. Maybe the influence of the team's nationality?
- Even though a lot of the objectives and the races we were invited to were the same from time to time, I think I saw a lot more variation than with the 15 man squad and we were invited/scheduled for a lot of races I never saw with just 15 riders. Almost like having that extra rider opened up a lot of new doors!
Thanks for the heads up, Ripley! Basically what I've learned is that if you're heading for promotion to Pro Conti either stay at 10 (maybe 12) strong riders or go to 16+ (although with just 10 or 12 it might be difficult to get enough points to stay in the division, especially without the ability to pick up points in .2 races).
Btw, is there another higher "magic number"?
Edited by Ollie23 on 13-04-2017 12:26
