Explanation: TTT World Championships for professional teams as it is in real life. It could be a goal to some sponsors forcing us to look for some good TT-ers, that are otherwise not very useful compared to other types of riders.

Why: Because I think it’s relatively easy to implement and may add an interesting aspect to our careers.

Explanation: While echelons are possible to be created in windy conditions, the mechanism is not very realistic. It’s usually race of attrition, where another riders are being shed from the peloton as they run out of energy. What I would like to see is that breaks in the peloton would appear in random places of it when there is an acceleration in windy conditions. Would be nice if important riders could drop a bit further down the peloton from time to time for different reasons to make the meaningful splits a bit more frequent, as these riders sit in the top20-30 places in the peloton all the time nowadays.

Why: It would make echelons stages more realistic and would provide further opportunities to exploit this kind of racing for your own benefits.

Explanation: This has been mentioned earlier in one of the post. I second that and I want to add that I’m completely incapable of getting good results in big stage races with world-class sprinters. And they usually finish way more down the order, than their skill-form combo would suggest. It also never happens that a second-rate climber from my team would go into the breakaway and finish in front of the peloton on a mountain stage. There should be more variety in results.

Why: I enjoy playing the career mode with simulating all of the races. But this brings some annoying stuff like not being able to fight for GT stage wins with world-class sprinters at all.

Explanations: When I’m a team leader in “Be a pro” mode and I’m being left behind peloton due to a crash, all of my team-mates just still sit in the peloton instead of some of them dropping back to help me chase down the main group.

Why: Because it’s annoying to lose races due to the lack of support from my own team like that.

Explanation: This also has been mentioned many times earlier in this thread, but I think not all of the commands I can think of have already been mentioned. There should be options for us to say to our team-mates what to do:
- Stop chasing: sometimes they ride hard for us, but they’re putting the pace that makes us feeling uncomfortable.
- Ride full-gas: when there’s an opportunity to create a split and we need a short but very hard effort from our team-mates.
- Ride hard: when we feel good and want to put a pace that will tire our opponents or bring the breakaway back.
- Ride moderately: Our team-mates will set steady, but not hard pace. This could be used when there’s a hesitation in the peloton and nobody wants to chase or when we hope a given section of the race will not be raced very hard so we take the responsibility for pace-setting ourselves and hope other teams will not decide to ride hard due to that.
Also commands “go for water now”, “stop protecting me”, “protect me with the next rider” (when the rider who currently protects us is run out of energy but still able to hand onto the group).

Why: To make “Be a pro” mode both more realistic and enjoyable.

Explanation: It’s frequent thing that riders develop their main skill quickly, but their secondary skills are not there yet and we see riders with strange distribution of skills. The same goes for deterioration, sometimes secondary skills deteriorate much quicker than the main skill giving the same effect. I believe there should be created a matrix which will indicate the minimum value of secondary skills for given value of primary skill. Minimum value should always be reached automatically when primary skill changes. For example, 78 MO riders should not be allowed to have less than 74 HI, 79 MO should not be allowed to have less than 75 HI etc. Sprint, cobble and TT skills should indicate minimum flat skill, and generally most of the skills shouldn’t be allowed under a certain value for riders of certain class.

Not to mention the fact that I would like to see more versatile newgens. For example, there are very little climbers who are good in both TT and hills, so it's hard for them to win big stage races as long as the old riders are still in the game. And I have never seen a newgen simillarly versatile to Sagan or Kwiatkowski.

Why: I’m fed up of seeing riders with unnatural set of skills. Also newgens have often problems with competing with real riders even after many years, because they have secondary skills at much worse level usually.

