I just played my first PCM game (2012) since the 09 edition. It actually seems to run faster/better than the older version, which is great.
I just played my first race. What was weird is that 3 of my 7 guys got dropped from the peleton without having lost all their bars. They just sort of drifted back and got dropped. I kept effort at 70% and "keep position". Is that too low? I remember I used to set this to about 50% for PCM2009. Seems like I have to pay attention to every rider, otherwise bad things happen. Two of the three dropped riders were set to protect other riders. The first to get dropped was a free rider, not protecting anyone, nor being protected. I could understand these guys getting dropped because they lost power, but their bars barely moved.
It might be because of a new feature added in PCM11, that the effort bar in the "keep position" action represents the maximum effort that a rider will do to keep his current position on the group. If his effort isn't enough to do it, the effort number will start blinking red and the rider will start sliding away to the back of the group, differently from PCM09, when the effort bar had little if any effect in the keep position action.
Ah, should be noted though that for some actions such as attacking, sprinting and protecting, the effort bar has no effect (you'll see the effort number in gray when in those actions), so I'm not sure about the protecting riders falling of the P..
Edited by lluuiiggii on 11-10-2012 05:54
Thanks for that explanation. Yeah, this new version requires more micromanagement to make sure riders' effort is sufficient to keep the position in the peleton.
There is also this new option of positioning (you get to it by right clicking another rider). How does this work? Is my rider supposed to go up the peleton and ride beside this rider? How long will he do this? Is it just temporary or will he follow him until the command is changed, i.e. if that rider drops off or if he attacks, will my guy follow? it doesn't seem like that's the case. The PCM manual is quite bad. Almost none of the new features are explained well if at all.
thanks.
Yeah, your cyclist will drive next to/directly behind the other rider. He will not follow if the other rider attacks or fall back in the peleton, its just a matter of the current position of the other rider.
