There has been testing going in the background from the time the 2024 season started. While initial tests with the base game version was not successful, the last two patches/betas had promising changes, that ideally work a lot better. We can never be 100% sure with the MG DB and 120+ races but most bugs were improved upon.
Eventually, we have to move forward with the game version, and now is as good a time as any for this impending switch. Just for recall, MG 22 was kept on for the current season simply because we did not have enough testing at the time. I would request those who were testing PCM 24 so far to post their findings in this thread, so that managers can get some idea of what to expect, to a certain extent, if not fully.
On the above note, we are always looking to have more help with game testing in the off season and reporting during the season. For anyone willing to contribute to this, we would like to point out that PCM 24 is now on sale for Euro 11,99 instead of 39,99, which likely is the lowest price for quite some time. This deal is available till 3rd February, 2025.
In connection to this announcement, there is the topic of the updated OVL formulas (first draft shared some time back by Roturn) and how the new Medium Mountain stat will work. Work on this has been ongoing in the background and final decisions will be shared before the statgains process starts for unmaxed riders.
Is there a (basic) PCM24 MG DB available though? The stat matrix is usualy very different from the game and has caused problems in the past, so if we're testing, we should be testing in similar conditions.
Interesting! I hope this will help with some issues regarding sprinting at the very least, as Well as the fluke GT podiums that have been showcased with the current version, which can determine relegations.
I am (as always) very happy to purchase a couple of versions to future (or current) reporters. Those are the backbone of this very game, and we clearly need more to volunteer, which is always an easy thing to say when I’m not contributing in a significant manor like I used to.
Just a quick input about GTs podium. Im playing in another site a sim game with PCM24 and at the TDF Kevin Vauquelin finished 1st, Rafal Majka 3rd from brekaway. And in the Giro Laurens de Plus 7th from br akaway.
About sprints, they seems normal, except one thing. If you sprinter is considered GC rider by the AI, he doesnt sprint.
But, except this things, i have very positive experience.
Just a quick input about GTs podium. Im playing in another site a sim game with PCM24 and at the TDF Kevin Vauquelin finished 1st, Rafal Majka 3rd from brekaway. And in the Giro Laurens de Plus 7th from br akaway.
About sprints, they seems normal, except one thing. If you sprinter is considered GC rider by the AI, he doesnt sprint.
But, except this things, i have very positive experience.
2nd this seen multiple instances in game of 3rd tier guys taking 10-15 mins in GT's
Sprints got a massive improvement latest patch though a real win
This is the mangame 2023 DB for PCM 24. Sharing this so folks can test, with the expectation that a summary of test results will be shared with the forum.
You need to change the name to official release. I remapped the equipment so it works with PCM Daily equipment so if you have downloaded the PCM db for 24 that should be fine. But not sure how it will work without jerseys - it might just populate defaults or it might crash. Reporters can just copy the jerseys from the PCM22 2023 season install, the files are identical in 22 and 24. If someone else is serious about testing and needs jerseys we can get that. Also the mangame uses it own classification xml's that isn't important for most testing but can impact the results of some races.
I have done some testing with the latest patch and will share those results soon, agree with others the latest patch was a big improvement over prior ones. I have not tested a GT, that takes a lot of work.
THanks for the note on GT in sprint races - was wondering if that was addressed - sounds like it is not. As KB notes we use dummy mountain stages in those races.
Will keep those and hopefully that still fixes it.
This is the mangame 2023 DB for PCM 24. Sharing this so folks can test, with the expectation that a summary of test results will be shared with the forum.
I wonder if a solution for GTs could be to split GTs into 3 one week races as it seems like the problem with huge breaks is not really happening there.
I don't know how easy it is in 24 version to move rankings and cyclist (so it remembers fatigue) table from one race savefile to another, but as far as I know it should still be possible.
The other potential idea here could be to not move anything, but have 3 mini-tours inside one GT with its own rankings. Could be a nice way to have more stories and aims inside of a GT. If it helps to improve AI, may be worth it.
Fwiw, I ran a Tour de France with the 2024 IRL route and there were no GC turbulations because of breakaways:
The only successful mountain breakaway included Latour, Carthy, Galta, Aular and Amezawa on stage 20, but they only held on to finish just over a minute ahead of the favorites and gained just a few spots. Some contenders were hurt by breakaway attempts instead, like Tenorio for example who lost a lot of time after being caught early.
