Ollfardh wrote:
Very good point by Roman as well, the current training system is pushing towards training main stat only as it's the same cost. I never really understood that.
I guess it was to avoid riders being too similar. Two-headed beasts like Cunego, Spilak, Ricco etc. was very hard to "keep down". They still are to an extend, but I guess it was created to ensure that all top climbers wouldn't become ardennes kings too.
Like my example training Lecuisinier to 80+ HI for 4,5mio would be an invititation for me to do that. He would then ride 1 GT and the ardennes that could guarantee him top 5's, to increase the team scoring. Basically what I did with Spilak where I won 3 seasons in a row. You don't want to make that path too easy, so I guess that is why we make the decision harder as the OVL come up when we train a key stat.
It is a big decision for me to make on van Niekerk too. I would like him to go to atleast 77MO, possibly 78-79, while I also want him to quickly become my HI leader.
So by training him in HI I also make the MO path trickier for myself, while if I take the MO path first, he will be just a domestique for 2 years longer than otherwise. I like that dilemma tbh. Otherwise it would be a no brainer to make him a top puncheur and then just keep adding MO for "cheap" until he was also a contender for week long GC races.
Allow me to illustrate. I want Aidan van Niekerk to become 79MO 83HI (Just as an example):
This leaves me with two (obviously more) main paths. 1) Up his HI first or 2) Up his MO first.
If I go for path 1)
Season 1: 79HI 73MO | 1,85mio (Lieutenaint level)
Season 2: 81HI 73MO | 2,6mio (Subtop leader level)
Season 3: 83HI 73MO | 3,7mio (Leader level)
Season 4: 83HI 75MO | 2,0mio (Leader level)
Season 5: 83HI 77MO | 2,0mio (Leader level)
Season 6: 83HI 79MO | 2,0mio (Beast)
Total: 14,15mio
If I go for path 2)
Season 1: 77HI 75MO | 0,95mio (Domestique level)
Season 2: 77HI 77MO | 1,3mio (Top domestique level)
Season 3: 77HI 79MO | 1,85mio (Lieutenaint level)
Season 4: 79HI 79MO | 1,85mio (Subtop leader level)
Season 5: 81HI 79MO | 2,6mio (Leader level)
Season 6: 83HI 79MO | 3,7mio (Beast)
Total: 12,25mio
Path 2 is easily the cheapest path. It ensure that I can train other riders quite a bit aswell as I save 2mio. But it also leaves me with a rider at a lower level for longer.
As I read Romans suggestion (except for him also wanting to train both HI and MO in the same year), he want to give me the benefit of quality from path 1 to the price of path 2.
Despite it helping me quite a lot enhancing Aidan and my greek future core, I don't think this is a good path for the game.
There is an element to this which i agree with. I trained Altur to 82CB this year because it was prohibitively expensive to train any of this other stats, or any of Ewan's other stats. Just as, because of the insane game-breaking inflation, it was not worth spending that money on my personal favourites of Alaphilippe or Matthews. Training anyone to a 74-78 really doesn't feel worth it unless, like with the Van Niekerk example, you are going all-in to push up to the 80's.
And as a regular CT/PCT team i am never getting that money, but still needing those stats.
Above all we need to fix inflation first by re-structuring the entire DB. Then we can also fix training to encourage managers to maintain this DB structure. Because with the current inflated DB systems, we are encouraging managers to make this worse. But changing training won't make the DB less inflated and broken!
For example, if we tackle inflation (and i mean re-structure the DB) even with the current training system it becomes a lot more interesting for a PCT team to gather training funds, and even a CT team can look at improving a rider in the 75 range to make them a real racing threat.
We have to fix the core issue, and then we can re-design the surrounding extra systems to maintain the improved version of the MG.
Edited by TheManxMissile on 10-02-2021 10:08
SotD wrote:
Which riders I have is irrelevant to my suggestions. I have picked up all the riders you mention from the FA pool and all have gotten significant stat increases:
Lecuisinier +4 MO
Coquard +3 SPR +1MO +2HI
Koretzky +2 HI +3TT
I have had all kind of riders, Young, Old, FA, trained, sold, bought.
