- C2HC: there HAS to be a change for C2HC - please no unvoluntary races for CT teams
- Crashes: Stay where we are. That a 1.6 mio wage rider may crash in his most valuable race (GC) may happen. If it's not worth the risk, plan him differently. Or get somebody else. That is something that has to be calculated into every managers eyes. You have to deal with being fear of crashes, that is an element of management we should keep!
- Team size: I'd like to increase them, but only if Race Days for teams are also increased proportionally. Otherwise the system leaves the doors open for abuse (stacking talents, go back down a level, then dominate - somehow the Grieg tactic [though they were kind of forced], also like we've seen Lierse, P-A & Euskaltel in previous seasons - just in more extreme)
- Stagiares: It's your choice whether you go for national boundaries or best riders available. Either you commit yourself to nationality by developing those riders, or you just don't. Buying XP enhances even more of that power play, cause there is no need to develop the home riders in your "main team" then.
- Stagiares min wage: Lowering the min wage only makes sense if you don't make them count into the team roster numbers. Otherwise room for abuse is too wide open.
- Closing the division gaps: No. I'd open the gaps even further for a more healthy game environment. That would go hand in hand with...
- Removing Over-Cap Renewals: Make the cap a hard cap for renewals, so that relegating teams have a more difficult job and we have a more dynamic exchange.
- Minimum Fee: Unrealistic, so I generally don't like it. But with knowing it before now it doesn't do any harm. I would open the space for no-fee trades though in a manner that it is made possible under two preconditions a. only in the second week of transfers
b. the team that takes the rider in has to write an explanatory message to an admin, where it convincingly explains why the trade is good for that team
- + / - idea: a no-go for me...just think of how awesome low avg high reward riders could come with this (f.e. Torkil Veyhe) - too many system abuse possibilities
- PT Race Days: get rid of the old fixed races, get more dynamic races in - like hilly cobbles, hill sprints, Mountain cobbles, tricky mountain races, hill + TT tours...some diversity to get the PCT/CT flavor over to WT
- FA upgrades: necessary for diversity - also helps a lot in suggestions for lower depth countries
- Stat gains: I like the new type. Still missing is something for hills + TTs and some training that trains both cobbles and acceleration without sprint (classics with acc?)
- Buying XP for young riders: Would be perfect for my team, but a no go for me.
- LVL 1 to LVL 3 clause: Yes and no. I don't see why. It is very difficult to do, and needs some sort of special compensation/relation anyway. Is it meant to enhance lvl1 to 3 because it's forced with this clause then? That makes it even harder for CT team imo. In general I like it from my teams point of view, but not from my personal one.
- Training costs: if anything higher them for top stats...lower price for less good riders may be nice, especially the 10 AVG rule should be more dynamic and is unfairly balanced towards better riders...also: how about making back-up stats half the price, to make training them make some sort of sense at all? a. balance the 10 AVG exemption rule
b. make back-ups cheaper
c. make it cheaper for lower level riders
- Declines and stat inflation: keep it as it is - still a -1 in every stat for every rider in the db every 5 years would benefit the game and wouldn't harm any team really
- Stagiares League: Too much effort for too less reward.
- Rider forms: I still like it, if we are willing to take up the effort then Roman has drawn a great system for it.
- CT Lvl4: No necessity for changes. It is realistic like this I think, and the system with no lvl 4 XP also ensures the dynamic on the loan market which is nice.
I just wanted to state that I agree with Scorchios thesis that this season may be the best for a long time from what I could read!
Don't have enough time for big responses now so I'll use the same format as Croatia
- C2HC: I've had my say - agree with Croatia and knockout and could see something like Abhishek's system (probably not exactly) working
- Crashes: I'm stuck on this as before now I was an ardent supporter of 100%, may still be too, don't know On the other hand, I have no doubt I'd be looking a lot more comfy in the promo battle with the huge benefit of maybe a Tachira podium, Andorra top5 and much better depth results in San Luis if there were no crashes in my season and as a CT team I genuinely couldn't plan other mountain races for Bennett at a CT level to "avoid risks". I do see the argument for the tactics of it in PT and possibly PCT though.