What was more notable in terms of the GC was that the yellow jersey often struggled a lot. Phinney took yellow after the first time trial, defended it for the first, pretty unselective mountain stage (13 riders finished together) and then had a bad following day, losing 3 minutes to stage winner Dombrowski, 2+ minutes to Herklotz, among others, losing the jersey. Egan Bernal took over, finished 11th on the next mountain stage and lost yellow immediately to Herklotz. The final mountain stage was the most notable one, where Herklotz cratered, losing 3'45 to Lecuisinier and more than 3' to Kudus and others. As overall gaps among the Top 10 were somewhat low, he finished only 7th in the GC.
I didn't follow each stage super closely, had them running in the background while doing other things, but it looked like the yellow jersey was often isolated fairly early and then did a lot of work even when groups were still pretty big. The Herklotz stage was the one with the Latour etc breakaway and they at one point had a gap of over 11 minutes, which maybe required early work. Puma's support was also very poor on that stage, with Johannesen and Madouas both finishing some 40 minutes behind the stage winner and 35 behind Herklotz. If this pattern holds in other tests, team support might become more important. However, it should be noted that the start list was also not the real one, as you can see almost all top riders were present, so I'll check again how it works in a less crowded field. This could of course also have an impact on breakaways, we'll see. Daily form was limited to +-2, the medium mountain stat is the average of MO and HI rounded up.
Another notable thing was a couple more successful breakways on flat stages in the early parts of the race than maybe would've been expected (also a succesful breakaway on the hilly stage 1). Other than that, the sprints looked pretty promising. Coquard won two stages in the first 10 days, then faded a bit. The other clear bunch sprint stages were won by Gaviria, Ewan and Ahlstrand, those were also the final points classification Top 4 sprinters (Phinney won green in the final time trial). Gaviria came out on top with 113 points, Ewan had 108, Ahlstand 105, Coquard 100.
I'll run a couple more editions with the 2023 ManGame route and ideally the startlist as well and then post all exported results here.
What I will say with regards to suggestions like those from Roman: In my opinion, there's a much easier solution: If it becomes clear during a stage that the gap to the breakaway would significantly compromise the GC rankings, like a complete non-contender getting so far ahead that he could well end up on the podium/Top 5 (a Malecki situation, if you will, or like the examples mentioned above with Vauquelin winning the Tour with an IRL database), the reporter should be able to just cancel the stage and restart it. You might lose half a report in the process, but it's much simpler than doing some heavy editing or changing the whole concept of GTs.
This should obviously be limited to the most extreme cases and not the Galta/Carthy types using breakaways to jump from 12th to 5th or other big surprises that at least somewhat make sense, especially in smaller races, but I think reporters have a very good feeling for what kinds of outcomes will result in unanimous frustration (the super weird MSR finish a couple of years ago could also be such a case imo, but we could also restrict it to GTs, of course).
just done a first few test on PCM24, ran Tour Down Under, LBL, MSR, Amstel, Fleche.
First note, Sprints are perfect now bar the odd leadout man scoring but even that is probably a realistic , positioning is super crucial but not seeing nearly as many top sprinters sit 50 wheels back and the "wind bug" seems to have completely gone
2nd note, better gaps especially on hilly stages no big groups of 100 coming in together after a descent which has been a huge problem for a while now and while not perfect they've made an effort to fix this which is promising, we probably still need the F1 style bonus seconds just in case but a move in the right direction
3rd note, Uphill 1-3km climbs, rubbish as per usual no different to PCM22, positioning is key and few riders change position up climbs can lead to one team who was on front having 5 guys in top 20-25
The first run did have an unusual breakaway moment: Tobias Halland Johannessen won the first big mountain stage (8) from a breakaway with over 9 minutes on the main contenders. He held it through the time trial and three mountain stages, but ultimately collapsed on stage 17 and would end up 16th overall in Paris.
On that stage 17, the yellow jersey went to another breakaway rider, namely Pierre Paolo Penasa. However, that wasn't a massive fluke like THJ, his breakaway group only finished 2'23 ahead of the main contenders, but he started the day just 2 minutes behind Lecuisinier. In general, at that point, time gaps were pretty small, with 12 riders within 5 minutes of each other.
That changed on stage 18, where Penasa immediately lost the jersey and fell back to 9th overall (he'd finish 10th). Lecuisinier took over, put in a very strong performance the following day, and that was enough to bring the jersey home. He won the race ahead of Phinney and Bernal (the final TT was quite odd though, with Munton winning it, Phinney just 5th, Lecuisinier 14th, among others - perhaps weather played a role).
