Volta Ciclista a Catalunya

drheaton wrote:

It's roughly what the game suggested as the right average of prices, also, remember that this is not a big race in the grand scheme of things and that some of the riders who are expensive but targetting the Ardennes or Giro may not be riding to win anything.

Sky in particular are an interesting set up. Will Froome be riding to win or will Porte be stretching his leadership legs ahead of the Giro? We can assume Wiggins won't ride to win but who will he support? What about Nieve? Will this be a race for him to race for himself?

The same goes for AG2R with Pozzovivo, Bardet and Betancur, which will race and which will support?

Which Contador will we see? He could race to win or could be recovering from TA.

TJVG? What's his target for the season, will he be riding for himself or for a team member?

Picking the preferred riders in any team will be key to getting off to a good start in this race.

The dossard numbers are often a giveaway as to protected riders

chrisdstripes wrote:

...I often find PCS or Cycling Fever to be more up-to-date, not less...

I think they really have their pulse on these things. I love them. If it were me, I'd take their word as good and whenever they have full rosters, put them on the game start list. Hell, I volunteer to enter them all in the game database! You'll still have to update, but so what? I trust them...

STEVESPRO 79 wrote:

145 credits is real stingy with this line up.....

Man, why don't we go back to 150 for all races, please? And do the Tour at 175? I hate using so many 3.0 riders, 4 or 5, just to make sure I get the riders who I think will get me the most points on any given stage! It sucks! Granted, it forces people to choose different riders but, crap, it's not that much fun to just choose 4 or 5 stars and then 4 or or 5 3.0 riders... Or can you redistribute the rider values, please?

enrique wrote:

Man, why don't we go back to 150 for all races, please? And do the Tour at 175? I hate using so many 3.0 riders, 4 or 5, just to make sure I get the riders who I think will get me the most points on any given stage! It sucks! Granted, it forces people to choose different riders but, crap, it's not that much fun to just choose 4 or 5 stars and then 4 or or 5 3.0 riders... Or can you redistribute the rider values, please?

More more more more more, that's all you ever seem to want enrique

Last year everyone complained that some races were too easy, that when a start list was bereft of top level talent the budget was too generous so we changed it and added in varying budgets to take into account the varying quality of the field.

Then everyone complained that the tour was too hard because you had to pick too many 3 credit riders so the basis for calculating rider values was changed to drop values quicker when a rider stops scoring and generally reduce values a bit.

Now after all those changes you want to increase the budgets back up and scrap the value system again? No. The game works well, part of the challenge of picking a team has ALWAYS been about balancing your high price and low price riders and making the most of your budget. The game has NEVER been about just being able to pick the best 9 riders. It is not fun for everyone to pick the same 9 stars and all get the same points. The whole point of a budget is to impose restrictions and force you to make decisions about who you want and the best way to spend the credits you have. Just arbitrarily increasing the budget because you want things to be easier for you is not going to happen. Dave has already said that the budget for the Tour may go above 150 but the budget is dependant wholly on the quality of the riders taking part, if its a strong field it'll be a higher budget, if its a relatively weak field it'll be a lower budget but that decision won't be made until the race is opened so stop asking for the budget to be set at 175 right now.

Anyway, nobody is forcing you to pick four 3 credit riders, if you're choosing to use 138 credits on five riders that's your choice. You could pick 3 high value riders and more mid priced riders, you could pick everyone at 16 credits, you have options.

drheaton wrote:

enrique wrote:

Man, why don't we go back to 150 for all races, please? And do the Tour at 175? I hate using so many 3.0 riders, 4 or 5, just to make sure I get the riders who I think will get me the most points on any given stage! It sucks! Granted, it forces people to choose different riders but, crap, it's not that much fun to just choose 4 or 5 stars and then 4 or or 5 3.0 riders... Or can you redistribute the rider values, please?

More more more more more, that's all you ever seem to want enrique

Last year everyone complained that some races were too easy, that when a start list was bereft of top level talent the budget was too generous so we changed it and added in varying budgets to take into account the varying quality of the field.

Then everyone complained that the tour was too hard because you had to pick too many 3 credit riders so the basis for calculating rider values was changed to drop values quicker when a rider stops scoring and generally reduce values a bit.

Now after all those changes you want to increase the budgets back up and scrap the value system again? No. The game works well, part of the challenge of picking a team has ALWAYS been about balancing your high price and low price riders and making the most of your budget. The game has NEVER been about just being able to pick the best 9 riders. It is not fun for everyone to pick the same 9 stars and all get the same points. The whole point of a budget is to impose restrictions and force you to make decisions about who you want and the best way to spend the credits you have. Just arbitrarily increasing the budget because you want things to be easier for you is not going to happen. Dave has already said that the budget for the Tour may go above 150 but the budget is dependant wholly on the quality of the riders taking part, if its a strong field it'll be a higher budget, if its a relatively weak field it'll be a lower budget but that decision won't be made until the race is opened so stop asking for the budget to be set at 175 right now.

Anyway, nobody is forcing you to pick four 3 credit riders, if you're choosing to use 138 credits on five riders that's your choice. You could pick 3 high value riders and more mid priced riders, you could pick everyone at 16 credits, you have options.

The game is working very very well in my opinion. Its hard to constantly pick a very good team due to the budgets and this adds to the value and the excitement of the game itself. I think i would pack it in if it became to easy and ultimately boring.

drheaton wrote:

... this race doesn't appear to run a standard 'sprint jersey' or 'points jersey'...

I don't know where the offcial site is posting it but PCS is reporting a Srint classification for Catalunya:

http://www.procyclingstats.com/race/Volta_Ciclista_a_Catalunya_2014_Stag...

By the looks of it I'd say they're only counting Intermediate sprints...

enrique wrote:

drheaton wrote:

... this race doesn't appear to run a standard 'sprint jersey' or 'points jersey'...

I don't know where the offcial site is posting it but PCS is reporting a Srint classification for Catalunya:

http://www.procyclingstats.com/race/Volta_Ciclista_a_Catalunya_2014_Stag...

By the looks of it I'd say they're only counting Intermediate sprints...

The information on the official site pre-race was very patchy. It turns out they're running two separate intermediate sprint competitions and I'm scoring the main one based on the usual scoring format.