So when I’m suggesting things it is due to what I think will help the game, and not what will help me. So let’s please put arguments like that to the grave. That really isn’t a feasable path to undermind my suggestions.
I'm not saying that you are not trying to help the game with your suggestions but it seems quite clear to me that you look at this from a different perspective due to your selling riders/training approach to the game.
My point was not that you have never signed riders from the FA, but rather that you don't need to sign leaders from it (in recent seasons and the near future). Some teams (especially promoting ones mostly, but also ones hit by decline of their leaders) depend on good riders being available in the FA. If we remove/weaken strong riders from the FA that will hit those teams extraordinary harder and help teams that want to sell riders, like yours. When you say there would still be good riders available in FA, that might be true for you, as you are focussed on different types of riders from the FA but not others. I'm not saying that's the reason why you suggest that, but it's clear that removing strong free agents would impact your team less than others.
I do believe that lowering the main CT sprinters from 79 to 76 would help significantly, for several reasons. 1) The better sprinters would stand out and 2) The psycolpgical aspect would shift peoples focus to more well rounded riders rather that 67 FL 76SPR riders. I feel pretty confident that negating all rider stats by 3 would make people act differently.
IMO the CT wasn’t crowded with 76SPR back when the DB wasn’t overrun by those being subtop sprinters. As far as I remember (I May be wrong) most CT teams were well rounded with small twists, and different leader types, and then the odd teams with a specific HI/COB focus (like Gazelle).
I believe that this psychological effect is very neglectible. Managers will know that 76 is the new 79 and still would try to sign the strongest riders which will be the same riders. When I started in CT in 2014 I had a 77 sprinter who rarely got a top 10. Imo, the better sprinters available would still be signed over the riders that are unsigned at the moment.
I just don’t (which was the original point) think picking out certain riders to “stay”, while others “lose”/“die” is a Man-Game friendly solution.
I agree completely with you and that's why this is exactly not what I was suggesting. I don't understand why you keep bringing that up. All I was saying is that if we consider a db overhaul with changing stats we need to increase the skill gap between a rider that's supposed to be better over a rider that's worse. Else the problems that we have in the db currently will remain. I'm sure a fair way to do this can be found that wouldn't favor some managers over others.
To the latter part - It's because I'm not directly adressing you when I speak of the suggestions, but more in general. I'm sorry if that isn't clear.
I agree that I probably look for other riders than you would, but isn't that part of the "established" vs. "newcomer" approach? Whenever I need a leader for a specific terrain I look at the same places that you do.
And seeing as we have lesser managers now than we had in the past - isn't that making it easier for you to pick up riders (in all levels?)
I try to look at things from a broad perspective, and to do so I have to include what can be achieved/exploited through trainings too. There may not be a lot of training going around ind CT/PCT level, but there is used humongous amount of fees on it on PT level, so we obviously need to cover that situation aswell.
When clearing up the DB I don't think it makes much sense to delete top top riders as there is a very select group of those at the moment, but I don't see why we shouldn't be able to clean up the 77-80 key stat group to some degree and the 74-76 key stat group severely.
At this point, everybody seems to have their own ideas and some combination of them would do something. I think a lot of us are prioritizing solving different problems, and our solutions may actually hurt other interests. Inflation is a problem in so many aspects that it is difficult to treat them all effectively without causing another problem.
I'm still in favor of the protection and decrease method. Yes, any DB changes will inevitably hurt some riders and managers over others, but I think if we made the system with enough nuance and complexities (dealing with things like rider age and team size), it could be pretty fair to all. It doesn't seem popular though except for me and valv, so I am open to other options.
I'd also be happy to support a training overhaul, but I'd be careful not to make it too easy to upgrade guys given the massive inflation issue we just talked about. Making guys more similar in backups isn't necessarily advantageous when we have so little spread for main stats. I'd like to see it in tandem with another method.
