I know this has been discussed before and I did searched the forum on this, even for PCM 13 but there is not a clear answer about what is actually raising the fatigue curve.
As anyone found out playing the game for a long time?
What I found on the forum is something related to peaking to early in the season and maybe to many race day too close together would set the curve off the original estimate from the sesason objective graphics.
Well, I'm not sure what goes wrong, but don't ever trust the fatigue curve at the start of the season, it's always going to be a lot worse. I'm not sure if race days play a role or just training. This works for somebody you want to maintain a decent level of fitness all season long (you can easily go without objectives, I don't believe it makes a difference):
Here's somebody who rides all stage races from P-N/T-A to the Dauphine and is back in form in September, I gave him a little more training for the Giro, though he'll never reach the highest fitness level:
So, if you want to use the highest training level (which I never do, not even in that example) you can only peak for a short while and need to plan a break of 4 weeks and then build fitness up again. Since that takes so long I find it more efficient to stick to lower training levels, which can be maintained for a longer time. That break in the 2nd example is still needed, though, a week less would have been fine, too.
What do you want a summary about? The actual fitness level is always the whole green area in the background, or rather, the top of that light green area. The game translates it to a fitness level between 1 and 6 (1 being the highest), at the start of the season everybody is at 5 or 6. The fitness level definitely makes a difference in races, try and race on level 6 (the lowest) and you'll really struggle.
Training is also between levels 1 and 6 - here, 1 being the lowest, in red. Orange is level 2, yellow 3, and three shades of green for levels 4, 5 and 6. In my first example, I just go up to level 4 interspersed with level 3 training. In the second example, I added three weeks of level 5, so the second highest.
The dark red area above the light green (in my screenshots only at the end of the season) is fatigue building up. The longer you train at high levels, the more it grows. It translates to tiredness, which will reduce a rider's performance. A little bit of dark red won't be a problem, the rider won't immediately feel tired, but I usually avoid it altogether.
Once fatigue starts building, you have to plan a break, go down to the lowest/red training level for a while. Your fitness level drops accordingly, with a delay, as the second screenshot shows. Then you have to build up training again according to the rules, at least two weeks on one level before moving up to the next (three weeks to move from level 4 to level 5 or from 5 to 6).
I think that covered about everything. In short, if you want to use he highest fitness level you need the highest training level and need to reduce the training drastically after the peak/top objective to avoid tired riders. You might be able to peak three times per season if you plan it well. I usually use two blocks or even just one, having riders who do nothing but the Tour de Suisse, Tour de France and Vuelta. Keeping to training level 4 - with maybe a little level 5, as seen above - I can have long blocks of good fitness. If I wanted great fitness (level 1) the blocks would have to be shorter.
As for the whole objectives business - it's supposed to make season planning easy, you have primary and secondary objectives and the game will create a training plan accordingly, though not care about fatigue. So if you use that system, you still need to adjust the training levels, bring them down across the board. So I find it simpler to just delete all objectives, start with a clean sheet (training only in red, lowest level) and design my own training plan. Don't add objectives again, the game will screw up what you planned. The riders will violently complain, but I do not believe it actually makes a difference.
He's a spambot, hope you didn't just write those great pharagraphs for him
At least this was good for me
So, I used to play pcm 07 , and I realize that there is nothing really different in pcm 14 than a better looking interface. The whole fitness system is still the same in the background programmation or very close to watch it was .
He's a spambot, hope you didn't just write those great pharagraphs for him
Damnit, I'm growing old, not catching such things. Human, bot, who can tell the difference anymore? 100010101001010010101, right?
@Pat: Yes, it still is the same system as in older versions. My training schedules in PCM 14 are exactly the same as in PCM 09. The whole objective thing is supposed to make planning easier but only makes it worse imho.
