Front Office Football Central - View Single Post - PCM2011 - Garmin-Barracuda Dynasty

Critch · 07-04-2012, 05:51 PM

I bought the game a week ago (after a slight hiccup where my credit card’s fraud group blocked my purchase because it was from a foreign website and out of character) and since then I’ve been in training. I’ve watched youtube videos, I’ve read how-to guides on the PCM website, I tried to play the Tour de France (it crashed after stage 9, not a good sign) and now I’m ready for the Career option. If Lance Armstrong was ever better prepared than I am, I’d be surprised.

I’ve downloaded the PCM website’s fan-made database, it apparently improves rider ratings and improves the race calendar from the default version that comes with the game. This database bumps the games start to January, 2012 and updates the schedule and stages to match RL 2012’s rather than 2011.

There are 18 UCI World Tour teams (the big name teams that get automatic invites to all the big races) and 65 Continental Tour teams (down on their luck big teams and smaller teams that have to apply to races). There’s some form of annual promotion and relegation between the levels, but I don’t know what it is. And as I’ll be starting as a World Tour team, I hopefully won’t have to find out.

The Team

As I mentioned, interest in pro cycling in the UK has always been limited, but that’s changing now due to a competitive British team, Sky Procycling, and two top riders in Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish. Unfortunately I’ve always found Mark Cavendish to be a dick and Sky is Rupert Murdoch owned, so they will not be my team of choice.

Instead I’ll be going for US-based team Garmin-Barracuda. They have a number of the North America’s top riders (Tyler Farrar, Tom Danielson, Christian Vande Velde, Dave Zabriskie, Ryder Hesjedal), a few other competitive riders (Johan Vansummeren, Heinrich Haussler), a group of good young riders (Jakob Rathe, Nathan Haas, Andrew Talansky, Sep Vanmarke) and, most importantly, a Scottish guy (David Millar). They’re a UCI World Tour team so they’ll get an invite to all the top races, and should be vaguely competitive in even the top races, unless I mess up.

Goals for the Season

The game provides a list of Sponsor’s demands, results they’d like to see for the season. From the forums it seems they’re always wildly ambitious (for example, the target for sponsors to be happy with the Tour de France is “win it”) so I’ll only be vaguely following their goals and will mainly be aiming for my own goals:

1. Be competitive in the three Grand Tours (Giro d’Italia, Tour de France, Vuelta a Espana) – pretty self explanatory really.
2. Target the North American based races (Tour of California, USA Pro Cycling Challenge, GP of Quebec and GP of Montreal) – we’re a US based team, so go after the home races. This matches with the sponsors targets.
3. Target the Northern Classics – a group of one day Spring races in Belgium, France and the Netherlands over cobblestoned and/or hilly courses. Good money in winning those, if you can beat Tom Boonen, who is apparently fairly great in PCM2011.

Other than those, Garmin-Barracuda will send a team to all the World Tour events to hopefully win enough points that I don’t have to learn the relegation rules. Outside of the goals and the UTI World Tour races, other races will only be entered to get the team fit. Each rider can race about 60 days a season, but don’t reach full fitness until day 16 onwards, so there’ll be a few early season warm up races.

07-04-2012, 05:51 PM	#2
Critch lolzcat Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: Herndon, VA	I bought the game a week ago (after a slight hiccup where my credit card’s fraud group blocked my purchase because it was from a foreign website and out of character) and since then I’ve been in training. I’ve watched youtube videos, I’ve read how-to guides on the PCM website, I tried to play the Tour de France (it crashed after stage 9, not a good sign) and now I’m ready for the Career option. If Lance Armstrong was ever better prepared than I am, I’d be surprised. I’ve downloaded the PCM website’s fan-made database, it apparently improves rider ratings and improves the race calendar from the default version that comes with the game. This database bumps the games start to January, 2012 and updates the schedule and stages to match RL 2012’s rather than 2011. There are 18 UCI World Tour teams (the big name teams that get automatic invites to all the big races) and 65 Continental Tour teams (down on their luck big teams and smaller teams that have to apply to races). There’s some form of annual promotion and relegation between the levels, but I don’t know what it is. And as I’ll be starting as a World Tour team, I hopefully won’t have to find out. The Team As I mentioned, interest in pro cycling in the UK has always been limited, but that’s changing now due to a competitive British team, Sky Procycling, and two top riders in Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish. Unfortunately I’ve always found Mark Cavendish to be a dick and Sky is Rupert Murdoch owned, so they will not be my team of choice. Instead I’ll be going for US-based team Garmin-Barracuda. They have a number of the North America’s top riders (Tyler Farrar, Tom Danielson, Christian Vande Velde, Dave Zabriskie, Ryder Hesjedal), a few other competitive riders (Johan Vansummeren, Heinrich Haussler), a group of good young riders (Jakob Rathe, Nathan Haas, Andrew Talansky, Sep Vanmarke) and, most importantly, a Scottish guy (David Millar). They’re a UCI World Tour team so they’ll get an invite to all the top races, and should be vaguely competitive in even the top races, unless I mess up. Goals for the Season The game provides a list of Sponsor’s demands, results they’d like to see for the season. From the forums it seems they’re always wildly ambitious (for example, the target for sponsors to be happy with the Tour de France is “win it”) so I’ll only be vaguely following their goals and will mainly be aiming for my own goals: 1. Be competitive in the three Grand Tours (Giro d’Italia, Tour de France, Vuelta a Espana) – pretty self explanatory really. 2. Target the North American based races (Tour of California, USA Pro Cycling Challenge, GP of Quebec and GP of Montreal) – we’re a US based team, so go after the home races. This matches with the sponsors targets. 3. Target the Northern Classics – a group of one day Spring races in Belgium, France and the Netherlands over cobblestoned and/or hilly courses. Good money in winning those, if you can beat Tom Boonen, who is apparently fairly great in PCM2011. Other than those, Garmin-Barracuda will send a team to all the World Tour events to hopefully win enough points that I don’t have to learn the relegation rules. Outside of the goals and the UTI World Tour races, other races will only be entered to get the team fit. Each rider can race about 60 days a season, but don’t reach full fitness until day 16 onwards, so there’ll be a few early season warm up races.