Youth Teams - first draft options

[Falcor CC]

Dear rsf community,

There have been some calls here and there to introduce youth teams. Below, I will list a few options that I would personally like with some nuances as well. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated to further improve the concept or different options.

Introduced with either option: New, additional races for youth teams.
-->In a seperate race tab. On top of, and thus not replacing the current racing model
-->No minimum riders (could ride with just 1)
-->Finances: How? Lower price money/salary? No prize money/salary at all? Seperate finances between senior and youth team? --> Transfers from senior team money makes sense, but then what is the youth team money for?


As for the youth team structure:
OPTION 1: the big age expansion
-Introduce new ages for riders (16-19)
-Have U21 teams, seperate from 'senior' teams
-->Increasing the youth market x4 with riders from different ages.
-->Even higher training %, but max stats at the end of 20 should stay the same
-->Problem: riders training at 20 would mean it makes no more sense to buy riders before the first training
-->Possible solution A: alternative training systems in youth teams? How would this be filled in?
-->Possible solution B: no training at all in youth teams but unrealistic
-->Option for youth riders to join the senior team right away when buying them
-->What about selling riders?

OPTION 2: improve what we already have
-Have U23 teams, seperate from 'senior' teams
-->No new ages introduced
-->21-22yo riders can ride, what about 20yo?
-->21-22yo can train, but 20yo can't?
-->No new market system needed
-->What about selling riders? And can they go from 1 senior team to another youth team? (fair play risk)


As for the 'internal transfers' (going from youth team to main team):
-A youth team system could be exploited by farmer teams or any teams in general, as the rules for young riders could be bypassed.
-->Solution: young rider rules stay in place for the main team. If a team already has 4 20yo riders bought straight into their senior team, they cannot 'promote' another 20yo bought for their youth team to the senior team. Also goes for the limitations to rider types (climbers, sprinters...).
-On top of that and maybe more of a question towards the community, do we a) go for a free promotion system or be b) limit promotions from youth teams to senior teams. F.e.: Unlimited promotions from youth team to senior team vs only allow 1 rider to go up to the main team from the youth team per season?
-One-way traffic seems logical, aka only going from youth team to senior team is possible, not the other way around.


In conclusion, the youth teams should be an addition to just have fun and create the possibility to ride more races/add more features. This concept is still in a very early phase, so any input at all is ver much welcome! The more detailed, the better of course! I guess I am missing a lot of stuff still, so please remind me about the topics that become relevant for a youth team system too!Thank you all in advance.

[cataracs]

If the youth team is not going to affect the current game world, then there's no need for it. We want to play more, simply allow multis as long as not used in the same race.

So the main goal should be the training. Since training is the most important part of the game, but it's random..allowing teams that are more active to have a chance to get slightly better riders is not an unfair idea. My suggestion would be:

Add a separate market for the youth teams with riders aged 16. Starting values are the same as the 20 years old market.
Give everyone 10m to buy whatever they want, 10 riders max.
Use the same money/points system in the races. Races are for 5-6 riders usually 70km max (there are defined rules for it Irl I think we could follow them?)
No trainings, but the top1 rider at the end of the season/month gets a +1 in a chosen skill, with a maximum of +1 in every skill. Meaning if a rider wins every season from 16 to 20 he can go from 73-56-79-50-50-55-50 to 74-57-80-51-51-55.7-50. (but ranking first, 5 months in a row should almost be impossible)
The top 3 teams at the end of the season/month get 150k-100k-50k to the A team (that's not really needed but it's something aswell)
At the end of the season, 20 years old riders retire/dissapear, unless the A team have enough money/can go through youth riders limitation to buy them before month change.

[schappy]

You need 1,5 hours every day if you want to be successful. If you need now more time to be competable here, its harder for many guys here in my Opinion. In my Opinion we dont need more feature in mass, better have some more gameplay features in this game.

[Falcor CC]

Thanks for the feedback, I think you both make very valid arguments. I think adding non-avantageous stuff makes it lose its purpose indeed, but of course giving too much of an advantage favors activity, which shouldn't necessarily be promoted. I do like Takas system, where the advantages are there but so small that it doesn't affect others enough to really be mad about it. After all the advantage might be gone with unlucky training soon anyway.

