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Price inflation
I'm already struggling. One of the cheap fillers in my purist team has pulled out and there are so few cheap riders on the roster that I had to downgrade one of my mid-league riders to accommodate the change.
If any more cheap riders drop out then I'll be screwed. Or seriously compromised.
I need a bigger budget. My human rights are being violated. I'm going to call Strasbourg.
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
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127 comments
Yeah, I like that idea...
Maybe you could just take the 10 lowest valued guys and make them all 3.0. This year that would have been:
Albert Timmer 4.9
Jean-Marc Marino 4.9
Dmitriy Muravyev 4.7
Christophe Le Mevel 4.6
Benjamin Noval 4.5
Julien El Fares 3.7
José Ivan Gutierrez Palacios 3.4
Murilo Antonio Fischer 3.0
Matteo Bono 3.0
Maxime Mederel 3.0
It's kind of sad to see Noval, Bono and Gutierrez abandon and not be able to substitute them with other riders at around the 3.0 level.
At last count, I think the following riders hadn't scored a single point (!), how about lowering their value to 3.0 for Friday's, Saturday's and Sunday's stages?
Fredrik Kessiakoff 27.0
Janez Brajkovic 19.8
Christian Vandevelde 18.9
Boy Van Poppel 15.6
Alexandre Geniez 13.3
Enrico Gasparotto 12.0
Adriano Malori 11.1
Damiano Cunego 11.1
Tom Leezer 11.0
Yoann Bagot 10.1
Gatis Smukulis 10.0
Michael Schar 9.3
Steve Morabito 9.2
Edward King 8.1
Guillaume Levarlet 7.7
Manuel Quinziato 7.2
Aliaksandr Kuschynski 7.1
Christophe Le Mevel 4.6
Benjamin Noval 4.5
Murilo Antonio Fischer 3.0
Matteo Bono 3.0
Maxime Mederel 3.0
you can't just feck about with the rider value half way through a grand tour. please don't be daft.
I wasn't meaning to do it straight away enrique, you can't change things mid way like Dave says, I was talking about the Vuelta if it ends up like TdF.
The other thing is, if new riders don't come through, then anyone who scored points goes up slightly. It will have to be looked at for next season. BUT, that's for the off season, NOT for suggestions right now
Ok, then, how about next year, for the Tour only, every professional team gets assigned one 3.0 to 3.5 value rider per team? So you can put a low value rider from any team you like at a dirt cheap value?
Holy Moly, enrique has come up with an idea I like.
YES, in a 9 rider per team race, it would be quite easy to make one rider from each team a super cheap guy
I was being uncharacteristically ironic in my original post but this is all getting unnecessarily complicated. Changing algorithms and scoring systems is over the top. This situation has come about because the riders selected for the TdF have form that means they aren't cheap. It probably won't happen for any other race.
The TdF must account for a huge chunk of any team's annual budget - more bus fuel, more hotel rooms, more bidons, more chamois cream, more everything. It costs the sponsors more, it costs Eurosport more pie money for Carlton Kirby, it costs road.cc more to post all those mini-pumps that I never win. It's a big-budget affair.
So give us a bigger budget.
This probably won't happen for the Vuelta, but if it does then just up the budget a bit. I'm only suggesting an increase of 50 points or so to avoid being forced to pick the same four cheapest riders as every other player in the game.
Is it unworkable to give people more money for the TdF than for the Tour of Poland?
What a beautifully simple thought. I admire how you framed it so naturally. Sounds good to me!
And I enjoy that (!) Thanks for the post and the lighthearted rambling!
Lighten up, Mr. Atkinson!
I can't believe you took it as anything but a joke
Just trying to liven things up a little
Please don't be daft enough to believe everything I write.
In the words of Jeremy Clarkson:
"I don't believe what I write, any more than you (Alastair Campbell) believe what you say"
Just kidding, though if it wasnt such a serious game, wouldn't it be fun?
I aim to please
... and entertain 
...
But if that rider is worth more then it is false engineering and doing it for the sake of it.
The game is supposed to be a challenge, not a walk in the park for toys to be spat out the pram.
Sorry for including this suggestion here and now, but I wanted to get it in print while it was fresh in my mind.
