Money, cyclists etc for starting teams

[Poekie]

Currently teams start with some money (2M?), no trainer  and some (12?) untrained cyclists. It might be a good idea to change this setup.

Money: Perhaps a new team can get a extra bonus by having more sponsor money in the first season (or an extra sponsor for 16 weeks). Starting money can stay the same, or perhaps a little less then.

Trainer: Perhaps start with a 10 trainer by default, either in a random skill (not downwards) or a skill of choice? (In that case starting money can also be a little less).

Cyclists: Currently all the cyclists in a new team have 12 points of primary skills, independent of age. Apart from the 18 years old, they are just no good and managers should not keep them. Wouldn't it be better if the older riders have at least some value? For example (  if it it technically possible): add one point to total skills for each year above 18. So a 23 year old will have 17 points in total. Or maybe even 1.5 point per year. It makes more sense that your 23 year olds are better than the 18 year olds than that they are of the same strength, right?

[Ab Normaal]

More money at the start isn't the solution.
New managers will spend it on buying useless riders.

problem is that there are manager who try to profit from new managers.
Put worthless old riders on the TL and just hope that a new manager who can't judge that the rider is worthless, is buying such a rider and spend all his money.

The risks of new managers to make crucial mistakes in the beginning is too big.
probably we should fix that you can only hire a trainer with a minimum of 10 in 1 skill.
I see new managers hiring a trainer with skill 1.

I absolutely do agree on your last point of adding skills per year the cyclist is older.

[naspa]

I agree with Poekie that the starting team of new members can be improved. Very strange to start with a team and than to hear from other managers that you can throw away all older than 19.

I agree with Ab as well that money is not the solution.

To my opinion the biggest problem might be the lack interesting competition in the "lower" divisions. And i think some team managers can do with a bit feed-back of more experienced team-leaders. (I see some new teams having horrible trainers).

Their might also be a gap in expectation - the game might offer too less action to some peoples liking. It is one of long term strategy. You set a trainer and wait for some weeks to see the first result. You can spend 3-4 years raising a new generation before you are competitive. You can fool a bit around with the prices of merchandise, to discover that the optimal prizes are fixed and only challenge there is not to forget to buy items for the weekend update.

Of course the dynamics of the transfer market can offer fun - and some that stay are many times developing in keen traders.
But in general, lack of short term actions, no clear starting directions and too less interaction for starters are to my opinion the top 3 hurdles to take.

[Schizm]

My suggestion is to take the first steps out of their hands ; ask what they want to specialise in (flat, hill, mountain, sprin , TT , (downhill ?, fitness ?)), then give them a trainer with 10 (or 15 skill) and in one go implement the suggestion about the increase in startskill with age where the chosen skill is the one that is increased the most (max to skill 5, the rest will be divided randomly to the other skills).

[heppie]

Sounds good!

[eboese]

Can we implement things like this though? Schizm, I guess you probably have the best understanding of the game code now, do you think we will be able to make any major changes to the game in the near future?

[bam]

It seems a good improvement to me. It takes away the possibility of making real mistakes at the start, and I think that having cyclists a bit better than just 1's and 2's (and an incidental 3) makes it more fun as well. But indeed, it is the question if it can be implemented, as these things can't be done manually (far too much work for anyone, and it causes a waiting time for new teams).

Another suggestion: make the 5th division larger (so 16 or 20 teams in it at maximum). In this way, the chance that there are some active managers in a division after a few weeks is larger, which makes it more fun for those managers. And the bots can then be removed later when new teams need to have a place? (Maybe the price money or sponsor money needs to be a bit higher then to prevent that some of the teams go bankrupt; maybe set it equal to the price money of div 4?)

edit: I now see that some of the fifth divisions have 13 teams in it already, so I guess that they are already allowed to be larger than 12.

[ElGringo]

Mar 30, 2018 15:38:23 GMT 1 bam said:

It seems a good improvement to me. It takes away the possibility of making real mistakes at the start, and I think that having cyclists a bit better than just 1's and 2's (and an incidental 3) makes it more fun as well. But indeed, it is the question if it can be implemented, as these things can't be done manually (far too much work for anyone, and it causes a waiting time for new teams).

Another suggestion: make the 5th division larger (so 16 or 20 teams in it at maximum). In this way, the chance that there are some active managers in a division after a few weeks is larger, which makes it more fun for those managers. And the bots can then be removed later when new teams need to have a place? (Maybe the price money or sponsor money needs to be a bit higher then to prevent that some of the teams go bankrupt; maybe set it equal to the price money of div 4?)

edit: I now see that some of the fifth divisions have 13 teams in it already, so I guess that they are already allowed to be larger than 12.

About division 5 we decided this season to extend them to regroup managers that play this way they have more competition.

Even in div 4 we already made some adjustment, 4.6/4.7/4.8 because in this ones some managers didn't login so we pass actives from div 4.8 to the others 2 and we will check till the start of season.