Not only are those visually beautiful, but they also give those races a sense of uniqueness and develops their personality to a whole new level. How great is that.
Thanks for your outstanding work Cav-Fan, absolutely love it!
Beautiful creations, something for all MG managers to aspire for - thanks to CF for his input. Even more incentive to consider paying up for certain wildcard slots ........
These leader jerseys are looking great. Well done Cavendish-Fan!
What about adding individual classification XML files for stage races, too?
In some cases the GC would have been different when bonus seconds for finish- and intermediate sprints would have been like in reality.
e.g. Baltic Chain Tour (Prologue + 4 sprint stages):
Seems like the standard classification xml file was used resulting in big time bonuses
For intermediate sprints 6/4/2 seconds and 20/12/8 seconds for the final sprint
In the real race it would have been the half (IS: 3/2/1 and finish: 10/6/4).
The used XML left the prologue specialists without a chance what otherwise could've been a nice fight with the best sprinters.
Changing the awarded KOM-points could create some more excitement, too.
In many CT Man-Game races last season the KOM-points for minor climbs are taken by the break (often breaks had three or four riders in last years CT). While whenever KOM-points are left some activity can be seen by the bunch, at least by riders interested in the polka dot jersey.
I'm not talking about making classification.xml's for every race (apart from the already existing xml for pro tour races) it could be a nice addition to even just create e.g. five different files to divide. The xml can be chosen considering real life or best suiting.
@Margh: Not sure, how many new XMLs SN will add/use, but he at least already confirmed that flat stage races (like Eneco or Taihu) will see more bonifications rewarded at the finish. I would also remove bonifications at intermediates in those races, but that's just my preference
This year one xml was used for all races. I like having the standard system of 20-12-8 as it seems to work well against the likely time gaps, but am open to changes to the KoM and Intermediate sprint aspects.
As tsmoha says, for flat stage races the sprint time bonuses at the finish will change next year. My plan to use the F1 pts system for the seconds, awarding time to all Top 10 finishers.
A race like Baltic Chain Tour is intended for the sprinters. The prologue riders aren't expected to contend for GC.
Not sure what you mean about the KoM pts - are you suggesting you'd like to see points awarded for more than the Top 3 on the smaller climbs? (So perhaps 6-5-4-3-2-1 rather than 6-4-2).
SportingNonsense wrote:
...
Not sure what you mean about the KoM pts - are you suggesting you'd like to see points awarded for more than the Top 3 on the smaller climbs? (So perhaps 6-5-4-3-2-1 rather than 6-4-2).
Correct. I've tested smaller stage races with edited classification xml's (made by clamel) and enjoyed bunch-action at the KOM-sprints when points were up for grabs. Maybe the little speed ups can even counter the breakaway issue a little. PCM14-AI seems almost the same than PCM13-AI to me, maybe a tiny bit better.
Edited by Margh Norway on 09-03-2015 15:34
Sorry guys, I am on holidays currently, so I don't have much time to response.
@fjhoekie 5. Even it would contribute only 10 people, I believe it would be worth it to have some general discussion/spamming thread. If it works nicely on Twitter, if it works in HQs, it would work again.
@Ollfardh Well I thought nations would participate in these continental champs! If we start the season with these continental champs, I believe it could work!
@sgdanny Fully agree with your thoughts!
@Selwink1. Well, I don't think a new category would be any big problem, in reality, we would only divide current HC racedays and in some of theme there would only be PCT teams and some of theme there would be PT teams too. I am ok with no PT teams in C1 races. There could be other systems how to fill in these available places in races, that there always will be available if we remain with a system where everybody in PCT/CT can choose races where he want to race. The most active managers could get an oppurtunity to run a few development teams for a season to give experience to unmaxed unsigned riders and could get an advantage to have a 'small second team'.
3. Well, you are probably right, that mainly African champs would likely have a smaller than full field, but exactly that could get a reward to teams that have an interest to develope cycling there. I have a plan to send a big list of new/upgraded riders to SN in a few days, quite a lot African riders inclused, that could help this problem too. Australia and NZ would ride with Asia, that was exactly my thoughts. I believe this champs could start/end the season, so that it wouldn't matter so much if there is a delay/there are always some delays with sending race plans and so on.
6. 7. 8. There are some other ways ho we could made it a part of the MG, that it would suit the game better and useful way. I will try to devise something more useful.
9. a) Well, the training could be made more cheaper for PCT/CT teams for these domestiques. Mainly all of these potentially trainable domestics are from the same nationality as are the teams based in. This would allow to made better homegrown domestics for every team from smaller nations and it would help to solve the thing that the training can only utilize PT teams.