- Team size: I wouldn't mind seeing it increased, as others have said this would need to and would go hand in hand with more team RDs
- Stagiares: Keep them!
- Closing the division gaps: Hard no. For the reasons others have stated (knockout put some of them very well). However I will say:
I am fine with EBH in PCT and Valls in CT - star riders which saw teams, especially the former, make big sacrifices, and I don't see it as unrealistic, especially the latter. If I was a subtop rider in PCT I'd love to go be the top rider in CT with a big wage at a home team, with the chance of promoting them and then journeying with them into PCT as Valls may do. I don't think PT level riders in PCT and PCT level riders in CT should become the norm, as I think it is becoming now.
I also disagree that relegating teams should have their stars walk out - instead I suggest that leaders should ask for more wages in renewals than they do automatically if they are riding a division below where they should. Hard to implement maybe with measuring of where the benchmark is but would fix that a bit.
- Removing Over-Cap Renewals: Croatia said: "Make the cap a hard cap for renewals, so that relegating teams have a more difficult job and we have a more dynamic exchange."
Could be interested in this
- + / - idea: Seems open for abuse
- PT Race Days: Croatia said: "get rid of the old fixed races, get more dynamic races in - like hilly cobbles, hill sprints, Mountain cobbles, tricky mountain races, hill + TT tours...some diversity to get the PCT/CT flavor over to WT"
Yes please! Without ever managing there, PT seems kinda rigid - don't know how to explain. Obviously implement over two seasons I think so it's not too sudden.
- FA upgrades: Think we have a general consensus on this but some disagreeing. I don't like upgrading for upgrading's sake or to make a regular top rider just for realism - I do like dynamic upgrades to make cool riders and definitely for nationality.
- Stat gains: Like the Spartacus type, was the inspiration for my hilly stage racer suggestion I still think cobbled/classics ACC upgrade is needed, especially the latter. And I do think fighter should be higher.
- Training costs: I agree with Croatia higher top level prices need to be implemented (my opinion now) as part of a less linear system, also then lowering it for lower stats. Backups being lower sounds sensible too.
- Declines and stat inflation: Reminder about the non-linear stats scale - however every few years a -1 might be better than nothing
- Stagiares League: Agree with many of you that if there's an expanded calendar this shouldn't happen, but I guess it could tie in with some sort of more XP gains for stagiares to make that more fun than a transaction/fact of life that they go up Not a biggie for me though
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
AbhishekLFC wrote:
This basically tells me that the gaps will not get bigger but only smaller in the coming seasons. So no point arguing further. Atleast I tried.
Btw, about recently promoting CT teams doing well in the PCT...the best among them is Isostar, who have just one rider the same from last season. So even with the small gaps between divisions, a complete team overhaul is required it seems
What?
The entire point of this thread is to discuss, and gauge what the consensus seems to be. See what the different opinions are, and say why if you disagree. It certainly isn't about making decisions within a couple of days of the thread being open. Nor is it about giving up once a couple of people have disagreed with you.
I've tried to lay out why I think what I do, and what assumptions I've made, and I certainly welcome any counters to those points!
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The CT to PCT transition hasn't really come in to anything I had to say. But, I'd actually argue that your statement rather proves my point. If more PCT/CT racing is the answer to calendar issues; and a competitive CT team needs to have a complete overhaul to become a competitive PCT team; then the gap between PCT and CT is too big as it stands, for the calendar changes to work. But maybe you interpret that differently?
And if keeping (or extending) the gap is felt to be more important than having more PCT/CT racing, then what other ways are there to improve the CT calendar?
I said what I did because there was a certain sense of finality to what you said. Maybe I misjudged and so I'm back to further explain my stand.
About the second part of your quote...