It was notable that five of the seven major mountain stages, including four of five mountain top finishes, were won by breakaways, but apart from THJ, none with big gaps to the favorites.
Spoiler
1
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
Evonik - ELKO
83h23'07
2
Taylor Phinney
MOL Cycling Team
+ 1'21
3
Egan Bernal
Polar
+ 2'04
4
Tadej Pogacar
Cedevita
+ 2'45
5
Pavel Sivakov
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
+ 3'57
6
Brandon McNulty
McCormick Pro Cycling
+ 6'13
7
Joao Rodrigues
Binance
+ 6'49
8
Jan Hirt
Moser - Sygic
+ 7'36
9
Warren Barguil
Lidl Cycling
+ 9'42
10
Pierre Paolo Penasa
Genii Hyundai N Cycling
+ 12'53
11
Mattia Cattaneo
Minions
+ 13'18
12
Alex Kirsch
EA Vesuvio
+ 15'27
13
Nairo Quintana
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
+ 15'56
14
Hugh Carthy
cycleYorkshire
+ 17'09
15
Bartosz Warchol
Gazelle
+ 20'32
16
Tobias Halland Johannessen
Team Puma - SAP
+ 28'16
17
Daniel Habtemichael
Cedevita
+ 29'47
18
Sigurd Nesset
Grieg-Maersk
+ 33'02
19
Aleksey Rybalkin
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
+ 34'00
20
Jonas Gregaard
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
+ 35'03
21
Lawrence Warbasse
McCormick Pro Cycling
+ 35'58
22
Alexander Vlasov
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
+ 36'47
23
Jonas Vingegaard
Grieg-Maersk
+ 38'48
24
Milos Borisavljevic
Cedevita
+ 41'43
25
Petr Rikunov
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
+ 41'58
Sprints looked very good again. Grosu is easily the best rider on the start list and he won 3 of 7 bunch sprints, finishing Top 3 in two more, winning green quite comfortably. By points, Kennaugh was the next best sprinter ahead of Philipsen and Samolenkov, which looks reasonable. Two surprising stage wins for Lander and Prasad were also in there. The hilly stages also looked good with Simon Yates winning two suited that his skillset very well.
Very different story for the second go. This time, Lecuisinier took the first mountain stage and never looked back. He won the second mountain top finish as well, finished 2nd to breakaway survivor Preidler on the third and then won the fourth. The fifth was again won by Preidler from a breakaway, but PHL was the strongest of the contenders once more, all of which gave him enough of a lead over Phinney to be able to lose a combined two minutes to Phinney in the TTs and still win yellow comfortably.
The other two mountain stages and a few more were won by breakaways, looked fairly realistic on that front. The Top 10 in the GC were 10 of the Top 11 in the preview, only Quintana underwhelmed.
Spoiler
1
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
Evonik - ELKO
83h05'37
2
Taylor Phinney
MOL Cycling Team
+ 1'09
3
Egan Bernal
Polar
+ 4'50
4
Pavel Sivakov
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
+ 5'48
5
Tadej Pogacar
Cedevita
+ 6'06
6
Brandon McNulty
McCormick Pro Cycling
+ 7'43
7
Joao Rodrigues
Binance
+ 9'57
8
Warren Barguil
Lidl Cycling
+ 11'23
9
Jan Hirt
Moser - Sygic
+ 11'32
10
Hugh Carthy
cycleYorkshire
+ 15'31
11
Mattia Cattaneo
Minions
+ 16'24
12
Bartosz Warchol
Gazelle
+ 21'05
13
Alex Kirsch
EA Vesuvio
+ 24'25
14
Pierre Paolo Penasa
Genii Hyundai N Cycling
s.t.
15
Manuel Senni
Gazelle
+ 24'48
16
Ildar Arslanov
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
+ 29'28
17
Aleksey Rybalkin
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
+ 35'00
18
Alexander Vlasov
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
+ 35'22
19
Pascal Eenkhoorn
Evonik - ELKO
+ 37'31
20
Sepp Kuss
McCormick Pro Cycling
+ 38'18
21
Keagan Girdlestone
EA Vesuvio
+ 38'33
22
Alexander Foliforov
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
+ 39'06
23
Jonas Gregaard
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
+ 41'08
24
Daniel Habtemichael
Cedevita
+ 41'11
25
Denys Karnulin
Gazelle
+ 45'01
The sprints were a bit less consistent. Grosu only wins on the Champs Elysees, scores just one more podium finish and finishes as the 5th best sprinter in the points classification. Hsu wins three stages but shows little in others, Jakobsen is the best sprinter overall, including one stage win, but Phinney and Lecuisinier are far ahead of all of them, as the American takes green.