@Taka, how would the 10m budget work? Does it reset? Cause if not you spend 10m once and then you're done. How do you see this exactly?

[cataracs]

@Taka, how would the 10m budget work? Does it reset? Cause if not you spend 10m once and then you're done. How do you see this exactly?

Give everyone 10m to buy whatever they want, 10 riders max.
Use the same money/points system in the races. Races are for 5-6 riders usually 70km max (there are defined rules for it Irl I think we could follow them?)

I just gave a general idea, but it's more complicated and needs deeper thoughts by the pros lol.

starting with 10m for 10max riders team sounds more than enough. There will be income from races, lower than normal due to less competition but should still be enough to avoid an early game over.
Selling riders I havent thought about it though, once you buy a rider you get stuck with eachother until they're 20? Idk

[flockmastoR]

Keep it simple stupid!

In general, I am pro youth team.

What I don't like about it is to give people even more advantage that can invest more time into the game. As Schappy already mentioned, 1,5h is already a lot of time and managers doing a race per day are favored in terms of income and the possibility to build big teams/have better riders/have solid finances. So I don't want that people that can invest even more time are favored by having access to better riders or by getting access to a second race for financial income.

What I also don't like is to create a seperate financing system. I personally would like something like a draft system. When we have riders between 16-19 lets say you get a rider each month based on a draft system you can pick from. I wouldn't go too crazy about it, all provided riders should be riders that one would consider "usefull" when he is 20 (trainable or not, IDK as long as it ends up in the regular skill range). You can pick one actively or not. So when you go all in in youth activity, you have 1x 16 year, 1x 17y, 1x18y, 1x19, 1x20 year guy in your youth team and can use them to do youth races. In youth races you earn points for the draft position (so you can pick first). When the rider is 20 you can chose to buy him for his regular value (he leaves the youth team then but you can just use him in mens' races when he turns 21. If you dont buy him, the rider enters the ordinary market with 21 (keeping his name). So you would have some scouting between teams as well, and seperately the free agent market (regular 21y market as is now).

As for the races, would be nice to have a different race engine to some degree. We had "Bahnrennen" once, then short races for retired races (which was imo the best so far).

[Hansa]

So,
the question is what do we want to achieve with this?

Should there be an competetivve advantage about this? If yes i am against it, as multiple people mentioned below dont want to give more competitive advantage for teams like me that play a lot.

If it shouldnt have an competetive advantage and is just for fun to ride more races, i would keep it with the retired riders instead of creating something new, we even had real races and the retired rider database is already there therefor it should be a lot easier to bring that back instead of creating a new U20 system.

[flockmastoR]

So,
the question is what do we want to achieve with this?

Should there be an competetivve advantage about this? If yes i am against it, as multiple people mentioned below dont want to give more competitive advantage for teams like me that play a lot.

If it shouldnt have an competetive advantage and is just for fun to ride more races, i would keep it with the retired riders instead of creating something new, we even had real races and the retired rider database is already there therefor it should be a lot easier to bring that back instead of creating a new U20 system.

Well new teams don't have retired riders. Plus it gives a new aspect to the game experience. Grow your own rider already before, scout them from other youth teams etc.

[Hansa]

Like i said i am against a new system with competitive advantage the growin youth riders before 20y.o. has a training flaw anyways, either you change the maxskills at 20yo or you are at a disadvantage buying them younger than 20yo as you can miss out on reaching max skills unless they are on a fixed progression but then its pointless.

There are a million retired riders without teams just let new teams pick out of them

[Pokemon Club]

Why not having a sort of draft like in NBA for riders below 20 yo in addition of the current young market :
- Teams that are interest should pay a fix amount to be on the monthly / quarter draft.
- No one know who pay for that.
- Teams with the less points on the months have the priority for the pick.
- The profile of the riders aren't known before inscription are close for the draft

[flockmastoR]

Like i said i am against a new system with competitive advantage the growin youth riders before 20y.o. has a training flaw anyways, either you change the maxskills at 20yo or you are at a disadvantage buying them younger than 20yo as you can miss out on reaching max skills unless they are on a fixed progression but then its pointless.