Why does CT teams need to be in contention to win against PCT to have fun? I'd like to ask Booker and Aquarius whether they enjoyed finishing 5th and 8th, or 6th and 9th, whatever the result was, in Costa Rica? That was in a strong PCT climbing field. From their reactions, I think they did. I've seen wildcard teams rejoice at getting a win in PT races, when they neither get points for it nor is this real life where the sponsor pays them money. I know I enjoyed Grabovski getting 5th place in the Olympia ITT, a 'home race' I chose to enter for RP purposes only, then the 9th place in the TTT and the final 12th place in the GC. Winning as an underdog always gives a greater satisfaction. And that is how it is in real life too.
Spoiler
Taking an example from football, as it is the sport I follow most closely,
has anyone ever heard the expression 'magic of the league'? But we have heard 'magic of the cup'. Why? Because domestic cup competitions allow 'smaller' teams the chance to compete and sometimes beat the big boys. That's where the magic happens.
Sorry if this was a little melodramatic!
I support the idea of encouraging more CT vs PCT competition 100%. But I don't support the fact that CT needs to be able to win against PCT. A CT team winning consistently in C1 and a PCT team winning consistently in PTHC goes against the whole flavour of having divisions imo.
@Abhishek I know what I think, but any certainty in that respect shouldn't be misinterpreted as finality, in terms of what will happen in the game. Sometimes stronger wording just helps to draw out responses that disagree!
I also very much did not say that CT teams need to be winning against PCT. I said competitive.
In this case I'm looking at it from a strategical point of view, rather than fun. Because the basis for the idea was that it would improve the strategy aspect of being in CT.
If you can't go into a race expecting a Top 10, or a Top 15, will you want to send your leaders there - if limited in RD - or will you continue to send your strongest team to CT only fields? That's the question I imagine CT teams would consider, in the planning process.
If we're happy tinkering with the C2/C2HC calendar to mix up the fields a bit; then offering up more competition with PCT just to give teams more RDs, and add to the fun - then we don't need to reduce the gap in salary cap.
Croatia14 wrote:
- LVL 1 to LVL 3 clause: Yes and no. I don't see why. It is very difficult to do, and needs some sort of special compensation/relation anyway. Is it meant to enhance lvl1 to 3 because it's forced with this clause then? That makes it even harder for CT team imo. In general I like it from my teams point of view, but not from my personal one.
To pick up on this one, it is a case of still trying to find a system that works. Removing the ability to make it a clause was intended to make it harder; but still teams ask for it, and teams will deliver it; and I don't feel there is sufficient compensation for it.
So, recognising that it is going to happen no matter what, then forcing more compensation - either money out of the game, or more to the loan-in team - seems to be the way to get closer to the target.
Alternatively we could say that on loan riders cannot increase two levels in one go. Thus giving a development disadvantage to PT teams looking for Level 1 riders - a disadvantage that can already be balanced by the fact that maxing Level 4 is very difficult to do outside of PT. PT still would need to loan out on Level 1s; they just can't expect a fast progression; and it leaves loan-in teams with more freedom in planning.
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@Trek I've deleted your Renewals post but please don't see this as censorship. I've saved your post, in case we want to bring it back.
I first want to ask, how much of a detailed renewals discussion do people want?
It's intended to be one of the game's mysteries. It shoudn't be beyond discussion if there is something to improve in it. But any discussion could take away part of the mystery. Is that a good thing?
Please can we answer that first, before going on to discuss it any further?
SportingNonsense wrote:
@Abhishek I know what I think, but any certainty in that respect shouldn't be misinterpreted as finality, in terms of what will happen in the game. Sometimes stronger wording just helps to draw out responses that disagree!
I also very much did not say that CT teams need to be winning against PCT. I said competitive.
In this case I'm looking at it from a strategical point of view, rather than fun. Because the basis for the idea was that it would improve the strategy aspect of being in CT.
