New Game

I echo the comments above. Very fast and easy to filter your wants/needs! Excellent! Can't wait to get into the thick the season.

Fantastic guys, was worried how it might turn out but this is going to be mega!

Yes, it's very slick and easy to use. Excited for the season!

Yeah, i got a sneak preview of it last week

But is that the final schedule of races? no overlaps this year?

Blackfoot bikers are back on the road! no more mtb'ing or cx, back to the racing!
does anyone know if TDU is on tv anywhere? or if any sites are streaming it?

great update of the game guys,thanks.

nope. sorry.

ir was a big faff to do from this end and lots of people didn't understand it. so they're out.

Front end of the game is really good, much easier to use. Thank you to whoever redesigned it.

Still managed to make a mistake (user error mind) didn't read the box about team name so sorry to say I have very unimaginatively named team. If the press ask I'll say it was down to Europaceormine being embroiled in a super team takeover during the off season

Go here http://fantasy.road.cc/account you can still change your team name, you could change it at anytime last year, so it might be the same again

Great front end - BIGGER and better, cinch to use.

Chapeau! Roll on the TDU.

I see that my nationality ideas didn't make it through. The only way to find out is my CLICKING, yes... on the rider's name and then on the X in the corner. That's two clicks too many...

But otherwise, reeeely good. I suppose that you're waiting for the rider's faces though.

Change team name? Uhuh. CC Borgo Ticino is back for a third season, no change there, and this time round when it hits the front early on, it won't fall away like it did last year. I hope

hi, could someone tell me how to accept players into my league? my mate are giving me massive grief!

Wondering the same too, the entrants to our league are getting impatient!

Love the new game, and my team is picked !!

And I'm sticking to last years policy of mot picking Cav - he'll never make it up that hill to Clare.

@J Andrew Hill

with stage wins being more points I'll be picking him more this year I expect. Bit busy with the nursery at the mo though!

if you go to your team page you should be able to approve them in the leagues box. let me know if they're not showing up in there...

you'll be able to search the list by typing the IOC code into the search box. so type AUS and you'll get all the aussies.

doesn't work yet though

Hmmm, need more Aussies

A good thing in my opinion, caused brain overload.

Thanks for the invite, hopefully in as Another Bunch Of Losers.

The new engine is great.

Loving the new stage points structure,the differentials should stretch out the leader board and stop bunching, a good run in a stage race should put real distance between players and their nearest rivals....great call.

You know, in all the time i had on some others and since its been fully open, i never even looked at the scoring system......off to have a gander

Also, if you think of anyone else who we were all having banter with last year, give them the league ID number and i'll accept them

Can't seem to click on any rider and move him to team.tried clicking on add and even using the filter but nothing happens

I'm kind of new to this game. Will the rider values stay the same throughout the year? Will star riders stay 'star riders' all year long? For example, what happens if you have a Jelle Vanenedert or a Chris Froome scenario? Where a domestique becomes a 'star'? Do they still stay in the 'Domestique' category for the whole season?

Nice job on the game design. It looks sleek and beautiful. I like the look of it.

On another note, does the fact that we now choose 'Star riders' instead of riders in different categories make these categories irrelevant? That is, during the year there will never be limits on how many GC riders or Sprinters I have on my team? So I can have a team with 5 'Star' Sprinters for a particular day at the Tour? Or a team of 5 'Star' climbers or GC guys? Hmmm....

According to my mates I'm a sad **** as i'm the only one whop takes part or even cycles ! Any chance i could join your league - pretty please

Excellent stuff - can't wait for the game to start now.

Yes the new game design with riders and categories is good, and the format is easy to use for selection and team management.

Like the transfer rollovers as well.

Only thing I don't like is the disparity for stage points and GC. Good to have the Top 20 on the stage going from 35 downwards, but I think you've gone way too far.

You could have altered the GC a little too - maybe starting at 20 points and going down in 2s for the top 10.

It doesn't seem right that the maillot jaune gets the equivalent number of points as the person who came 11th on a stage. By that position they're just rolling across the line.

There's not much reason to have a top GC rider in the team.

Isn't that just the same as last year? Personally, I think it's a good thing that people who take risks by bringing in contenders for stage wins get rewarded with more points than those who play safe with GC contenders. It'll be interesting to see how it works out.