Also, what's the verdict on game version? Are we going to test PCM 19 and PCM 20? I'd really like to see what we can do with sprints and the MG DB across several versions. I stand by the fact that continuing to have PCM 18 like sprints is way too damaging to the game, even if we can accept 18's other flaws.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
I was thinking of a training alteration as well, but had 2 exams yesterday, but I think Roman raises a good point. I dream of training Saya Kuroeda to be atleast competent on hills as a cobbler, as right now he's practically usesless, but I can only train him 1 Hill stat atm (iirc, haven't checked in a while), before he goes above the average exemption. Maybe making a cost thats separate for energy stats and main stats as well
I also think Bbl raises a good point.
I think our priority should be something like this (since I doubt we will make major changes to fix inflation, since that requires almost everyone to agree on something, as well as the Admins to give it the go ahead):
1. PCM Game version for future season/ AI discussions, possibly testing
2. MG DB Inflation issues, what causes them, possible solutions etc.
3. Training cost/rules overhaul, stat gain changes
4. Bringing back crashes, keeping crashes out etc.
- If I missed anything brought up so far, let me know.
Maybe unless someone is directly quoting someone else, we could all BOLD or title what we are posting about, to make going through the thread a lot easier?
ivaneurope wrote:
There must be a balance between the net selling teams and the net buying teams.
I struggle to understand what you are saying. Can you elaborate?
In MG terms a net buying team is any team that buys more than it sells - for example any new team (and to most degree promoted teams) is by default a net buyer. A net selling team on the other hand is any team that sells more than it buys.
If we decrease every single free agent during post-renewal phase then it will put the net buying teams at disadvantage IMO. I've seen riders being sold for way more than they'd really cost and with the regressing of the FA some fees will skyrocket since they were spared from the stat decrease - unfortunately I can't provide an example from my team since most of my top riders are aged 32 or more and they'll start declining anyway. Implementing a cap on the transfer fee itself (i.e. the fee shall not exceed x% of the rider's wage) won't be fair.
IMO we need to reach a consensus where the net buyers are not in a heavy disadvantage, but also not hinder net selling teams with training orientation.
valverde321 wrote:
I was thinking of a training alteration as well, but had 2 exams yesterday, but I think Roman raises a good point. I dream of training Saya Kuroeda to be atleast competent on hills as a cobbler, as right now he's practically usesless, but I can only train him 1 Hill stat atm (iirc, haven't checked in a while), before he goes above the average exemption. Maybe making a cost thats separate for energy stats and main stats as well
I also think Bbl raises a good point.
I think our priority should be something like this (since I doubt we will make major changes to fix inflation, since that requires almost everyone to agree on something, as well as the Admins to give it the go ahead):
1. PCM Game version for future season/ AI discussions, possibly testing
2. MG DB Inflation issues, what causes them, possible solutions etc.
3. Training cost/rules overhaul, stat gain changes
4. Bringing back crashes, keeping crashes out etc.
- If I missed anything brought up so far, let me know.
Maybe unless someone is directly quoting someone else, we could all BOLD or title what we are posting about, to make going through the thread a lot easier?
What is our goal here? If it is to just give the admins an impression of the different issues and opinions floating around so that they can cherry pick the ideas they like, then this "one thread for everything" format is fine.
But if our goal is to let the community decide on what to do, then we should create a separate thread for every major topic and assign a moderator who is responsible for steering and summarizing the discussion.
If we want to ever come to some sort of consensus on a topic, the discussion needs to be more structured and not constantly interrupted by completely different discussions.
valverde321 wrote:
I was thinking of a training alteration as well, but had 2 exams yesterday, but I think Roman raises a good point. I dream of training Saya Kuroeda to be atleast competent on hills as a cobbler, as right now he's practically usesless, but I can only train him 1 Hill stat atm (iirc, haven't checked in a while), before he goes above the average exemption. Maybe making a cost thats separate for energy stats and main stats as well
I also think Bbl raises a good point.
