PCM 2011 The Basics part 1

Personally I struggled to read the manual for the game so I may cover some things that are in fact in the manual but ah well...I'm presuming the manual was about as much help as a chocolate fire guard if you are looking here for hints and tips :)

Where to begin...I guess I will begin with the bits I personally consider most important in the game the actual 3D races (I tend not to sim races unless I honestly don't care..).

OK so here on the left is an image I have just ripped from a stage race I just set up for the purpose of this post. In the picture we see the basic information available to us regarding a riders current situation in a race.

• The long dark green bar is the riders overall energy for the race. This will slowly deplete throughout the race.
• The yellow bar is used up when the rider is pushing it at fairly high speeds, this bar will regenerate slowly when the rider takes his foot off the gas and settles to a speed he feels more comfortable with.
• The red bar is what I would call the riders "explosion" bar, this bar is used for anything that requires the rider to be explosive. This may be creating an attack, sprinting or following an attack. This bar rapidly decreases under these moments of high exertion and will like the yellow bar previously slowly regenerate when these moments of exertion have passed. If your riders red bar is depleted when someone around you attacks you will not be able to follow them and as such you should take care of your riders explosiveness. A simple tactic to reduce the use of your riders explosiveness is to wait for an attack to commence and chase this reduces the amount of red bar your rider will consume.
• The large number in the picture is the maximum amount of effort you are allowing a rider to use. Note the fact I say maximum, this does not mean that if you tell the rider to maintain his position he will permanently use 80% effort to do this. It means that the rider will exert up to a maximum of 80% effort to stay in the position. When the rider begins to struggle to hold the position at his maximum allowed effort you will see the number flash red. You must then decide if you wish for the rider to be allowed to increase his effort or not.
• The two bottles indicate the riders available food/drink and will decrease through out the race. Your riders do not start with enough to last a full race and as such you will need to send a rider to replenish these for your team. I *believe* that you cannot collect water after the last 20km of a race, So make sure to have done this at some point before then. If a rider runs out of feed the water flashes a blue colour this means he needs to urgently be supplied, if it gets to flashing red then the rider is suffering and will give lower levels of performance.
• The green battery like bar is the energy gel the rider is carrying. This gel can be used as a supplement to assist in a riders attack it provides a small boost for a small period and may only be used once throughout the race
• The heartrate is a fairly obvious measure of how difficult your rider is finding the current exertion on his body
• Finally, the arrow pictured in the picture is the first phase of a three stage indication of how a rider is feeling about his efforts in the race. As this is fairly complex I will discuss this more in my next post.