Greg Henderson's a Kiwi by the way not Aussie!

Agree - 100% - it was so boring when everyone was after safe 'GC' type points - the risk was too high to try anything else... the new points system is far better.

he's probably not the only one that's wrong either. let me know if you find more

Not really, its going to be the same as it was last year, i rarely picked the LR and was losing 10 points a day to the guys who constantly keep the LR in, boring as sh*t, should scrap the LR points, just because someone is in last place, thats just the same as getting safe GC points

I can see many an hour of my already limited spare time being lost to this.

Now if only there were stage profiles within the Stages tab.... Appreciate it's a mammoth task but would be immense. Perhaps links to the relevant stage profile on the respective website? i.e. http://www.tourdownunder.com.au/down-under-classic-and-stages-1-6.htm for TDU.

Cheers

Rich

Haven't the LR points been changed to the last person across the finish line on the stage? That's going to be incredibly hard to predict.

Well, some days on the Grand Tours it won't be too hard to predict who some of the more likely candidates will be.

But think of it as a bonus if one of your riders has a shocker

Like me....but your not gonna like me beating you again this year

Ok, so it's not the 'Lanerne Rouge' who gets these 10 points... It's literally the last rider to cros the line each day, right? So, it should practically be a different rider every day, right?

yup

Ah, you don't agree because you were only 'mid table'

Us fella's at the top of the tree would pretty much always have the same riders on the same stage of each and every GT - it really all came down to who picked the best team for stage 1 - as everyone else was a day or two behind transferring in the 'safe picks' and so dropped behind on points

I think I am going to play differently this year... but then again... I only really played with the season long total in mid last year and LOVED the game from start to finish.

Dare I suggest that Chris Froome is Kenyan ???

Froome was born in Kenya and did represent them but he's since switched to GB (and rode for Cav at Copenhagen).

If we start going by birthplace, Dave will need change David Millar to Malta, Wiggo to Belgium, Dan Martin to GB and Nico Roche to France, to name four riders off the top of my head.

I'm not sure we want to do that to him

go on - it would be fun wstching him work it all out. . . .how about Dave indicating the following . . .
nationality,
country & place of birth,
country where his team is based,
country where he last went on holiday,
country where his main residence is,
country he'd like to retire to
etc.

Hardly 99/5113 is not "mid table"

To give a long answer, i was in the top 1.9362409544298846 percent

So lets just call it 2%

HAHA - bait, taken.

(I was 6th - bring on the start of the competition).

Hugh, "... country where his main residence is..." ?

Further subdivided in the case of Italian riders into "country where his main residence is for tax purposes" and "country where his main residence is in reality"

Only 65 Italians in the ProTeam ranks according to Inrng

http://inrng.com/2012/01/2012-peloton-in-numbers/

We'll set Dave to work

tree fella's, you mean Lumberjacks?

That link was interesting reading from the start

Basically because of the oldest riders

Jens Voigt Radioshack-Nissan 40
Christopher Horner Radioshack-Nissan 40
Robbie McEwen Greenedge 39
George Hincapie BMC 38
Stuart O’Grady Greenedge 38
Levi Leipheimer Omega Pharma – Quickstep 38

I have removed some names from the list, BUT these guys could, if they have not transferred out of the Leopard and Radioshack teams, been in the same team

Chuffed about the fantasy cycling league 2012. I did the halfords one for the TDF last but the thought of a full season sounds brilliant.

Looks great and can't wait for the TDU to kick off now !!

I think like alot of us here, we played the halfords game aswell, but it was a shambles, we had our own road.cc league, but the game was never updated very quickly and as far as i remember, there were backdoors in to glitch the system and score lots of points

I actually think that a rider's town would be useful in case it was a finishing town or something, as they might put in an extra effort. Like in the beginning of David Millar's book.

Good idea Aldecycle.
And maybe Dave could add the home town of each riders parents. That might be useful.

well obviously i can't be bothered with all that

I can sort of help you though

if you google 'professional -former racing cyclist born [town] site:wikipedia.org'

you normally get some decent results.

for instance, it might be useful to know that Jack Bobridge and Luke Roberts are both adelaide boys...

Dave,

I'm probably being a numpty, I set up a league on Friday and didn't take a note of the code. I want to invite people to join the league, but can't seem to find the code anywhere, any ideas?

