Another really weird sprint and this time AKA fails again, which I guess should have been expected. Most concerning to me is that AKA never had any teammates near him to prevent that kind of gap from going away. We brought a full leadout here and it meant absolutely nothing as each stage was kind of a free for all with random placement and rider tactics. If AKA had just followed that first group in the sprint, he probably would have easily placed high enough for the GC.
3rd on GC is still fine, and I consider myself lucky to have even taken that much, considering what teams like Centovalli and Glanbia put up with from their main sprinters. Losing the points classification by one point stings a bit too, but still some extra scoring. We did get a stage win out of this, but honestly this race has soured my expectations for AKA this year even more than they were before. I just have no confidence that he's going to be at all consistent. Rather than last year's Holloway, he's probably gonna end up more like last year's Coquard - dominating wins scattered between complete no-shows.
Thanks for the great reports Marcovdw and congrats to Nordica!
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
One 4th place and 13th in the GC on its own would be a massive disappointment and the no-show by Selig is worrying either way. But Samuel Mugisha winning the white jersey makes up for everything. Surely a bit lucky in a race like this, but I'll take it. So cool to have a young Rwandan talent up on the podium!
Well my goal was for Keough to be competitive and we falied that. Was hoping flat races would be the one race where our primary joy wouldn't be break hunting but Rathe had clearly decided that was our only hope by Stage 3. And his bonus seconds mean he beat Keough by 15 spots in the GC.
Or course when the split happens we might have been regretting that but once it splits at that stage you are never going to recover. A little irked that we managed to be on the front multiple times on stages but still get terrible positioning in the finale. Clearly Holloway was not only our most talented rider but the smartest one as well.
Congrats to Carsi and thanks for sorting through the mess and generating coherent reports Marco. Now onto a long ramble on the sprint situation.
I agree this wasn't bad by AKA, not great, but not bad, But I am more optimistic that he will be relatively consistent. Holloway didn't win every stage but he was far more consistent than his competitors over the season. AKA will be similar, I bet he will generally finish these C2 sprint GCs in the top 5, but nobody else will. I think for riders like Pelucchi and Krieger (2nd and 4th) who basically have the same stats as Bennett (45th) and Keough (38th) it is all about luck on the day. At least that is the hope I am holding on to.
I do think the PCM sprint AI is bad but I also think if there is one area where the stat inflation in the Man game DB has a big negative impact it is on lower level sprints. I think the best AI in the world is going to have trouble handling 30+ riders with similar stats. It is bad at higher levels but not to the same extent. There are 99 78-80 SP sprinters but only 30 81-83, so at the top level you get more differentiation.
And I don't think it is fair to managers who invest in a sprinter like Rheinhardt that someone can pick up a sprinter in the draft and have a pretty good shot to do just as well.
Generally I think gradual reductions of the stats make sense but I think the sprint stat inflation may need to be done quicker. Simply reducing any free agent's 77+ sprinter SP and AC by 1 to 3 during the offseason would help. And any not signed before the draft should decide on early retirement.
Ulrich Ulriksen wrote:
I do think the PCM sprint AI is bad but I also think if there is one area where the stat inflation in the Man game DB has a big negative impact it is on lower level sprints. I think the best AI in the world is going to have trouble handling 30+ riders with similar stats. It is bad at higher levels but not to the same extent. There are 99 78-80 SP sprinters but only 30 81-83, so at the top level you get more differentiation.
You're definitely right, and I also think that we as MG managers expect that relatively small stat differentials will matter more than they really do. I think to us, looking at the DB spreadsheets, the few stat points differences that separate a top CT sprinter from a minor leadout guy seem pretty dramatic, when in game that's really not the case. And we probably wouldn't expect it to be the case as much if we were just playingPCM with an irl DB - it's the nature of MG that makes us focus on it.
At the same time, I'm not sure that's really most of the problem anyway, based on what we saw in Tachira earlier this year. Tachira had a very small sprint field with a lot of differentiation between leaders (top ten sprinters ranging from 72-79), and we still saw similar results. The strongest either won or barely participated, while much lower level guys consistently over-performed without any rhyme or reason. The differences between them power wise seemed mostly random. The matrix we have makes it a lot worse, but I think it's only part of the problem.
In any case, it's really not a fixable problem at this point. We've done everything we can to make the stages more suitable. At this point it's just the engine we're working with. It's disappointing, but at least we can plan knowing how it works from now on. When I complain about a guy like AKA underwhelming, I have to shoulder that responsibility entirely because I knew already that training a sprinter would be a risky maneuver in this engine. I think that knowledge will spread around and shape how we play. Only thing it messes up is the OVL and wage formulas, since just by luck some guys will still overpeform and it will be hard to gauge sprinter value, leading to market bubbles (as we saw this past offseason).
Anyway, this probably isn't the time or place for that discussion, sorry to hijack another thread.
RIP Exxon Duke, David Veilleux, Double Feature, and Monster Energy
Bouhanni again in contention but coming a bit too far behind..Hopefully we continue to improve. Thanks for the reports and gratz to all winners. Sprinter field is perhaps too full in CT, will be a lesson.
"It’s a little bit scary when Contador attacks." - Tommy V