Is it possible to have a banker included in the team lineup?
IE; you have to pick one rider (or maybe two, one sprinter one GC) for free before the competition starts, he costs nothing then you have 150 points for the other eight.
I know most people will choose the same rider in lots of competitions, but that may not necessarily be the best choice, and adds another aspect to the game. Knowing you have a banker in your team allows you a little more flexibility to play with your other riders.
Could it work or is it making the game too purist like some some people?
I don't get how this works
What's the banker do for you and how do you use him?... 
You dont have to load your team up with 3.0 pointers. I have 2 in my team today and still had enough credits to get a team that scored 120+ points on the stage.
Admittedly those lower valued riders who scored well for me wouldn't necessarily have been in my original team but i disagree about changing value's of riders so that there are more 3 pointers.
The game is the same for everyone so just accept it and try to enjoy it without going to the umpteenth degree in disecting it during the season when its obvious it aint going to change until the end of the season.
Today's stage is an example of why I think you overestimate the effect of being able to pick the 4 highest value riders and put them on your team. How many stages have been won by a breakaway this year? And what do people do on stages like today? Pick the 4 highest value riders and stick with them? No, obviously. The true players and risk takers gambled today and won big time! So I'd be ok with being able to fit in the 4 Top Rated riders in your team along with 5 no-name DS's! You can have fun pickijng them, but you certainly aren't going to win the competition! Would the scores be much closer tan they are now? Probably. But I think that makes it more exciting!
I like the fact that values are based on form, I just wish there were sort of, two or three tiers more distinctly visible, something like:
10-15 Stars, at a value of 25 to 40,
20-25 All-Rounders, at a value of say, 10 to 25,
and then a bunch (!), maybe 140+ of DS's all below 7.5, and at least 10 at the 3.0 level, sort of a proportion for each competition, something predicatble (!) instead of just (!) value formula driven which would give the values a more stable structure within each competitio,
Now you could say, Enrique -
and I would have to say, categorically - Yes!
It's just an idea... But one I like (!)
no it wouldn't.
because you don't know the final squad until the day before the race.
it wasn't a joke, except in the sense that as a good idea, it was a joke.
you posted it here, and you started another forum topic to try and resurrect it when everyone rubbished it on this one.
don't.
Don't spoil it. I never said anything about a rider in the race. Just ONE rider from each team that will be taking part. He doesn't have to be on the startlist
That it is!
You get to choose one rider for free at the start of the competition and he is not transferable. Then you have 150 credits to play with for eight guys. As I said a lot of people will have put in Froome or Sagan but with the extra breakaway points they may not be the highest scorers. It just means that you have more credits to play with for medium/cheap guys and the added interest of finding the perfect Banker who will make you the most points in a purist kind of way.
Simples
I like it, but, I would have it as a tiebreaker...
What a bunch of whiners and sourpusses! Enjoy the game!
It seems(I might be wrong)that good performances effect a rise in price far more than a poor performance effects a fall.
Andy Schleck for example started the season at 3.0 and has not really done much yet he's trebled in price to 9.2 but I doubt anyone has gone in the opposite direction.
I'd go even further and say he's the team captain and therefore scores double points.
Well, I may be wrong but, maybe (!), the reason we haven't seen that might just be that, hell, if you're not scoring in real life or putting in a real effort, you won't (!) get chosen to the 'actual' Tour de France (!) , so we won't see them in the game (!)... Maybe I'm right...
It'd be fun to have access to the values before and after the Tour of all to check though... But maybe you have a point because, what I don't know is, if, timingwise, a rider's value is recalculated after the Tour or only if they appear on the start list for a next race... 
I don't know, but it'd be nice to know! 
In a tie breaker...
But you can't just say, He's 3 for this race and 9.2 for that race. Its worked out over a YEAR and getting the value at the start of one race to the next won't work either.
Because its not just worked out on past form, its also worked out on the profile of the stages. So Schleck scores most of his points on higher stages, with the tour having mainly MM HM and SF stages, his value was always going to go up.
For instance, If Cav was going to be racing the Tour of Poland, I did the values for them yesterday, he was down at 32
I don't like the ideas of having a 'protected' rider in your team or a team captain, either of which would get double points and not be transferred.