Explanation:
- First of all, I think riders find new teams a bit too quickly. In real life, there are still dozens of good riders still searching for new team in August or even September. In the game, all of good riders have new contract signed by the end of July. We have little options to react if our negotiations with riders who were our primary goals fail.
- Why do U-23 riders usually hesitate longer than older riders when negotiating with my team? It should rather work the other way around. Good riders who are aware of wide interest, can wait longer, but young riders for who offer from big team is a real deal, should be quick to accept it.
- More options for players in negotiations. If rider can tell us that he wants to wait, why can’t we say the same and tell a rider who wants to sign with us that we want to wait? Of course he won’t wait forever if he has other good offers, but if our is the best one, he should be willing to risk and wait a bit to maximize his chance. There could be an option “we need quick answer” as well. Also there should be option to change our offer before the rider gives us his answer.
- Contract extensions should be possible to negotiate before negotiations with other riders start. Also there should be an option to buy rider out of contract with other team, as it happens in real life.
- Feedback from riders could be implemented to make us aware how big our chance for signing a given rider is. For example he could say “I like your offer but I want to have more time to think about it” when he likes our offer or “It seems I may have more interesting options at the moment” if we need to come with something better.


Why: To have more realistic process of negotiations.

Explanation: It should be the player, not the computer, who decides which rider starts first and last in both TTTs and opening ITTs.

Why: Because in short TTTs starting order can change a lot and sometimes our good TT rider starts first in ITT so we can’t find out which effort is optimal on worse riders and that limits our chance of good result.

more attribute movement, training effects

get more use of training.
Riders need training to stay at their high levels or built up a new specialisation.

for example:
We all know Tony Martin is a TT Specialist, he needs to put a high effort on TT in his training.
So lets say there are all the attributes and you can decide how much percent he should use for a special attribute in training.

Personal training:
Martin is already at a high TT level so if you want him to get the max amount of the attribute, you need to invest a lot of training/percent. We give him the full 100% on TT. But now we got the problem that he is only working on his TT abilities and the other attributes will decrease, because they don't get trained.

Now Tony Martin's Training looks like this: FLA0% MON0% HIL0% TTR100% PRL0% COB0% SPR0% ACC0% DHI0% FTR0% STA0% RES0% REC0%


Trainer:
What it needs now is a Trainer.
Every Trainer is different and also got his own specialisation.
"Trainer A" has the following training effects: FLA15% MON0% HIL5% TTR35% PRL15% COB0% SPR0% ACC10% DHI0% FTR0% STA10% RES10% REC0%

Tony Martin's Training with Trainer: FLA15% MON0% HIL5% TTR135% PRL15% COB0% SPR0% ACC10% DHI0% FTR0% STA10% RES10% REC0%


Now the TTR is above 100% so we need to change Tony Martin's Personal Training:
FLA15% MON0% HIL10% TTR65% PRL5% COB0% SPR0% ACC0% DHI0% FTR0% STA5% RES0% REC0%

The final trainingplan fully build on TT:
FLA30% MON0% HIL15% TTR100% PRL20% COB0% SPR0% ACC10% DHI0% FTR0% STA15% RES10% REC0%


Bonuses:
Another aspect could be a bonus on the spezialisation. Martin is a TT-spezialist so he gets a 25% Trainingbonus on the following !4! stats: TTR, PRL, FLA, RES,
These bonuses are static and can't be moved.

new training with the bonus:
FLA55% MON0% HIL15% TTR125% PRL45% COB0% SPR0% ACC10% DHI0% FTR0% STA15% RES35% REC0%

So we see TTR again over 100% the personal training needs an update:
FLA20% MON0% HIL20% TTR40% PRL5% COB0% SPR0% ACC10% DHI0% FTR0% STA5% RES0% REC0%

after all that, we have the training including the specialisation bonus:
FLA60% MON0% HIL25% TTR100% PRL45% COB0% SPR0% ACC20% DHI0% FTR0% STA15% RES35% REC0%

On all attributes with 0% there will be no improvement.