There are a million retired riders without teams just let new teams pick out of them

It is not pointless. If you have a good draft pick place, you maybe get the 73-56-79 (potential at 20) rider for a fixed price at a specific time. You got him in the draft, and you have good luck you can buy him directly without competition. Or you have to decide if the 72-55-79 is also worth to be bought. My aim would be a system where you, once in a while buy one of these riders to your team but most will just be released or disappear.

The racing system would then be a little side race for managers with a lot of time. You can have seperate youth statistics and rankings of youth teams (a nice feature to compare those who take that serious).

Question is still who can pick first. My initial idea was to reward those who do good at these side races but after thinking again, I don't think it is actually a good idea. Mabye we just get some random pick positions each month (all teams with points/ just all in division 1-5 otherwise it could circumvent the transfer market rules we now have for max skill).

The only thing that would bother me is the balance of the 20/21 year old transfer market. We currently have 110 teams in Divisions 1-5. That means potentially 110 additional youth riders. But I guess we could find a way for that. But this is kind of neglactable when we have around 100 youth riders created per day. So this is just 3.3% of the generated riders.

My understanding of proposing a youth section was a sort of additional integration into the game. If it is just a side riding, I wouldnt care at all. It if is both, needs a balance of course

[Bright]

I love the youth teams with all restrictions in place. One youth pull per week/month for eg 100k (you can choose the discipline but not the stats) Random age 16-19 development yourself by training them the normal way (max stats apply, max numbers of age 20, 21, 22 23 apply) no max number of youth riders. If you want to promote a youth rider you pay a flat fee (eg. Flat rider 1mln, Cobbles 1.5mln, sprinter 2 mlns, classic 2mln, climber 2.5 mln) This way you can possible carve your perfect rider.

Youthpull would have max stats too: if 16 he would have 5 seasons to develop so max 20 points added and upto the regular cap for a 21 year old)

So best possible pull would be something like:

Climber 56-40-70-40-50 at 16 (so this guy could reach max Climbing after the first training on his 20th)
Flat 40-56-70-60-50 at 16
and so on.

[Robyklebt]

I really don't see the need for this.
Neither option 1, nor option 2, actually the best would be a mix between option 1 and 2... But even better is no youth teams.
Option 1-2 mix would be 16-17 juniors. 18-23 U23. So 2 separate races.

Starting values as Bright says so that they don't end up better than 20/21 year olds. Or not? But that is the first problem or the main problem.
-Can get better than the starting values now verson: First, like that even less than the other way around. Then the "normal market" become weaker, and the way it is now IMO is one of the things at c4f that works very well (in principle, number of riders still too high IMO. The potential 57-75 at 20/21 is now cheaper at 16, how to make sure he isn't cheaper when he becomes 21? Another auction, but then the owner somehow doesn't have an advantage anymore, which if we have it would be nice. And if we ever get around to slightly change starting values (sprint spread really way too big, at least make the minimum 46) we need to remember to change it all.

-Max same as now. Higher training values, logic, but then what Hansa already said, somehow it all seems pointless. You almost have automatic training, you buy/get the classic, 56-74-79 at the end of 20, start of 21, As a junior at 16 he's 36-54-59-3x-46 (TT 3x assuming you want him to be around 50 later) And then? He just trains all skill automatically at 16 I assume, so 40-58-63, at 17 probably at least 4 skills at 100%, and so on. So the training is somewhat automatic. And they will always end up weaker than the 20 years old, unless you make some skills higher, downhill basically, So you could start with an 85 downhiller maybe, if you take risk and possibly lose a mountain or flat or sprint... But as Hansa said, the whole thing seems rather pointless? Start at 18 the same, what's the bloody point of it all, so we start with 44-62-67 classics, 61-47-67 climbers and they all develop the same basically. I don't see the point, I don't see the plus for the game. You can ride a few more races, but there's better ways to get to that result. So 100% opposed to this idea of youth teams (I now reluctantly voted for the badly worded "The game should stay the same as it is right now" answer, even if that's not my opinion, which is "100% opposed to youth teams", other stuff can change.)