If you can't go into a race expecting a Top 10, or a Top 15, will you want to send your leaders there - if limited in RD - or will you continue to send your strongest team to CT only fields? That's the question I imagine CT teams would consider, in the planning process.
If we're happy tinkering with the C2/C2HC calendar to mix up the fields a bit; then offering up more competition with PCT just to give teams more RDs, and add to the fun - then we don't need to reduce the gap in salary cap.
But CT is already competitive isn't it? In-n-Out won Slovenia, Garmin with all their troubles were one stage away from a podium there, WCC were expected to be competitive in De Panne and they were (Goldcorp won it via a freaky breakaway), WCC also picked up top 10s and 15s in C1 sprinter races, so did Proximus, previously mentioned result in Costa Rica, cycleYorskire's excellently planned TT calendar, etc etc. We can't really expect the whole division to be competitive against the PCT. The whole division isn't even competitive in the CT!
With my earlier idea of making the C2HC into bands, and keeping the C2 as it is, the latter is where the CT teams will send their best teams no doubt. However, if PCT has to select two bands from from C2HC, their participation in C1 will go down by some percentage. This will open up scope for the CT teams to fill those gaps in search of the higher points that those races offer. Thus we will have competitive PCT vs CT clashes in two divisions as opposed to one that we have now. CT are allowed to go to HC races, but how many take that up, so we can't really consider that as competition between those two divisions. The bands will also allow for more specialized teams I believe, both in the PCT and the CT. It's also not very nice to be forced to do as much as 50% of our RDs!
I don't think PCT in C2HC is the answer. We can reduce C2HC race days; increase non-C2HC race days; introduce some choice into it; or whatever - but the main point of it is that they are races which only have CT teams. I'd rather relax some of the restrictions on PCT teams entering C2 races, so that there is a greater mix in there.
SportingNonsense wrote:
I don't think PCT in C2HC is the answer. We can reduce C2HC race days; increase non-C2HC race days; introduce some choice into it; or whatever - but the main point of it is that they are races which only have CT teams. I'd rather relax some of the restrictions on PCT teams entering C2 races, so that there is a greater mix in there.
This (reduce C2HC race days; increase non-C2HC race days)
But maybe up the C2 points just a little bit also. (id say eqal to C2HC, but a bit lower that C2H2 is now (90%)
In CT, would make it more interesting compared to points from C2HC/C1
In PCT would attract more teams (combined with less restriction)
I perfectly understand the need to remove my post for now.
Renewals really really need to be changed, they aren't balanced well at the moment imo, I can understand the want to keep the mystery without too deep a discussion, but on the other hand I couldn't share many examples I had for my point because I knew they would cross the line (turns out my post did anyway ) but it's hard to make a point without fully explaining where I'm coming from.
Insulting riders was added to make it harder to get a riders wage down, as a number of experienced managers were finding it rather easy to reach a minimum wage. This addition made that riskier and it has had real effect. Realistic, absolutely not, but it actually tackled a bit of a growing issue. I've got no issue with it, seems to be working well.
3 Rounds i like. Keeps things pretty short, makes you compromise on demands but gives just enough time to have a discussion with a rider. And again i think it needs to be shorter to keep a challenge and prevent experienced managers nailing every riders minimum amount.
The formula is a secret. Good, knowing the exact detail would make it easier to game and nail the minimum amounts. This way there is a touch of skill but it's accessible to all regardless of knowledge, experience or free time.
I do agree with trek that Previous Wage seems to play too high a role in renewals, especially with declining riders. They just seem to hold a bit too much demand, when you could release them and get them back for less. That shouldn't be how renewals works.
Previous Wage should play a role but behind Results and OVL. This would also help, i think, bump up the top riders wages a bit and challenge those top teams in managing their cap. With results playing more role we'd also get wages up of those riders PCM likes but perhaps the OVL doesn't quite work for.
Granted this could see a team struggle for a year, relegate, and hold more top riders but the loss in Wage Cap and general budget should prevent that. And arguably it happens already.