Lets try it with Contador.
In this case there is a GT Bonus: MON, TTR, ACC, REC all with 25% = 100%

"Trainer B" (specialised on GT):
FLA0% MON25% HIL10% TTR15% PRL5% COB0% SPR0% ACC15% DHI0% FTR0% STA0% RES10% REC20% = 100%

and Contadors Personal training:
FLA10% MON20% HIL5% TTR20% PRL0% COB0% SPR0% ACC10% DHI0% FTR0% STA0% RES10% REC25% = 100%

all together we get his trainingplan:
FLA10% MON70% HIL15% TTR60% PRL5% COB0% SPR0% ACC50% DHI0% FTR0% STA0% RES20% REC70% = 300%


The higher the attribute the more training you need to keep it on that level. So if MON is on 85 you could stop train it, but within a few months you won't believe your eyes the stat is decreasing. In this case the training should be around 30 - 40% to keep the attribute on that high amount.



Why:
It would be a great future for the managing part. You can create a lot of various training plans and you have more influence on the riders evolution.
It's hard to understand, but this would bring the training stuff to a new level in PCM.

Explanation of idea:
After also losing the Potential stars of the riders I thought why not giving the trainer the opportunity to find out the potential of every rider stat in form of a "potential sense".
After January the trainer gives his first statement on the potential value he found out during the training days with the riders. BUT this potential is not to 100% the potential the rider really got. So the better the "potential sense" of the trainer is, the closer it is to the real potential of the riders.

Why:
This would bring back the Potential stars for each stat in a more interesting way and gives also some unknown development, because the trainer could also see the false potential in a rider.

Explanation of idea:
What would be also great some potential variations during the seasons. Here it's hard to say on what this should depend.
So I thought comparisons during seasons and the influence of the manager (ME) himself.
If a riders got 3 top10s and 1 top5 result in the 1st season, and only a top25 in the 2nd season his overall potential is decreasing for the 3rd season.
Kittel not winning a single race in one year so his potential drops. Which means no step forward on his stats for next season. And what also could happen decreasing stats in some way, because the potential multiplication is to low to keep the stats on that high range.
So it's also in your hand what riders you are most having a look on and get the best out of them to push them forward on their potential stats.
The moral system could also be taken into count.
This is just a simple basement on how it should work, in detail race categories have to be taken into this, maybe the overall strength of the rider compared to the opponents,... to give this a better value.
So for sure victories are one thing, but what's with the helpers, water carriers?
So to be a little bit unfair that's why they are in that position. If you as manager decide to give a water carrier chances to show himself and it works, next year he will be no longer one ;-).

Why:
You can now decide how good a rider can develop. The responsibility is in the hand of us. Sure Kittel not winning a single race is way far, but this should show how it's meant to be.

Explanation of idea:
I wish that the stats are more moving on influences like the fitness, moral, favourite races, weather conditions.
Overall I want to get more knowledge on the actual stat strength of my rider. With all this fitness and stuff you never know really how strong a rider is actually. So I would create a second window next to the basic stats with the actual stats of the riders including fitness and all that to see how strong my riders are at the moment.

Also some temporary stat drops.
So if a riders moral is going down during the season stats are decreasing temporary. So very bad moral means -1 on all stats, or bad moral -2 on specific ones.
The 3 favourite races could be also some big moments for the riders where they can gain temporary stats or fitness points same goes to weather conditions. Or in this way the daily form could be a very interesting point. Because this is most of the time not working on this things. Got riders loving rain and colder conditions and then they get -2 daily form on that??

Why:
This would bring a good overview of the actual strength of the riders compared to their basic stats. The way it's working right now is OK for people playing for a longer time and knowing how this has to be taken into count.
The moral, fav. races and the conditions look like a realistic goal for 2016 to get them to work. Also with random weather likes, dislikes on riders having non compared to their origin. example: Spain hot, dry Bretagne: cold, rain,...

Explanation of Idea: we discuss this very often what is the AI doing or "thinking".
With all that I remembered some RPG's were the AI Names get in different colors so you can see if they are good or bad.
So why not doing this in PCM?
green colored Name = working with you
normal colored name = neutral
red colored name = not working with you

To make it even better.
command lines to the AI
So if you ask the peloton for help to catch the front you get answers back. Yes but only if example two or more riders of my team work with them in front on around 70+ effort.
"Maybe, later!"
So if they give back "NO!" the color changes red.
If "YES" the color goes green if I do that what they asked me and help out, or I do nothing and the color stays neutral. Like in "Maybe, later!"