I think our priority should be something like this (since I doubt we will make major changes to fix inflation, since that requires almost everyone to agree on something, as well as the Admins to give it the go ahead):
1. PCM Game version for future season/ AI discussions, possibly testing
2. MG DB Inflation issues, what causes them, possible solutions etc.
3. Training cost/rules overhaul, stat gain changes
4. Bringing back crashes, keeping crashes out etc.
- If I missed anything brought up so far, let me know.
Maybe unless someone is directly quoting someone else, we could all BOLD or title what we are posting about, to make going through the thread a lot easier?
What is our goal here? If it is to just give the admins an impression of the different issues and opinions floating around so that they can cherry pick the ideas they like, then this "one thread for everything" format is fine.
But if our goal is to let the community decide on what to do, then we should create a separate thread for every major topic and assign a moderator who is responsible for steering and summarizing the discussion.
If we want to ever come to some sort of consensus on a topic, the discussion needs to be more structured and not constantly interrupted by completely different discussions.
Agreed with both of you. We should try to structure this more and address each topic, depending on our goal.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
For now this thread is to collect suggestions what to change and also ideas how to.
From this, we can and will clearly discuss single points more in detail in probably another thread to have it easier to follow.
That said in the end it might probably be something in between. Neither will I "cherry pick" and only do things I personally like if the majority os against or there are clear negatives mentioned here by others.
But also it might not be a full community decision neither I guess. Or let`s say, it can`t fully as long as the work to do so isn`t handled by several people. The more complex the changes are, the more manpower is obviously needed to work on this. Testing, implementing and so on. I clearly lack the time for testing this year in especially and with bigger changes, I also need help to implement as the regular off season stuff already is far more time consuming as I normally am able to do without proper help.
SotD wrote:
The OVL rule is the only thing keeping me from training Lecuisinier in other stats than MO tbh. It cost 1,4mio to change his HI from 75 to 76.
For me to get him to 80HI fe, which was my initial plan it would cost 7,4mio, and would take atleast 3 seasons, probably keeping out training options for any other riders in the proces.
As far as I understand your logic (Correct me if I'm wrong), this can now be achieved in the same time but for 4,5mio.
I can see some issue with that tbh... Part of picking talents is coping with their limitations. With your suggestions I guess it will level out talents even more, which isn't ideal in terms of trying to somewhat control what riders look like, how many of a certain level there is etc.
My suggestion was to freeze the 82 (new 85) mark for 2-3 seasons after this addition, to ensure the gap between current riders. This would see it impossible for Lecuisinier, Morton, Dombrowski etc. to ever go past 82MO.
Herklotz could on paper reach 84MO in his last year of training however, but as he would drop to 81MO it would require a +1MO training during those 2-3 years and then a +2MO training (Which would cost close to 6mio) in his final season. Merhawi Kudus can potentially reach 84MO too, on the same restrictions as Herklotz, but would require a +4MO training in the 2-3 seasons before the final leap aswell.
So IMO we won't create bigger gaps here and now, but in the long run it will be possible for a few select riders to break this new normal 82 key stat. This could be riders such as Mark Padun, Yevgeniy Gidich, Joseph Areruya and whatever talents we decide to add, that should be able to do so. But mind you, that it would require a massive effort (Eastman-like + ) to get there. So only a very few riders would actually get past the "breaking point", and this would (like you mention) possibly encourage people to try another path instead if we take a look at the training system in general. This way we get more well rounded riders, but still have the option to go full on with a select talentpool, to break the new normal and create a new Contador, Schleck or so, that isn't that well rounded, but really excel in a certain area.