SportingNonsense wrote:
I don't think PCT in C2HC is the answer. We can reduce C2HC race days; increase non-C2HC race days; introduce some choice into it; or whatever - but the main point of it is that they are races which only have CT teams. I'd rather relax some of the restrictions on PCT teams entering C2 races, so that there is a greater mix in there.
I am one of the few who have experience of being in CT before and after C2HC introduced. It is one of the top recent improvements to the CT division imo. I would wholeheartedly agree that PCT in C2HC is definitely not a good direction to go in. I also think that the balance of RD's 'forced' vs. 'selected' is pretty damn good. I like a lot that the C2HC races are all mandatory rather than band choices. (This also suggests that the maximum (in fact 'desireable' CT team numbers is 24 to fit with full race fields). I also think the currrent points awards for C1, C2HC and C2 races works very well. If C2 is moved more towards C2HC points, there will be less incentive to race C1 for CT teams as the risk/reward balance not worth it. This would then cut down on PCT/CT mixing
Slightly separate issue is if C1 and C2 races are undersubscribed, then it is obvious that if existing team numbers remain relatively stable then PCT and CT teams can be allocated additional RD's above the 140/120 limit to fill the breach (I was not particularly aware that we had suffered from small fields much this season in C1 and C2 races, particularly in context of previous years). Plenty of CT teams ride C1 (and even the occasional HC race!). Not so many PCT ride C2. A simple solution would be that e.g. if there is spare capacity in C1 and C2 races to enable all PCT and CT teams 10 extra RD's that they become a mandatory minimum number of RD's that 'must' be used in the 'opposite' division.
Example for CT: 130 RD's, 60C2HC, 70 choice RD's, minimum 10 of which must be in C1 (could of course be 75 and 15 or whatever to suit if race capacity exists)
Just for basic info, WCC this year have 23 RD's in C1, 14 in HC (and hence 23 in C2).
Final point for now is that I think that with the increase in rider quality over the past couple of years in CT, the PCT rider stat limits are now excessively limiting. Just had a scan through the DB, and I think it would now be perfectly sensible to increase the PCT stat minimum to 74.5 or even 75 and remove any specific individual stat restrictions. This opens up riders capable of competing for victory in all terrains but none that I can see would be the absolute top favourite. As C1 races are still worth a lot more points that C2, PCT teams would in general still focus majority of races in C1 rather than swamping C2.
Scorchio wrote:
Slightly separate issue is if C1 and C2 races are undersubscribed, then it is obvious that if existing team numbers remain relatively stable then PCT and CT teams can be allocated additional RD's above the 140/120 limit to fill the breach (I was not particularly aware that we had suffered from small fields much this season in C1 and C2 races, particularly in context of previous years). Plenty of CT teams ride C1 (and even the occasional HC race!). Not so many PCT ride C2. A simple solution would be that e.g. if there is spare capacity in C1 and C2 races to enable all PCT and CT teams 10 extra RD's that they become a mandatory minimum number of RD's that 'must' be used in the 'opposite' division.
One reason for this is easy.
Last year CT teams had 60 rd in C2HC (3/4 bands) and then were able to pick the remaining 60 race days elsewhere and they had a pool of 68 C2 race days plus C1 and HC.
This year C2HC remained at 60 rd without bands though. But the remaining C2 pool dropped to 52 rd and hence a minimum of 8 rd had to be used in C1 or HC. Obviously most teams if not all use less on C2 and more in C1 or HC.
The average CT teams in C1 events is at almost 6 teams! Not too bad I guess and shows that there is already a nice mix of PCT and CT and several CT teams have shown that success is very possible.
The other way PCT in C2 races is less interesting obviously. More for talent teams to help with 1-3 development. In total just 6 C2 races saw PCT teams with a maximum of 2 only.
Reason again simple. 60 rd in HC. 30 rd in PTHC. The remaining 50 race days then can be picked from the biggest pool as C1 has 97 rd to offer. Hence enough to avoid C2 races as long as you don`t want to.