Or the AI asking me. Or give statements why they do this and that.
Like if I try to follow the break some teams turn green and join the follow with a comment and others turn red, because they got someone in front and don't like my work. This team could also stay red during the stage, because of that.

Or a table with options to click and see who is interested in following the break/win the stage, work against a leader of a category,... and with the neutral color we got the unknown.

Could be also a interesting point for "be a pro" in form of teammate tactics like Anderis ideas: Riders dropping back to a team leader and Team-orders in “Be a pro” mode.

Why:
You get more control of the AI and knowledge of what they are doing and why. Some things are getting very deep so this needs perhaps more development but a basic info system would be a great first step.

Explanation of Idea: Who deserves the best sprinter stat in PCM? Does Kittel should get a higher rating as Cavendish? Is Greipel a 82, 84, or 83 Sprinter?
I think they are all together great sprinters. So why not giving them stars from 1 to 5 in steps of half stars like 1, 1.5, 2,...
Here a pic how it would possibly look like:

Evolutions have a bigger impact. From Worldclass to nowhere, no this sounds to dramatic, but with this system the skills become more important, because losing or winning a "star" means a lot.

Why:
If we see how close everything in today's cycling is, the pure stat rating is to detailed in it's form. The biggest factors are moving to the fitness, the dailyform, terrain, race situations, freshness, other important stats for the race,...

It just an idea and maybe it's worth a try to test it out. But as I may know this would change the whole PCM Engine so this may never happen.

Explanation: I’m a world class rider in “be a pro” mode and I have good form and I’m riding dot 85 effort (my energy bars are not empty) and I still can’t catch the rider with “struggling” animation who rides 15-20 seconds in front of me (alone, not in the group). This should not appear. “Struggling” animation should mean rider does really struggle.

Why: It’s frustrating to see rider who is visually struggling, but still manages to keep a good pace.

Explanation: After just few years of the career, there are multiple of very good newgens (main skill>78) coming from exotic, I mean really exotic countries. Something should be done to prevent this.

Why: It’s unrealistic.

Explanation: Unless the pace is very high, or the road is very narrow, peloton should always leave a space from one side of it, so any rider could quickly move up the peloton if uses enough of an effort. It’s really frustrating that sometimes you need 15 or 20 kilometers to move yourself from the back to the front of the peloton, when the pace is slow, the road is wide and nothing special happens. Set the riders behavior so they never use (unless the road is narrow, the pace is high or the terrain is complicated) the space at the very left (or right) side of the road (unless they want to move, of course) so anyone who gets there, can get to the front in reasonable time.

Why: It will prevent riders from getting stuck in situations they wouldn’t have got stuck in real life.

Explanation of Idea: Just give Money in be-a-pro some sort of use. Spend it on your own training camps or recon or better equipment. Anything will do! Just give it a reason to actually be there.

Why: Ok it's not just PCM that does this, it's all sports management or be-a-pro games. Your contract is coming to an end and you're looking for a new one, you are picking the contract on three criteria: Length, Salary and Squad. By squad i mean, are you going to be a helper/leader/free-role. Except, Salary means litterally nothing because Money has zero use in Be-a-Pro.
You can't spend it. You don't need it to live. You just collect it endlessly as like a tertiary counter of success (behind your rankngs points and results). I know when i play be-a-pro i don't even give a consideration to the Salary, and often i'll drop my request to the minimum to guarantee myself a spot at the team i want.

In Career mode Money has a purpose, you use it on Wages and Camps and Recon and various bits and pieces. If you run out you get into trouble and if it's low your team suffers. In Be-a-pro that will never happen, you can coast by on a minimum wage as an 85AVG rider for the lowest CT team in the game. It just kills so much of the challenge and realism for me.

Force me the make a real choice. Do i sign with the team i want, but struggle financially, or do i take the extra cash i need (not want, need)