The ICL Transfer season is splitted into 3 rounds, the first two rounds consist of a Free Agent biding round and a round in which you can make transfers between different teams. The third round only consists of a Free Agent round. After transfers you'll need to have filled your team. WT teams must have at least 25 riders, CT teams 18 and U23 development teams 8.
1.1 Free Agent Biding
Free Agent biding happens in two parts. A sheet is uploaded containing all riders without a contract. You can offer each of those riders a wage which will have to be at least the minimum wage of the rider. If you are the only one to bid on that rider you get him. If several teams are biding on the same rider and the leading bids are close together, there will be another round, in which those teams can improve their offer. You cannot pull out of a rider negotiation if you are in a tie break but have to bid at least 90% of your previous bid. After that round the rider signs to the team with the highest bid.
1.2 Transfers between Teams
In this round deals between different teams can be made involving money and cyclists. This happens in a seperate thread.

After transfers are done, teams will have to select races which they'd like to ride. As soon that is done there is going to be a race planning sheet uploaded with that teams can decide which riders to enter into what race. Every rider has to ride at least 20 race days. Around that time you'll also need to select 3 focus races. The performance of your team in those races has an influence on your next season's budget.

WT riders with AVG 74,5 or less are allowed to enter CT.2 races, riders with a higher AVG are not. Riders with an AVG of less than 76,0 can enter as much CT.1 races as they want. For higher AVG riders this table applies:

AVG	Max CT.1 RD
- 76,9	18
- 77,9	16
- 78,9	14
- 79,9	12
- 80,9	10
- 81,9	8

At the beginning of the season each team gets a specific amount of money. This money can be invested into signing riders (Wages & Transfer Fees), Scouting and Research. Every team has 100 added for each Research and Scouting that is not included into the initial budget.
The size of the budget depends on the teams division, the final ranking position in the year before and how they scored in their focus races. Teams that have a development team get 1000 added to their total budget.

Each team can have a development team which will race in their own division against development teams from other teams. Eligible to ride in a development team are riders that are 23 years at max and have an AVG of 72,0 or less. Each team is allowed 2 riders above 72.0 AVG. One of which can be max 73.0 AVG and one 73.5

If there is money left after the transfer season it can be used for research. Research money can either spent for Training or Other. With the training money you can buy stat packs, which can be applied to riders to improve their overall stats.
Other things that can be bought with Research money are Potion of Youth (increasing a riders Age of Decline), Potential (increasing a riders potential), Mediator (Lowering a riders demands during renewals), Fitness Trainer (Increasing the riders race days) and Recalculating Maximum (Changing the hidden number, that determines the maximum a rider can reach). Research will be done before the season starts!
This is how much one point in the Training Table will add to the base stat: Of course there is a random factor but it will always be between 1,5% and 3% of what you are paying. So if you buy a 100 stat pack you will get between 6 and 12 points for a stat where it says 4 in the Training table.
For riders with an AVG 78,0 or more, a statpack that costed more than 100 can only be spent, if it fits the rider stats distribution. Meaning a climber package on a climber and so on and on an AVG 78+ climber can e.g. only a sprinter package which was max 100 paid for. The same counts for riders 76,0 or better with stat packs that costed more than 250. The specialization can be interpreted loosely so a classics rider might be allowed to get stat packs for hills, cobbles and sprint. It's just to prevent too extreme stat combinations. The maximum that can be spent on training for one rider per season is 1500.

You sign scouts and send them to different regions. After each round you get a scouting update from them including data about talents they found there. After that you can change the instructions for the scouts, depending on if you want to send him somewhere else or it is possible to focus on specific talents they found. Meaning that the report on them will be much more accurate than before.
In total there will be 10 rounds (= # of racing months). From round 8 on you are allowed to sign precontracts with riders you have found for the upcoming season.
After the 10th round closes there will be the U21 WWorld Championships with the regens and I'll share a table with all talents still available (not with their exact stats). A draft will conclude the Scouting. Teams will be ordered in the order of the turned around rankings. Also newly signing up teams will get a chance to take part in the draft, that way they are involved in the game earlier.
Besides on Scouts, budget can also be spent on Scouting packages that will be auctioned. These also include information on talents.