Well, yes. This idea would also make it less expensive to train PHL. But I don't see that as such a wrong thing - mainly because you likely would not spend any money on him right now - it is just not worth it. But if it would make sense, you may as well make him even better, but that investment would likely be just for a small gain. And - it would also mean you would have less money to invest in someone else. If you would train PHL, his wages would go even higher and his RDs would go down. He would be the favourite to win any race he enters in - but that may not be such a big change to the situation we have right now. Would it be worth it? I am not that sure about that especially with more unpredictable PCM AI we have in PCM18 and it is likely more of the same in the newer versions. But well - for the absolute top riders with stats 80+ there may should be some additional limit, but personally I don't think there should be these types of limits and restrictions like that as it ruins options and fun. In my opinion: if you really want to invest all you have into one rider every year to make him as spectacular as possible, I don't have a problem with that and I believe we are somehow restricted in options we have right now. If needed, these riders may should have even bigger wages than they have right now then, that may should be enough to tackle these megastars with insanely high attributes. The reality is, throwing all eggs into just one bag is not usually the best option when it come to team leaders on the absolute top level.
About your idea to give all the riders -3: I believe the minus X amount thing should mainly be considered for:
1. AI may work better with all-around lower attributes.
2. If the maximum limit for good days is still 85, then it also may make sense to lower the maximum attribute.
3. I can also see some sense for automatically downgrade all riders in an attribute in case a rider has a max attribute - so there is still some space to improve that rider in the future - that could be a partial solution to the inflation problem as you would need to invest to keep up and so we would create more of gaps between riders on the top of the pyramide.
4. One-off downgrade to create that training space may also work - and may not work badly for the game - but honestly I would prefer more of a longterm solution than just a one-off thing.
In all those cases training prices and OVL/wage changes need to be considered. But: we would make a much better decision if we have some testing data.
I am not sure that this is really a big solution for inflation thing though. The problem here really is that we probably have too many solid riders/good domestiques. This is why I think #3 argument for this may somehow work - if we create space for training and make that training more affordable, it could help. In the end the decision about training is probably the most exciting part of the season. Maybe there could be a basic untransfarable training budget for all teams to have a chance to do something? I believe it is not that unimaginable if we make changes that would make the training part of the game a bigger part.
The solution here is clear though: create something like draft class for each year of birth so we add in around a similar quality and amount of riders each season so we can somehow control the amount of riders that are in the database. I may have created some of the current problems by doing a huge update of the database a few years back when I have helped a lot to transform the DB by replacing literally thousands of riders so the database would become as diverse and would also include in almost all pro riders in the world. The problem with that - the DB may have too many domestiques so they have became a lot replacable. From my point of view it is not such a big problem as you somehow expect these guys being a lot replacable, but today's amount is clearly too high. But it is hard to make a massive change from year to year - maybe a solution could be to give -1 for all riders that don't find a team for the next year's database and are over the age of 25 + were not released because of cap complications for a team. For these riders it could make some nice roleplay sense to make them worse - a year without racing won't make you better and MGUCI have no grants to help people that are already outside of their school age. This would partially tackle the problem with the current amount of riders. If this is too harsh, we may at least start with riders that have not found a team for 2 years as we have the data in the DB.
Sorry for the lenght. Would not be against if someone puts this together into a TL,DR summary.
As an extra - it would be good IMO if someone would start to put all of those nice ideas in this thread somehow together into the first post in this TL,DR type version: otherwise there is a strong chance the discussion will get so complicated and long that it will be almost impossible to use these without really putting a long and hard effort for it. Page 7 and counting - and we are only in the "collecting suggestions" part as roturn wrote.
Roman wrote:
The solution here is clear though: create something like draft class for each year of birth so we add in around a similar quality and amount of riders each season so we can somehow control the amount of riders that are in the database. I may have created some of the current problems by doing a huge update of the database a few years back when I have helped a lot to transform the DB by replacing literally thousands of riders so the database would become as diverse and would also include in almost all pro riders in the world. The problem with that - the DB may have too many domestiques so they have became a lot replacable. From my point of view it is not such a big problem as you somehow expect these guys being a lot replacable, but today's amount is clearly too high. But it is hard to make a massive change from year to year - maybe a solution could be to give -1 for all riders that don't find a team for the next year's database and are over the age of 25 + were not released because of cap complications for a team. For these riders it could make some nice roleplay sense to make them worse - a year without racing won't make you better and MGUCI have no grants to help people that are already outside of their school age. This would partially tackle the problem with the current amount of riders. If this is too harsh, we may at least start with riders that have not found a team for 2 years as we have the data in the DB.