Third run and Lecuisinier again wins the first mountain stage. The second mountain stage is then won by the breakaway with a big margin. Nesset wins, but Preidler takes yellow and leads by 4'38 over PLH in the GC. He loses that entire time and then some in the time trial, Nesset takes yellow but only some 20 seconds ahead of Phinney and PLH.
The next mountain top finish (stage 14) is won from the breakaway by Carthy, but Phinney takes yellow, gaining a few more seconds on Lecuisinier. They're 14 seconds apart at this point, 2'51 on Nesset in third, Bernal already 3'21 in fourth place.
On stage 17, Lecuisinier takes yellow, gaining over a minute on Phinney. However, this is another breakaway stage and Penasa turns 3rd on the day to 3rd in the provisional GC. He was 3 minutes behind Bernal before the stage, and gains around 4 minutes on him here, as well as on most other contenders.
Another slightly odd result on stage 18, where Hirt is allowed into the breakaway despite being in 5th overall (I didn't follow this closely so I can't rule out he attacked late, but it looks unlikely from the results). The breakaway wins again, but the gap is limited, Hirt gains two minutes on the other favorites and moves up to 4th in the GC. Penasa just barely hangs on to the group of favorites, no differentiations there, so he remains 3rd. Nesset was also in the winning group, he's up to 6th, stage winner Barguil is 7th now.
Lecuisinier takes the win on stage 19, gaining more than a minute on Phinney. Nesset drops out of the Top 10, Penasa still hangs on to his podium place, though it's very close behind him. And in the final time trial, he does fall to 6th overall. In the final GC, Hirt in 5th overall, Barguil in 9th and Nesset in 14th all benefit from breakaway success as well.
The biggest sensation, though, is that Phinney gains 2'35 on PLH in the time trial and takes yellow by 9 seconds!
Spoiler
1
Taylor Phinney
MOL Cycling Team
83h16'07
2
Pierre-Henri Lecuisinier
Evonik - ELKO
+ 9
3
Egan Bernal
Polar
+ 6'22
4
Tadej Pogacar
Cedevita
+ 7'34
5
Jan Hirt
Moser - Sygic
+ 9'46
6
Pierre Paolo Penasa
Genii Hyundai N Cycling
+ 9'54
7
Pavel Sivakov
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
+ 10'25
8
Brandon McNulty
McCormick Pro Cycling
+ 10'39
9
Warren Barguil
Lidl Cycling
+ 11'50
10
Mattia Cattaneo
Minions
+ 12'59
11
Joao Rodrigues
Binance
+ 14'33
12
Bartosz Warchol
Gazelle
+ 15'52
13
Nairo Quintana
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
+ 16'15
14
Sigurd Nesset
Grieg-Maersk
+ 22'12
15
Hugh Carthy
cycleYorkshire
+ 23'25
16
Daniel Habtemichael
Cedevita
+ 24'29
17
Lennard Kämna
Carlsberg - Danske Bank
+ 25'27
18
Manuel Senni
Gazelle
+ 26'48
19
Miltiadis Giannoutsos
ELCO - ABEA
+ 31'20
20
Georg Preidler
Aker - MOT
+ 40'42
21
Aleksey Rybalkin
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
+ 41'34
22
Michal Kwiatkowski
Binance
+ 42'46
23
Sepp Kuss
McCormick Pro Cycling
+ 43'36
24
Ildar Arslanov
Tinkoff - La Datcha Team
+ 43'43
25
Alex Kirsch
EA Vesuvio
+ 44'50
Regarding sprints, Grosu is the most consistent again, leaving with one stage win and a few more podiums. Jakobsen did well and was a close second, although Farantakis was the only two-time stage winner among sprinters. Simon Yates also takes two stages, but green goes to Phinney again.
In total, I would say those results are promising. The third edition was most heavily influenced by breakaways in terms of the final GC, but I think 6th for Penasa is a somewhat harmless outlier (he was listed as 12th in the preview).