There are three different rankings: WorldTour, ContinentalTour, U23Tour. Also a ranking out of all rankings combined will be made, the Prestige Ranking (PR Ranking). The WT ranking will decide on which team will relegate to CT. The best CT teams in the PR Ranking will move up. In the unlikely case that a development squad is among them, the spot will go to the next CT squad. How much points a rider will get for a certain positioning will be published before the season starts.
How much each race brings can be found here: https://www.mediafire.com/download/8eh...oints.xlsx

The calendar will be published shortly before the season starts. It includes the Grand Tours and Monuments as well as other WT races. CT races are divided into the categories CT.1 and CT.2. For development teams there are U23 races, of which the Tour de l'Avenir is the most prestigious.

Steals
Renewals

Free Agency & Transfers
- R1.1 : FA
- R1.2 : FA Tiebreaker
- R1.3 : Transfers between teams
- R2.1 : FA
- R2.2 : FA Tiebreaker
- R2.3 : Transfers between teams
- R3.1 : FA
- R3.2 : FA Tiebreaker
- Filling up teams with FAs on first come first serve

Season Planning
- Rider Planning
- Deciding on Focus Races

Research

Scouting

Races

Palm Classic	Sprint
Clasica di Tirreno - Adriatico	Sprint
Milano - Sanremo	Sprint
Vattenfall Cyclassics	Sprint
Paris - Tours	Sprint
Omloop Het Nieuwsblad	Cobbles
Gent-Wevelgem	Cobbles
Ronde van Vlaanderen	Cobbles
Paris - Roubaix	Cobbles
Richmond Criterium	Cobbles
Strade Bianche	Hills
Roma Maxima	Hills
Amstel Gold Race	Hills
Liège - Bastogne - Liège	Hills
Clasica Ciclista San Sebastian	Hills
Bucaramanga Classic	Hills
Il Lombardia	Hills
Trofeo Campania	TimeTrial
GP Luxembourg	TimeTrial
Chrono des Nations	TimeTrial

Individual Rankings
There will be minor rankings for every terrain type. All combined will be the World Cup.
The top 20 will get these number of points:

1	100
2	75
3	60
4	50
5	40
6	32
7	24
8	18
9	14
10	12
11	10
12	9
13	8
14	7
15	6
16	5
17	4
18	3
19	2
20	1

Team World Cup

For the team rankings the top 10 teams will get points. For that the finishing positions of their top 3 riders counts, the lower the better, if two teams have the same number, the best finishing rider counts for the tie break. The best team will get 10 points until the 10th will get 1.

Budget Bonus

Indiv	Total	Hi,Sp,Cb	Tt		Team	Total	Hi,Sp,Cb	Tt
1	250	50	30		1	250	50	30
2	200	35	20		2	190	30	20
3	170	25	15		3	160	20	10
4	150	20	10		4	150	10	5
5	130	15	5		5	120	5
6	120	10	5		6	100
7	110	5			7	80
8	100	5			8	70
9	90				9	60
10	80				10	50
11	70				11	40
12	65				12	30
13	60				13	20
14	55				14	10
15	50				15	5
16	45
17	40
18	35
19	30
20	25
21	20
22	15
23	10
24	5
25	5

A quick overview on the columns included in the database:
A - Rider ID
B, C, D, E - Obvious
F - Rider Average
G - S - Stats of the rider
T - Wage
U, V - Birthdate and Age
W - Potential
X - Race Days
Y - Division of the team the rider is in
Z, AA, AB, AC - Whether the rider is National or World Champion
AD - Minimum Wage to be paid to sign the rider
AE - Continent (AF - Africa, AS - Asia, EU - Europe, NC - North&Central America, OC - Oceania, SA - South America
AF - Talent Focus (Part of wage paid not from actual budget)
AG - Loyalty (Years the rider is in Team)
AH - Age of Decline
AI - Years added to AoD through research
AJ - Last Season (1 if rider retires after season)

A simplified virtual version of managing a professional cycling team. Each player has to assemble a squad, pick races from the calendar and decide who will race where. The actual racing will take place in PCM (2015), as one-day or stage races (everybody at top fitness and rhythm). The "reporters" will (not) control a small control team, all the players' riders are at the mercy of the PCM AI.