Cheers.

go to http://fantasy.road.cc/leagues

it's in the league list at the top

to be fair, it wasn't there before

Cool, thanks Dave.

Now it does. enjoy...

About leagues:

1. After I set up a league and give people the league number is there anything else that needs to be done?

2. If I wanted to kick out a person from the league, can I do it?

3. Are the leagues from last year still active? Or were they deleted? Just wondering...

Ok, I want to be able to stack up my team. Can you give us a higher budget, say 200 points, for the Tours? Please?...

What about "rider whereabouts"? (kind of obvious if they're in the next stage). Then the anti-doping authorities could keep track of everyone hence no more missed tests.

Dave might get commissioned by WADA and make his fortune - he's bound to do 'rider whereabouts' for us.
Team Sky are in Mallorca Dave

Patronising much?

Maybe the town of each rider's girlfriend, and her parents.

And the town where their main sponsors' headquarters are.

Stop it, you lot

Hmmm.... how about days since last win?...

Days until next win would be more useful. But the UCI aren't releasing that information unless you pay them for it...

Thank you very much

Looks fantastic.

I can't wait to get the year going. I only joined in time for the TDF last year so can not wait to speculate on a whole season and the Olympics.

Great new interface, and I also like the simplification of rider categories, along with the reduced points.

I wonder if the star riders vs domestiques is actually even required, given the point restriction. Perhaps this would allow for more possibilities?

I am also interested to know how the rider values are determined?

Much better than last year's already and it hasn't even started yet

Just wondering, Dave, do you have a system for coming up with the riders? Or is it more of a gut feeling thing? Was it based on last yaer's results?

I'd kind of like it if we got rid of the distinction bewteen star riders and domestiques. I agree that given the point restrictions there's no need to have the limit of 4 star riders and 5 domestiques. And! I'd like to have more (!) flexibility and stack my team with star riders and be foreced to choose really, really cheap domestiques! Will you think about it, Dave? Thanks!

By the way, great game! I'm hooked!

There seems to be an error in the "list of stages".
The WORLD CHAMPS - Time Trial is on 21.sep (not 17. oct) and the WORLD CHAMPS - Road Race is on 25.sep (not 23. oct)

If it was up to me I'd go back to the old stage scoring (20,19,18,17,16,15...) as opposed to the newer one (35,30,25,22,20...). I have to admit I've screwed up my team, but with the GC bonus (10,9,8,7...) and the PC bonus (5,4,3,2,1...) if you screw up on your first day I think you might get into such a huge hole you might not ever be able to recover! I like the old system more!

I think it's more the fact that you can have 4 star riders of any category that makes the first stage so key, especially if it's a sprint. But over a long tour with lots of different stages there'll be time to catch up. People are going to move up and down the table a lot with so may points being on offer for each stage. Even in this short tour, stage 4 and 5 are a bit different so there will be changes and chances to catch up.

I like all the info that pops up when you click on a rider name. It helps out a lot when you're curious about how well they've done, etc... There's things I still don't understand about the graphs, but I'll try to play around with it to get the gist of it... As far as points to date, would you consider adding a section that states how many points the rider has scored in the current competition, or is that available some where else? Myabe it could be a part of thhis page, too:

http://fantasy.road.cc/riders

Thanks!

Dave, the season has barely started and I've got the weirdest suggestion for next year...

I know it'll sound outlandish but here goes...

Could we set up another competition, which runs parallel to the current ones, like the purist league and the 'transfer' league do?...

This is what my "dream league" would have, and it's just a thought...

1. Än unlimited budget which means you could choose any 9 riders without any limitations. No 2 rider per team rule. No distinction between star riders and domestiques.

2. PC points and KM points would be awarded exactly as they are in the actual race and would include finish line points.

3. GC, PC and KOM rankings would be the same as in the 'transfer' game.

4. No Young Rider points awarded.

5. Two rider per day transfers as in the current game.

What do you think? Am I crazy? I think it'd be fun!

Limitations are what make it some kind of challenge in my opinion

Well done, Dave. I like everything about the new game so far. You've certainly made good use of some of the feedback from last year. Chapeaux.

And because they are so different, ie 45 PC points for a flat stage win in the TDF, 20 for an intermediate sprint in the TDF, 25 for a stage win in the Giro etc, it is going to make each race very different game wise depending on the scoring system used in the race.