I'm not necessarily opposed to this, but I'm just not sure what it would accomplish, besides limiting options for new teams to sign RP riders in a specific niche? I mean, by definition, riders without a contract are already not good enough to get contracts. They're not the ones contributing to inflation, and they do not actually affect the AI of PCM, or really anything in the game at all.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
The thing I keep coming back to and that we would have to reckon with and agree to is, that if we really want to combat stat inflation because we have too many races where there are too many contenders for the AI to handle properly (or riders are too inconsistent/don't live up to their value), every team at every level has to get worse. And not "every rider everywhere gets -3" worse but worse in the sense that you have fewer race days where you expect to compete for the win/podium/Top 10. Or that you lose much of your depth if you want to keep having contenders on every terrain. If we want fewer contenders to increase AI performance, that is a necessary consequence.
On the flip side, this would also make the race days where you do compete more valuable, because your chances of getting a result in line with your rider's skillset are higher.
Of course we would have to make sure the "making teams worse" is done as fairly as possible (though I agree with bbl that 100% fairness is virtually impossible). I briefly mentioned this earlier: The way I think this could be done is by decreasing free agents while simultaneously increasing wage demands to balance what ivan called buying and selling teams. I can elaborate this further, but I've also read that going in that direction would basically destroy entire team building processes and should therefore be out of the question.
The way I see it, something's got to give. We can either continue to "allow" teams to be as strong and balanced as they are/become even stronger and stay with the current structure, or we limit the ability to be competitive on a high level on every terrain. If that is not what the majority wants, I think it's important to make that clear so we don't continue to circle around that specific aspect. (I should add that teams would still be of different strength and skillful team building rewarded. But the overall number of viable contenders and top domestiques would decrease.)
Of course, coming to that conclusion doesn't mean that across-the-board decreases could not still make sense because of other points that were made in this thread, same for changes to the training system.
As a final thought, I think there's a version of this where we tackle the inflation for sprinters only. That way, we could clean up the area where, I think most of us agree, the AI problems and randomness are the worst, while letting the natural progression (and some non-stat changes) improve things for other terrains where as some have said we're on a good way anyway.
Edited by cunego59 on 11-02-2021 02:25
As a final thought, I think there's a version of this where we tackle the inflation for sprinters only. That way, we could clean up the area where, I think most of us agree, the AI problems and randomness are the worst, while letting the natural progression (and some non-stat changes) improve things for other terrains where as some have said we're on a good way anyway.
Definitely agree with this. In addition to addressing the worst issue it would limit the "damage" if the change didn't work while also providing a model should it later be decided that other areas need to be addressed. I also think it would greatly reduce the "buying team" penalty of some of the solutions if only one market was impacted.
Roman wrote:
The solution here is clear though: create something like draft class for each year of birth so we add in around a similar quality and amount of riders each season so we can somehow control the amount of riders that are in the database. I may have created some of the current problems by doing a huge update of the database a few years back when I have helped a lot to transform the DB by replacing literally thousands of riders so the database would become as diverse and would also include in almost all pro riders in the world. The problem with that - the DB may have too many domestiques so they have became a lot replacable. From my point of view it is not such a big problem as you somehow expect these guys being a lot replacable, but today's amount is clearly too high. But it is hard to make a massive change from year to year - maybe a solution could be to give -1 for all riders that don't find a team for the next year's database and are over the age of 25 + were not released because of cap complications for a team. For these riders it could make some nice roleplay sense to make them worse - a year without racing won't make you better and MGUCI have no grants to help people that are already outside of their school age. This would partially tackle the problem with the current amount of riders. If this is too harsh, we may at least start with riders that have not found a team for 2 years as we have the data in the DB.