10. I know it works like that in real world. But we could use that in MG a little bit unrealistically how I suggest. We can have goals linked to team and so we could have goals linked to riders too.
@TheManxMissile 1. Well, the field size is a random thing and I don't believe the randomness should be awarded too much, there should be at least 18/10 teams in every race, it gives us a better AI too. I believe it should be awarded mainly only that randomness, that you send your top guys to a race, where there is a lower quality of the field.
Simlarly I believe a new HC-PCT category would be only a good thing, if we allow PT teams to start in HC races. As a former (P)CT manager, I wouldn't want to race against PT teams too much, but some racing against them would be a nice thing. As a PT team, I don't want to race against PCT teams too much too, as it won't get me many points. But I believe that some racing agianst each other race category would be a good thing. And we can reduce the calendar thankfully to that as well. There would be a lower number of PT races and only a slightly more HC races needed in addition.
3. It gives an American, African or Asian sprinter/climber a chance to win some big jersey, to win something. It would give a chance to compete in a big competition to riders from Gabon or Costa Rica. It would give a chance to Japanese team to dominate a hilly course. The only similarity I see only in possible Europe champs, as majority of current teams in Worlds are from Europe. In the end we can question what's the point of current TTT in Worlds? It doesn't give any jersey to any rider, it doesn't effect any next year's wage of a rider, it doesn't give any points to any team. I see a similar/bigger point in these champs than in a Worlds TTT or U23 races.
4. Allright, but even if this doesn't solve the problem too much, it could help, don't you think?
I agree with your view on activeness part.
@Heine This could work nicely. Would probably be more useful for MG than my original idea. For one single rider, I really like it!
@Smowz Exactly something like that, even through I would more like something like a 4-day race with cobble TT/TTT, Flanders type stage, Roubaix type stage and something in-between with cobbles.
@SN Well, I would love to help you somehow in a more organised and longterm way, but I can't run PCM apart for some testing, as my notebook is only good enough to run it on the lowest graphic details. But anything apart of that, I would like to help you.
1. Well, if PT teams will be able to send their best squads to HC races and points gained there will count for PT rankings, then I am ok with that. But PCT managers certainly won't enjoy that in their best possible race category there could be teams present from better racing division. Any other system will be at least better than what we have now, but the thing that I see as a must that results there should count for PT rankings. Still I believe we would all enjoy more action between PT/PCT. I am jealous for the system that PCT/CT have between them.
And interaction - yes, it is mainly about people, but in the same way, I believe it is about making the system the most possible enjoyable and fun for everyone, as I know that a lot of people are mainly interested in their own team, myself included. If there would a chance in the system, some other people would have way more interest in other division than they compete too.
2. Yes, ToNE is already partially decided by cobbles, but the thing I miss is a pure 3/4 cobble stage race, I certainly enjoyed some earlier decisions of De Panne Tour in CT, which was at least something close to what I would possibly like.
3. I could certainly help with continental champs at least with making startlists and database creation, and as existing stages for races would likely be used, the only thing I couldn't help with is reporting.
4. I know this seems to be the problem, but still I think that zero level of experience could be used for these 20/21 years old riders you decide to add. It would still at least partially help to solve the problem that riders become maxed-out too soon.
5. In my opinion the only system way how to improve that situation is to make PT managers part of some PCT/CT too. Myself included, I would have way higher interest in at least HC races if there are other PT teams present in a meaningful way. In the same way some of these PCT teams should have more interest in PT too. In my opinion currently PT is something like the Premier League and PCT/CT is something like the Football League. But we should try to make the system less elitist and more interactive between divisions. That's in my opinion the only way what we can do. For example merging PT and PCT/CT discussion forums could possibly help.
6. You are right, systems b) and c) are quite similar. I agree that PCT/CT could likely do with form and out-of-form months, but the problem like you say is, that out-of-form months would likely be used in almost all cased in months when actually these riders are not racing any race at all, so that out-of-form period is absolutely useless.