Apart from the fact that it over complicates things I think that if this rider is outside of your budget and a fixed item in your team then as soon as one of the major contenders crashes everyone will be up in arms that they can't transfer them. There are two types of play in the game, transferring and purist. Forcing a standard, transferring, player to not transfer one person is mixing it all up for no real clear benefit.
Likewise people want more cheap riders for more team variety. What benefit is there to every team having Sagan or Froome as their protected rider?
Finally, if you have to keep one rider in your team for all stages then you're effectively handicapped on the stages where that rider doesn't feature. If you picked Froome as your leader then you have to have him in your team on the flat or medium stages where he won't feature much.
Tomorrow is another day in the Tour that I wish I had more space in my budget...
Let me say this, which is obvious, having the same (!) domestiques as everyone else does (!) make teams more similar on day's like tomorrow. That's why I advocate having so more riders at the 3.0 level!
When you're planning for a 3 week tour, on the very flat stages you'll want the top point getters on this list, because the scoring table is so heavily skewed towards the top:
Mark Cavendish
Peter Sagan
André Greipel
Alexander Kristoff
Marcel Kittel
That's a lot of credits right there... You really can't fit in much more in there if you don't want to lose out on too many points!
In the the mountains the same thing probably happens with (maybe not this year!
) Contador, Froome and Rodriguez...
So, if that's what you want on your team, then to fit them in maybe you'll have space for 3 or 4 domestiques and maybe another decent rider...
But (!) if you have many (!) choices to make (!) at the 3.0 level, then (!) who (!) you choose at that level will stick with you for along time, and could be (!) significant in the long run, 'cause you can't overhaul your team overnight!
It's too bad there weren't so many choices this year.
In a way it's actually proof the valuation process is working, maybe too well, because the 3.0 riders have hardly contributed anything to the scoring, but because of the pricing and their few quantity and the abandonment, we've been stuck with them and there've been few, if any, surprises at that level of value (!).
I mea, I think El Fares has scored 9 points, Bonnet scored 34 points and abandoned and maybe the best (!) value has been Riblon (!) who at 8 credits has scored 191 points! But I think that's it.
So I'm partial to creating a structure rather than relying so heavily on formulas... Not trying to insult anyone here...
So yeah, I really believe it's a good idea, for next year, of course, to have many more riders at the 3.0 level or thereabouts...
Well, I wish we could see actual figures for the managed teams telling us what percentage of the 'active' teams brought in what rider...
I bet that, of course, 98% of the "still-managed" teams will bring in Cavendish, 75% will bring in Greipel, 80% Kittel and more than 65% will bring in Sagan... But it'd be nice to see the actual figures, but, please, don't get me wrong, I don't expect them tomorrow
And I don't expect to see them any day soon, either, and I know I'm the only one thinking it would be cool to see that, and I don't want to create more work for Dave, either...
It's just a thought! 
Once again you totally miss the point. The reason you can't have all of the best sprinters in your team for tomorrow is not that there are too few 3 credit riders, its because you SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO HAVE ALL THE BEST SPRINTERS IN YOUR TEAM!
Likewise in the mountains, why do you think you should be able to have Froome, Rodriguez, Valverde and Contador all in your team? And why would having twenty three credit riders make any difference?
Whatever happens the best teams will all have the same 'stars' and a few cheap riders. If you artificially make some riders cost 3 credits, riders like Hoogerland or Schleck then they will be picked by everyone because they're better choices than Mederel or Fischer so everyone WILL STILL HAVE THE SAME TEAM!
No matter what anyone does, all players will pick the best options at any one price point. If you have a dozen three credit riders everyone will pick the ones most likely to score so you're not changing anything, everyone will still pick the same riders, everyone will pick the riders who are most likely to score points. Tweak the game however you want, that will never change.
What I mean is, we have the Dream Team, right? The team of 9 riders that, without considering budget restraints, would have scored the most points? That's (!) been built into the system. And I like it!
Well, it's the same idea, but what I'd like to see is the 9 most picked riders by the users for that stage. Just out of curiousity and fun!
I know it's just a dream, but, what the hell? 
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