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In the end I like the system in CT with a strict schedule in C2HC with a balance of all terrains and kind of races. Obviously some teams don`t want to race cobbles or mountains but then it`s like 2-3 events only and C2/C1 can be picked whereever the focus is.
And the interaction between PCT and CT is already forced this season and hence in my opinion doesn`t need a changed C2HC system but seeing C1 as the mixed category.
What can be changed in C2HC imo though is the kind of races. Make them a bit different. e.g. hill stages in mountain stage races. Or cut them from 60 to 50 forced and then 10 more for free selection.
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Regarding the total rd. Right now it`s 140 in PCT and 120 in CT. Obviously this is an easy calculation and with unused spots right now with a max of 24 teams per race, you might be able to higher the CT to 130 and/or PCT to 150 without changing the calendar at all.
Negative though that this season we had 3 C1 races that were oversubscribed. Then almost 8 that were really close. When adding more rd per team to allow coming to 24 teams per race in average this would mean several more races would be oversubscribed and would need re-picking and again re-picking and so on until all are 24 maximum again.
With the system this year we had an average of 19 teams per HC/C1/C2 race and actually just 4 races had less than 15 teams with Yekaterinburg being lowest at 12!
33 HC/C1/C2 events had 20+ teams.
SportingNonsense wrote:
I don't think PCT in C2HC is the answer. We can reduce C2HC race days; increase non-C2HC race days; introduce some choice into it; or whatever - but the main point of it is that they are races which only have CT teams. I'd rather relax some of the restrictions on PCT teams entering C2 races, so that there is a greater mix in there.
I also think the currrent points awards for C1, C2HC and C2 races works very well. If C2 is moved more towards C2HC points, there will be less incentive to race C1 for CT teams as the risk/reward balance not worth it. This would then cut down on PCT/CT mixing
Honestly don't think that is the issue, when you chose not to race a C2 it will most often be because it do not fit your team skills. The way I see it is too draw PTC into C2, rather than getting CT to race in C1/HC.
My thinking was that overall C2 is more small startslists than C1/HC, but I may be wrong, have no hard fact to base that assumption on.
I found a table in the cdb that is only generated after each race started and hence can`t be edited by us in the DB used.
I am not 100% sure what kind of table this is exactly but from a first look this is my interpretation:
- the team equipment used in that race is getting random numbers for fiability and feeling
And while I don`t know where exactly those numbers get into formulas for the AI and it`s likely some hard coded stuff anyway, this is in my opinion a problem.
This interpretation basically means that in the specific race the same teams that got randomly bad values are more crash prone than others.
For a real statistic we probably would need to check the stats for each single race and see what kind of values there lead to a higher amount of crashes.
But even without such studies I think it`s rather obvious that the same riders seem to crash in specific races. Often the same rider crashes 2-3 times in the same race while others don`t crash a single time. Sometimes the same rider even crashes twice on the same stage.
Actually similar to the decision of who is going into breakaways which also seems to be hard coded and seeing same riders again and again.
It`s really difficult/impossible to find the 100% correct answer on that issue with this table and if it`s really crash related at all.
But in my opinion as long as it`s a possibility that such random table might exist and potentially being the cause of those individual crashes, I guess it`s worth a discussion if deactivating the crashes at all as it`s too much randomity there.
e.g. in a GT it`s basically decided at day 1 which team got shit equipment and while in classics this might be less of a problem, in long stage races it`s annoying as it`s pretty sure that this team/rider is going to crash at least once as 21 stages higher the chance of crashes anyway but 21 stages on shit equipment even more. And while crashes might belong to RL cycling, those kind of equipment fixes also belong to RL cycling and hence PCM apparently can`t handle this as a broken bike on day 1 means, bike 2 on the next stages is still broken or at least low in quality. (At least this is my interpretation of the table)
So far we thought equipment is just visual and we always put those stars/quality equal for all teams. But with the possibility that it`s still not equal, we probably need to fix this problem else and the only way would be to put crashes to 0.