An extreme system could be, that it could work like that for every one +1 form you have to select two -1 form months. There could even be an option to select +2 month, but you would have to then select four -2 months. An extreme option could be that you can select one +3 month, but then you have to select eight -3 months. If there will be a similar amount of flat/cobble/hilly/climbby races in every month, this could in my opinion work really nicely. Similarly for PT, it could work with months system too, if races are moved a little bit in calendar. But even if we split the PT to parts like this, we could have a lot of choices to make for which parts should our riders be in forms and where they shouldn't:
A - Early season (Badaling, Qatar, Herbiers, Nieuwsblad, Nice, Tirreno, Catalunya)
B - Classics I. (San Remo, EMCC, Koln, Pais Vasco, Ronde, Amstel)
C - Classics II. (Roubaix, Fleche, LBL, Romandie, Appia)
D - Giro
E - Vuelta
F - Pre-Tour races (California, Suisse, Dauphine, Duche)
G - Tour
H - Post-Tour races (Norway, Colombia, Liechtenstein, Moscow, Deutschland)
I - Close season (Lisbon, ToNE, TTT, Praha, Tasmania, Lombardia)
With something like ~20 race days in each of 9 parts we could use exactly the same +- form system like in PCT/CT. As it was founded that even 86-99 attributes are better than 85, but even slightly, so it could be an interesting tactical all-in decision to go for me with +3 form for Velits and give up the rest of the season to give it a real go in a GT.
I believe I could collect all these choices and make the needed changes to DBs. If it would be only something like 9 extra DBs for PT and 10 for PCT/CT, and we have a choice excel file from which I could copy these choices somehow to our excel DB to apply these choices, then it should be really easy for me to create all these ~20 additional DBs with changed DYN_cyclist.xml files.
7. Well, maybe if a rider gets a no-trade clause, he could get an discount on his renewals fee, if they are introduced. If he is then traded, a fine would have to be paid. It would reward resigning a rider to keep him in the team and not only to sell him later. Another thing here could be introducing of a transfer-list clause, that would mean that if a rider gets that clause the renewal fee of that rider would have to pay his new team.
8. Allright. Maybe the better concept of this idea has Heine. I like his idea, that the franchise tag could be used for a rider that you could not agree a contract in 3 rounds, so he would then get an average wage of riders with similar average. Or maybe a little bit more than average, because some riders could benefit a lot from this. This would mean that you won't lose a rider that you really want to keep even you could not agree a contract with him.
9. I mean riders with under average of 73 or 74, that would be allowed to be trained with a cheaper variant of training and at the same time their best attribute/attributes over this average limit could not be trained using this cheaper training variant at all.
10. I believe I could help with organisation, as it wouldn't be in my opinion too much time consuming in the off-season - it would mainly be about collecting PMs after rules are set. It could be sent in a similar time like are sent race planners. It would be even better if anybody else would be willing to help me with these to make it happen, if SN decides to make it a go.
@Scorchio Agree we made a good progress this year, but I believe we can always make it better. I believe all my suggestions aren't slowing the MG at all. The only one could possibly be Continental Champs, but I am willing to help with organisation to help to accomadate them to the calendar.
In my opinion there will always be accumulation of money in PT, any way you set the current money system, the PT teams always will have the advantage they have the most riders to sell to other teams, as well the most cap space possibly available to sign free agents. We can only do some things to slower this trand, but you can't avoid this completly. I don't agree with training limitation in a season, but I agree with making the training above 80 attributes a little bit more expensive. This would help us to solve a lot of problems in my opinion. But only slightly, even currently the training is a lot expensive thing, I had to sell half of my team to be able to train Velits to MO83 and my team has stayed the same quality as in the last year IMO. We can solve a lot of problems by making riders like Madrazo worse when they come to free agency too.
@SotD I agree live reports could possibly work nicely and could help the discussion around races quite a lot. If stages could be posted in a few posts in a few hours time, or even for a few days, if there would be otherwise a big gap to the next race, I think we could have a 'live report' like that. There may even be an extension to PHP-Fusion that a new post would be visible only from some time in the future, so it could all be automatic, but I really don't know if that would be possible. But I agree with @roturn and @TheManxMissile there, the most important thing is the speed of the game.
@Mhaley45 I think your idea of grouped one day race Championships is quite interesting, we can possibly have that in PCT/CT, we can have that in PT too. The question is what exactly could bring us these champs? If these champs should be organised only for race goals reasons, then it probably is not worth it. Am I missing something?
Live betting seems to me like a nice idea, nice work guys, what a perfect idea by @Cavendish-Fan with these leader's jerseys too. I absolutely love espacially the jerseys for Czech Tour!
In my opinion perfect idea by @Margh Norway as well! A bonification seconds system like in F1 would be really cool, the same would go with much deeper competitions for KoM and sprint competition too. If it could help AI to give us more interesting stages, that would be even better.
1. Well, if PT teams will be able to send their best squads to HC races and points gained there will count for PT rankings, then I am ok with that. But PCT managers certainly won't enjoy that in their best possible race category there could be teams present from better racing division. Any other system will be at least better than what we have now, but the thing that I see as a must that results there should count for PT rankings. Still I believe we would all enjoy more action between PT/PCT. I am jealous for the system that PCT/CT have between them.
