PCM 2011 The Basics part 3

OK so we should now be fairly familiar with each riders little information panel (in a normal stage at least) so what next, I guess next up I will do a quick coverage of the different icons that we can use on each rider:

• The top of this image we see the "effort slider" this will allow you to change the effort a rider is currently using ranging from 0-100.
• Top left icon - Attack: This will make the rider you have targeted expend his red energy bar rapidly in an attempt to attack away from the group he is in
• Next along is the Counter Attack: This will allow you to expend your red energy bar at a slower rate to counter another riders attack. Generally to do this you would select the rider you wish to counter with, right click on the attacking rider and select this icon (or at least that's how I would do it :D)
• The greyed out S is the sprint icon: It will only become active 3km from a sprint point on a flat stage or 1km from the finish on a mountain stage, it will use the riders red energy bar to give the rider an extra burst.
• The arrow with the S is the follow sprint icon: This is used using the same method as the counter attack icon (right click etc.) this allows you to setup your sprint train or latch on to another teams sprinter
• The shield icon that is greyed out is the protect icon: It works in a similar manner to the counter attack/follow sprint icon. It allows you to protect a rider this protection means that riders being protected will have reduced energy consumption. However the riders doing the protecting will have their energy consumptions increased.
• The large shield icon is a second method of giving protection, its fairly self explanatory so I wont be talking about it.
• The bottom left icon is the maintain position icon: This icon is used to hold a rider within the peloton or the group he has joined.
• The next icon is the individual effort icon: This icon allows for micromanagement of a rider, it will make the rider expend the exact amount of effort you have assigned for him in the effort bar. Generally I would use this icon to head the sprint train and allow myself to fine tune the effort outside of the 3km sprinting zone. There are other uses and I'm sure I will cover them in future posts.
• The 3 dot and arrow icon is the short relay icon: This will have your rider expend the amount of effort set in his meter to head to the front of his group and attempt to join the relay to pull the group along, you must be careful with the amount of effort you wish to expend as if you set this too high you will find no other riders take the relay from you and you will set at the front consuming energy with no recovery.
• The next icon is the infinite relay icon: This icon is used to head the group and attempt not to allow others ahead, if their are team mates in the relay they will not go passed this riders effort level even if they are set to relay at a higher level of effort they will respect the fact he is the lead relay and not try to overtake, however other teams will make their own decisions as to take over the rider as they have their own goals in a race.
• The final greyed out bottle icon is the feed icon: this is used to send a rider to the back of the group to pick up food for his team mates.
• The icon with 3 people returns you to the main icon display if you are in the protect rider mode display

The effort bar does not effect all actions you can do; Attack, Counter Attack, Sprint, Follow Sprint, Protect and Feed are not affected. Meaning the rider will use as much effort as he requires. The maintain position icon is also *sort of* not affected by the effort bar in the sense that the maximum effort the rider will use to maintain his position is set by the effort but the rider will not always require to use this effort amount.

Due to seeing a lot of people complaining about losing riders out the back of the peloton a quick hint for these people is to increase the effort of your rider to an amount say for example around 80% effort at the start of the race and they will require less micromanagement regarding maintaining position within the groups. This is not ideal however as your rider may exert energy you don't feel he should be exerting to try and hold in a group he is not really capable of maintaining position within.