I'm not necessarily opposed to this, but I'm just not sure what it would accomplish, besides limiting options for new teams to sign RP riders in a specific niche? I mean, by definition, riders without a contract are already not good enough to get contracts. They're not the ones contributing to inflation, and they do not actually affect the AI of PCM, or really anything in the game at all.
The positive in the idea (as I see it) is that by slowly letting the uncontracted riders become worse, we could also add talents/new riders worse than we currently add, and thus allowing all of us to slowly accept that lower stats can actually be OK.
I suppose that in 3 years time all of us have 25% starting to decrease in stats, and in 5 years time 50%. And then the effect will start to really show, as we only have the remaining young leaders left, and whatever we have assigned and trained up.
It wouldn't hurt anyone on the short term, while some might have to rethink their long term plans - But it would also still be very much possible to go by the year-to-year aproach that some takes, as the riders that have a contract and is released into the DB isn't actually affected.
I think this is a very solid suggestion by Roman, that will slowly eat away the DB for us to balance it better overall, and to control the intake of new additions better...
If riders are needed for roleplay reasons (Eg. riders from Bahrain) then those can obviously still be added to keep that part alive.
On short term it would mean that domestiques would become slightly worse, and on the long term it would make it easy for us to control the amount of leaders and sub leaders in the DB, so it can be balanced.
I have commented on some of your suggestions above in a quote to BBL.
I'm not particularly in favor of earmarking money for training. I know that you and I love that part of the game very much, but others don't really and would rather spend as much money as possible on a "gamechanger", so I don't think it's suitable to change that. How much money is floating around is obviously always up for debate.
While I agree that it might not be feasible for me to train Lecuisinier further, training him from 75 to 77 HI would see him lose 1 RD (This season he has 1 left, so it wouldn't change anything.). Going from 75 to 79HI would also be the same, while going for 85MO/81HI he would lose a total of 2RD (going from 36 to 34). But he would then be the new Spilak which can win GT's and podium in ardennes to make a heavy impression. But Lecuisinier is already so well rounded that he may not be the best argument.
But what about Coquard then? He's arguably the best sprinter in the game - BUT has limitations in a fairly bad flat stat of 73, low MO and HI aswell... With your suggestions he could be quickly - and easily - boosted to become superior. He still have 2 years left of training, so making him 77FL would be a gamechanger (Degenkolb/Bewley level), and making him better in MO and HI aswell to make him even more complete. He has quite a lot of racedays and isn't difficult to plan, because he is a one-trick-pony so he will always get to ride his best races.
It basically just means, the higher the OVL, the bigger the gain. And that is not a good path imo. Miguel Angel Lopez fe is 71TT, and has an OVL ov 79,44. So it doesn't make sense to make him better at TT's. If it would cost a normal stat gain to move from 71-73TT and still possible to train him in MO or HI then he would become beastlike very very soon.
Caleb Ewan with 71HI and 79OVL, can suddenly end up with 79HI by the end for quite cheap. Gaviria even 80HI.
I'm OK with changing the training system, but I do believe we have to have the OVL in play at some point. But changing the training system to OVL -2 could be a solution. That would mean that training Coquard in FL would cost 77 rather than 79 and thus atleast being somewhat alluring, but still expensive. Also I think it wouldn't hurt to enhance the -10 OVL/stat thing to 70 max rather than 67. This would help Demare f.e. to become 70MO, which wouldn't really make him a better GC rider, but would allow him to be the ardennes type rider that everyone thought he would end up to be.
And just for the record (for everyone). When I'm talking about -3 to all riders it is thought as being a part of a better DB control, and to change AI behaviour over a long term. It isn't meant to be a quick fix, but to open up for us to better manage the DB over the path of 5-10 years. A quick fix isn't (imo) the path to take on a problem that have been slowly built up, and in a game where planning ahead is key.
![imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg](https://imgur.com/KlJUqDx.jpg[/img[img]]https://imgur.com/yUygrQ.jpg)
This would partially tackle the problem with the current amount of riders. If this is too harsh, we may at least start with riders that have not found a team for 2 years as we have the data in the DB.