Hope this is not too much rubbish and weird text above. Started to write and probably became hard to follow.
That follows what we've seen this season- if TMM did his investigation again with that involved I'd be very interested to see the results. Also fits in, maybe, with as Matt said in Skype once, the proportion of leaders crashing in PCM vs real life is too high.
If this does exist then I'd switch my view maybe - difference between bad luck once in one race and bad "luck" more than once in maybe more than one race.
24/02/21 - kandesbunzler said “I don't drink famous people."
15/08/22 - SotD said "Your [jandal's] humour is overrated"
11/06/24 - knockout said "Winning is fine I guess. Truth be told this felt completely unimportant." [ICL] Santos-Euskadi | [PT] Xero Racing
Very interesting find, which would put me on the side of massively reducing crash-tendency in stage races as well. I don't mind keeping it in classics though.
And now for something completely different: Small fields.
What about throwing together a bunch of regional teams with unsigned riders to fill up in these races. Could even count for XP for the riders who end up riding. Say the 2 best unsigned riders of the area and the best unsigned talents to fill up.
Could be a fun way for these riders to impress their way to a contract and get closer to levelling up (and this more interesting to sign). Much similar to when national teams and even amateur teams start low-ranking races IRL.
Atlantius wrote:
And now for something completely different: Small fields.
What about throwing together a bunch of regional teams with unsigned riders to fill up in these races. Could even count for XP for the riders who end up riding. Say the 2 best unsigned riders of the area and the best unsigned talents to fill up.
Could be a fun way for these riders to impress their way to a contract and get closer to levelling up (and this more interesting to sign). Much similar to when national teams and even amateur teams start low-ranking races IRL.
I am massively against this.
Finding unwanted races and send your strongest riders to those is one part of tactical planning.
And just because other teams didn`t want to ride that race, doesn`t mean that it can`t be an advantage for those being there.
Those free agents would disturb the balance in scoring. As it is now all teams have same amount of race days and cap to find riders with a specific amount of race days.
By adding free agents to races, we would suddenly have a scenario where some teams ride against those unbalanced teams often and others not at all. In my opinion this would be an unfair move for some teams.
Wow, if that table is true as I've interpreted from your post, that is really worrying, classic Cyanide - does fit what we've seen so far though.
Needs more investigating and testing surely, although looking through the equipment thread to compare teams who crashed often I noticed that Tinkoff and Jayco both ride the same bike brand (Cervelo) but aren't equally affected (afaik).
Atlantius wrote:
And now for something completely different: Small fields.
What about throwing together a bunch of regional teams with unsigned riders to fill up in these races. Could even count for XP for the riders who end up riding. Say the 2 best unsigned riders of the area and the best unsigned talents to fill up.
Could be a fun way for these riders to impress their way to a contract and get closer to levelling up (and this more interesting to sign). Much similar to when national teams and even amateur teams start low-ranking races IRL.
Not for main races, but this would be a good idea in NCs though imo, filling up the fields to a certain size would mean that is' more likely to give us a good race (as long as we had a limit that we made sure we weren't adding riders to make the peloton size less than a certain number).
On the other hand, I have no doubt I'd be looking a lot more comfy in the promo battle with the huge benefit of maybe a Tachira podium, Andorra top5 and much better depth results in San Luis if there were no crashes in my season and as a CT team I genuinely couldn't plan other mountain races for Bennett at a CT level to "avoid risks". I do see the argument for the tactics of it in PT and possibly PCT though.
I still think cobbled/classics ACC upgrade is needed, especially the latter. And I do think fighter should be higher.
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
CT team numbers is 24 to fit with full race fields). I also think the currrent points awards for C1, C2HC and C2 races works very well. If C2 is moved more towards C2HC points, there will be less incentive to race C1 for CT teams as the risk/reward balance not worth it. This would then cut down on PCT/CT mixing