As a new team you will start in the second division, the Continental Tour. Your team will gain prestige points with good results, the prestige rankings will decide promotion to the World Tour and have some influence on next season's budget. It is additonally influenced by performance in focus races and activity in the team thread. Unlike PCM careers, rider stats remain constant during a season and are updated once between seasons. Also, there's a strict limit on the number of race days riders have, the better a rider, the fewer RD (check the RD column in the database). Depending on their age, performance and potential they will gain stat points at the end of the season, you will decide the point distribution by choosing an off-season training, until they peak and then reach their age of decline.

It's scalable. When you delve in you should spend a good time looking at the riders, thinking about the squad you want to form. Then there's the actual transfer window, it stretches out over weeks, but you don't need to check in every day and depending on how things go you might have finalised your squad long before the transfer window ends. New teams start in the CT and the race selection can be time consuming because apart from the U23 races every race is open to your team. After that, you have to pick all races for all riders, which will take a few hours. And then you're done, the actual racing doesn't need participation, except for scouting, which only takes minutes. However, it is absolutely encouraged to update everybody on your team's progress, even the shortest reports would be welcome. Bikex has included a small financial incentive for team updates.

You will need a spreadsheet application. Bikex makes the spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel, if you don't have that, the freeware options Open Office and Libre Office will usually also work, Bikex can create a compatible file if needed. In my experience Libre Office will open files faster, but lacks the colour coding for the rider stats, which Open Office provides.

When the time for a new season has come one of ICL managers will open a signup thread. The opening post will go into more detail, but basically you will have to supply a team name, a three letter abbreviation of the name and the nation the team is based in, optionally secondary nations. You will - not right now - also need a jersey for your team.

Does it have to be a real team?

No, a few managers use real teams, most use fictional teams with real companies and a few use purely fictional teams. So anything you like.

Can I only hire riders from my team's nation?

No, there are no restrictions on who you can hire. Most of us like to role-play a bit and try to hire riders from our sponsor's nation, you can do as much or little of that as you like.

How do I get a jersey?

If you use a real team, a jersey from one of the talented jersey makers will be easy to find on this site. Many offer fictional teams, too, look through their threads in the graphics subforums. If you ask one of them nicely, he'll usually be able to create your own jersey, too. You might even have fun designing your own jersey, a simple design isn't that difficult to make and you can find how-to-guides on this site.

Yes, and trying to assemble a squad can be a little nerve-wrecking. Most of the riders you hire will be free agents. The current FA transfer system is very transparent and very flexible, including the very useful signing directives. Building a new team has never been easier.

Established teams will also offer riders for sale, only rarely will they state a definite price, some haggling via PMs is usually required.

Dev Team: If you have decided to also run a dev team you will get 1000 more budget. Riders have to be 23 or younger and have AVG 72.0 or lower. New in 2021: You can have two U23 over AVG 72.0, one up to AVG 73.5 and another up to AVG 73.0. You will need at least 8 riders, but can have up to 10. You can of course have more riders who fulfil the requirements and at a later point choose who rides for the U23 and who stays in the main team.

Pretty much. It can be worth saving up some cash for the "shop" that opens up once squads are complete, called research spending. However, Bikex provides everybody with 100 (extra) cash so even if you have saved up nothing you can participate, this bonus can't be transferred to scouting.

Buying training packages to immediately improve the stats of riders is generally too expensive for new teams, as are the potions. If you do want to train riders you should look into the base stat system the ICL uses. Fitness training to increase the number of race days for your outright captain can be a good idea, 40 for +2 RD, 75 for +3 RD.

If you have money left over it doesn't carry over to the next season, instead you can buy "mediators" for 10 each which will reduce the wage demand of a rider by 5 to 15 (randomly) each in renewals next season (they are stackable). Bikex will also provide everybody with 100 for scouting which is enough for one decent scout. (more on scouting below)

Race selection: Once the full calendar is published you will be asked to select all the races for your team in one go. A CT team should book around 175 race days, plus or minus 5 days. You should send 7 riders to nearly all races, it should be no problem even if you hired the minimum amount of riders (18). A few races require less than 7 riders, for example, one-day ITTs only take 3 riders per team.

The calendar thread will show you the stage overviews you know from PCM. The amount of races to choose from can be a little overwhelming, on the other hand, whatever you specialise in, there will be enough races for you. You only hired sprinters? Book those flat one-day and stage races. Only climbers? Plenty of options. Only cobblestone specialists will probably wish for more races, but then these specialists are pretty rare.