It would be like PCT in C2 races, there'd be a limit on how good a rider you could send there.
SportingNonsense wrote:
This year one xml was used for all races. I like having the standard system of 20-12-8 as it seems to work well against the likely time gaps, but am open to changes to the KoM and Intermediate sprint aspects.
As tsmoha says, for flat stage races the sprint time bonuses at the finish will change next year. My plan to use the F1 pts system for the seconds, awarding time to all Top 10 finishers.
A race like Baltic Chain Tour is intended for the sprinters. The prologue riders aren't expected to contend for GC.
Not sure what you mean about the KoM pts - are you suggesting you'd like to see points awarded for more than the Top 3 on the smaller climbs? (So perhaps 6-5-4-3-2-1 rather than 6-4-2).
hmmm, not sure how that would work, would rather have it as close as possible to real life rather than favouring sprinters more and more (wouldn't a better solution be to increase the pts allocation of the points jersey instead?)
John St Ledger in Team Bunzl-Centrica and Team U25
SportingNonsense wrote:
This year one xml was used for all races. I like having the standard system of 20-12-8 as it seems to work well against the likely time gaps, but am open to changes to the KoM and Intermediate sprint aspects.
As tsmoha says, for flat stage races the sprint time bonuses at the finish will change next year. My plan to use the F1 pts system for the seconds, awarding time to all Top 10 finishers.
A race like Baltic Chain Tour is intended for the sprinters. The prologue riders aren't expected to contend for GC.
Not sure what you mean about the KoM pts - are you suggesting you'd like to see points awarded for more than the Top 3 on the smaller climbs? (So perhaps 6-5-4-3-2-1 rather than 6-4-2).
hmmm, not sure how that would work, would rather have it as close as possible to real life rather than favouring sprinters more and more (wouldn't a better solution be to increase the pts allocation of the points jersey instead?)
Favoriting sprinters in sprinters stage races just makes sense! It's a real pity to see breakaway riders scoring better points through the GC than a sprinter, who has a couple of Top-5 stages but no podium. So bonifications for more than just the ppodium is perfect there..
Roman wrote:
That's not the system I would really like, but still better something than nothing.
But the way you like won`t work well imo.
This way I would just have sent my best riders to HC races (LL Sanchez, Keizer, Vanmarcke) and would have podium chances in PCT HC, which should have given me more points probably than all those top15 PT results.
But for PCT managers, this would be annoying.
I agree though, that the limit should be considered a lot. I think most PT leaders have like 75+ AVG. Can`t check right now.
So we could eventually make this limit to just under this leader average and not too far below. Otherwise we would see PT teams sending their squads to PCT without any chance to shine there, which would be awful as well.
So if it`s just below 75AVG, you could still send some more one dimensional riders (which have to be fixed a bit more imo in terms of average), but also most of your ~80 sprinters or riders with PCT similar stats.
@Roturn In my opinion you are wrong. I suggest there would be something like 40 race days available (could be less if the calendar is cut more than I thought) in that new race category for both PT and PCT teams and points available would be somewhere between PT and HC category. That would mean that both PT and PCT teams would have a dilemma if they should send there their top guys. I believe many other PT managers could do the same thing as you, as you would still race in every race of this category against almost half of the PT. Yeah, you would probably get good points from these races, but then you would likely get way less points from PT too and as better points are available there, it may not be advantageous as you are thinking.
The motivation for PCT teams to send their best riders would be that they could get there better points than in standard PCT HC races, the best riders of PCT could still win, as the top PT riders would not been there anyway (if a top rider can win a PT race, why he would ride in HC races?) and then there still would be enough of classic HC races only for PCT teams, so they would have a nice dilemma if they should send their top riders to these HC-with-PT races or C1 races, where they would not get too many points. In my opinion advantages would be over disadvantages and if it could bring more of an involment between PT and PCT, that would be only a good thing.
About these AVG limits - I don't like them either. You are absolutely right there - if PT teams can't send there riders to get a good result, then it is absolutely worthless to have PT teams in these races - XP points would be still a nice reward, but then PT teams should not be able to score any points in these HC races for their PT standings at all. I don't see too much point to have a rider like Kreuziger or Vysna as a leader there, PCT leaders would murder them and they would likely do better as helpers for my leaders in PT races.
But if the limit is already max AVG76, a rider like Vanmarcke can already race there... We could define a more complex limit for sure, but it is going to be more or less unfair whatever limits are than a new race category with a clear fair system for both PCT/PT.