Breakaways were very strong in taking stage wins even on mountain top finishes: Of 15, breakaways won 9, with the other 6 going to Lecuisinier. I don't think that's necessarily a problem with the game, though, and I think if this pattern is confirmed in further testing, it might simply put an emphasis on stronger mountain support for the main contenders.
Sprints were solid, I'd say. Not flawless, but adding all three points classifications together reflects the sprinting field pretty well.
Another point that jumped out to me was that punchy sprinters looked strong on the stages they should. Simon Yates won a bunch of stages, the likes of Madouas or Narvaez consistently placed very well. And there was a nice variety of outcomes across stages and the three editions.
I will do a few runs of the Tour of America next, to try another route and another level of competition. Let me know if there's something you'd like me to pay attention to in particular.
I did three test runs of the Tour of America as well (preview here). Won't go into as much detail as with the TdF, but I can provide the result files again if requested. Key points:
1. No breakaway shenanigans here, either. Only mid to lower Top 20 GC places were affected in any way. In general, breakaways saw mixed results. In one run, they won 7 stages, in the others just 2 and 3, respectively. But always on stages that made sense.
2. The GC contenders seemed unusually fragile. Each of the big three (Eastman, McNulty, Reis) had days when they were significantly worse than expected, losing anywhere from two to four minutes on their rivals. As those days were spread unevenly across the three runs, there were three completely different podiums. This was not in any way related to the yellow jersey as it had been in my very first test.
Top 20 of the three runs (after stage 20 because the final stage kept crashing):
3. Sprints were pretty evenly distributed overall. Across 17 bunch sprints, nine different sprinter won at least one stage, none more than three. I would say this makes sense given the startlist. Sprinters could be very streaky across the runs, though. Reinhardt for example scored as many points in one run as he did in the other two combined, Petit had one really poor run where he scored around half as many points as in each of the other two, and so on. What I will say (and this is very much anecdotal, since I again didn't follow each stage super closely, so it would require further testing, but still), is that it looked like sprint trains were quite beneficial to have.
Full points tally across all three runs, and stage wins:
Points
Wins
Nur Aiman Zariff
Air New Zealand-Alfa Romeo
285
3
Houcaine El Sabbahi
Colombini Cycling
266
3
Theo Reinhardt
Adidas-Eurocash
262
3
Marco Haller
Kraftwerk Man Machine
249
1
Wouter Wippert
Simba Cement - Tanga Fresh
237
1
Adrien Petit
DuckDuckGo - Everesting
227
3
Madushanka Perera
Spark-BNZ Racing
223
1
Nacer Bouhanni
Strava
203
2
Matthew Walls
Zwift Pro Cycling
151
Most stage wins in total went to McNulty with 5, he also won two points classifications, the other one going to Powless. Reis had 3 stage wins, Eastman 1.
Again, nothing in here that would indicate any major worries regarding grand tours in PCM24 to me. I think you can find here again some clues that team strength could be more important than before, but that is mostly anecdotal, like I said.
I ran Tour of California twice, top 25 GC results below. I noticed also the "bad day" phenomenon. Particularly noticeable for Reis - in the first test he won the mountain stage, in the second he finished 20th. Resulting in two pretty different GC results - in a shorter race like this there is less time for that to even out. Also, I have only seen it on road stages not ITs.
A couple of other observations - both of which fit in the category of don't shoot me if I am wrong, these are just guesses. Dual leaders seem to be handled differently - see Darbellay and Stussi. And the way the MT stage played out felt a little different - the more hybrid guys like Dunbar and Min were not able to stay with the true climbers like they did in PCM22. On the other hand, Eastman was less dominant (which might just be he was lucky in the actual version).
We chose California to see if Med Mt had a big impact on the way the S7 of the 2023 race played out since it has a lot of shorter climbs but still rode as a GC/MT stage in PCM22. I think the answer to this is no - it was still largely dominated by the traditional GC guys like Eastman and McNulty. As noted above it was really the MT stage that played out differently.
Overall though I think a reasonable outcome. The sprints were still messy with a weak field but definitely better. Also, these tests were the 5th and 6th I ran under PCM24 and they were dramatically better than the first 4 which were prior to the latest patches - so we will need to make sure all reporters installs are on the right version.
Top 25 on GC, actual versus two tests below. Will post full results in a few days.
Thanks guys for all your work. Just saw there’s a new update that affects sprint trains and apparently also makes medium mountain/mountain stages more selective that’s how life today, with your experience in game do you think it’d affect much?