While you won't be making a definite selection of whom to send to where - which will be the next and final step of the preseason - it's something you should already keep in mind when making the race selections. Look for races which suit your captains and book an appropiate number of race days in their favourite terrain. I'm pretty sure it pays off to spend some time on this, study the terrains well, watch out for race clashes.

What's the difference between WT, CT.1 and CT.2 races?

In the World Tour you're up against all the World Tour teams and CT riders are usually outmatched. However, there are more prestige points up for grabs and more riders get points. Generally, the WT won't be very attractive to a new CT team unless it managed to hire a really strong rider.

In the CT.1 you could theoretically face top riders, everybody is allowed (a few) CT.1 race days, but it's unlikely a top rider's race days would be used for a lowly race. The exceptions are the CT.1 races which count towards the World Cup: Clasica di Tirreno, Roma Maxima, San Sebastian, Richmond and the TT races Luxembourg and Chrono des Nations. Expect stiff competition from WT teams in those races. There are a few more one-day races which tend to attract WT competition, check past results for that.

CT.1 races bring about 25% more prestige points than CT.2 races, which seems a fair trade-off considering the expected higher competition.

Dev team:

The U23 has its own calendar with no scheduling conflicts. You must book a few further races, they don't have to be CT.2 but those are the safest bet, since we cannot have more than 24 teams per race. Avoid any scheduling conflicts since you don't have the riders to run two races in parallel, Bikex made sure there are no conflicts between CT.2 and U23, but you'll have to check conflicts for CT.1 races.

Focus Races:

The focus races can have considerable impact on next season's budget, try to choose them wisely. Currently you have to select 5 of them.

Your performance is based on the prestige points you score in comparison to the total points available in the race. I wrote a post called "Focus races explained" with the details which you can find here.

Search for your best bets, new teams without a proven scorer will probably have their best chances in CT.2 races.

Rider selection: The final step before the racing season starts. You'll get a table with all your riders on the left and all the races you booked at the top and now you have to enter your riders for every race, you see the numbers ticking down in each row and column (race days left for the rider and riders still needed per race). The more planning you did in the previous phase, the easier this will be. You'll probably want the race calendar thread open in your browser to make sure you send the right riders to the right races. I'd suggest starting from the top, it's important that your best riders face the right terrain, if domestiques end up in the wrong terrain it won't matter too much. The season is simulated in one-off races, not career mode, all your riders will be in top shape in all races, no need to plan any kind of preparation, unless you want to role-play.

Reporters will run races and then publish the results in the results thread. They will usually accompanied by a few screenshots, sometimes even a video of the final kilometres of a stage, which I personally find very exciting. We discuss the results and how happy we are with our team in the race discussion thread.

Note that the results come pouring in fast compared to the MG and the actual season goes by quite quickly. Keeping up with team posts can be tough.

There is one further task during the season, scouting. Even if you spent all your budget you will be provided with a small amount of cash (100) which will be enough to hire a decent scout. Saving up a little money could afford you a second scout, covering twice as much ground. Every month of the season you will send scouts to a region of the world and they'll discover young riders. Repeated scouting in the same region will not only find more riders, but also more information about riders you already know, plus you can ask your scout(s) to focus on individual riders and scout them fully (AVG and potential) even faster.

You will have a chance to hire the new talents you discover during the season, which works similar to the FA bidding, other managers may have discovered the same riders and also declared their interest in them, in which case the highest second round bid decides who gets the rider.

The actual Team HQ is only one post, it would be nice if you edit it once in a while and present your jersey and team. Take a look at other HQs for inspiration. Further updates in the teams thread are also appreciated (and financially rewarded), notify the others about important signings, good results, big disappointments, tensions in your team, some managers can get very creative.

There is also the race discussion thread for discussions about the latest results as well as the previews thread. There you can find predictions about the upcoming season, useful and useless stats, fantastic monthly previews and more.

Managers always look forward to the development file, it's like opening christmas presents and even cooler now that Bikex has created a "cockpit" page. You will get to select the off-season training focus for all your riders. Depending on age, potential and season there will be fewer or more points to distribute. Usually you will strengthen the core skills, but it's possible to take riders in other directions, create "hybrids" who are adept on several terrains.

Once the development file is out you know it's not long until the new season starts.