So I'm going to do hijack this thread (I shouldn't, but each time I proposed what I'm going to propose now the thread was hijacked by youth team guys!)
Just make a women's race series. Separeted completely from the races now, money, points, all separated. Same team name would be nice though, Team FL being a mysterious FL Team in the women's series would be confusing. And no full calendar needed, women's UCI calendar, a few fantasy races if the calendar is too thin, a few one day races during tours so all can ride a bit.

It has all the advantages of youth teams: More races and shorter races. (That's the only advantage youth teams have)
And it has more advantages:
- It doesn't have to be compatible to what c4f is now. Starting skills can be completely different. Market (even if IMO close to perfection now) etc etc too.
- It can be a testing ground. New sprint system? Try it first there, if we are all happy with it, go over to the then male races with it. Same for echelons. Same for earlier mintact then change back to 30" tact.
- It would be more fun for Alk+Gipfel to develop, than youth teams. Because they could finally make something new, so far it has mostly been transition still (and think this thread should have been in technic, this badly named (by me) section really should be for teh flash-react transition, new stuff better in technic). Here they could try new things. (but I still see lots of transition things that are needed, so prefer if they wait)
-If we go back to paying, not free game anymore, this section could stay free. But seems we won't, but who knows, in 2053 when our current admins have enough of it...

So forget youth teams, or present a proposal with actual advantages, which so far I don't see (ok, 1, you could keep 21-22-23 year olds down, and then have them ride Giro next gen, Avenir etc, that would be fun)
Women races=good
youth teams=boring

[flockmastoR]

-Max same as now. Higher training values, logic, but then what Hansa already said, somehow it all seems pointless. You almost have automatic training, you buy/get the classic, 56-74-79 at the end of 20, start of 21, As a junior at 16 he's 36-54-59-3x-46 (TT 3x assuming you want him to be around 50 later) And then? He just trains all skill automatically at 16 I assume, so 40-58-63, at 17 probably at least 4 skills at 100%, and so on. So the training is somewhat automatic. And they will always end up weaker than the 20 years old, unless you make some skills higher, downhill basically, So you could start with an 85 downhiller maybe, if you take risk and possibly lose a mountain or flat or sprint... But as Hansa said, the whole thing seems rather pointless? Start at 18 the same, what's the bloody point of it all, so we start with 44-62-67 classics, 61-47-67 climbers and they all develop the same basically. I don't see the point, I don't see the plus for the game. You can ride a few more races, but there's better ways to get to that result. So 100% opposed to this idea of youth teams (I now reluctantly voted for the badly worded "The game should stay the same as it is right now" answer, even if that's not my opinion, which is "100% opposed to youth teams", other stuff can change.)

Well why is that automatic? not every 16 year old gets his full potential in the young years, you cannot train that hard early on, your body is still growing. So for me it would be logic to have smaller training percantages than with 20. Meaning that you can have a max skilled rider at 21 at a very low chance (Da trennt sich die Spreu vom Weizen). You mostly get underaverage riders which you can still decide to buy in my proposal (which would be stupid) and you can get (with low chances) the 73-56-79 for the normal market prize. IMO thats more realistic and wouldnt mess the usual transfer market too much and adds a benefit to developing them. Can you plan your future star? No you need to be very lucky.

But in general, I can also live with no youth team. I am not so much into the more riding possibility stuff, if that is the main porpose I would go with the Hansa idea and just reinvent short races for retired too

[Radunion]

I do not think it should be a priority, and I see some issues with training those youth riders. You either lack side skills or create riders that are not possible at the moment, like training a flat guy only sprint and flat getting a brilliant launcher (or even sprinter) with very little mountain. TT is another thing. If you do not train it, you get a cheap guy with way below 50 TT, or you allow climbers to have more TT if they compromise on flat.

If we decide to do it, I think we should keep the U23 class, allowing 21 and 22-year-olds to ride youth races. Those riders could either be from the senior team or the junior team. Pro contracts could be done with matching rights. The first team offering a contract has to put the money down in advance and cannot change the bid. The rider automatically moves to the transfer market, and everybody else can bid. After the auction is won, the manager of the youth team can match the offer to get the rider. The initial bid and the winning bid are reimbursed. Riders turning 23 are auctioned off in the normal way, similar to nameless riders. Advantage there would be that the 21-23 marked gets better, and that doing no youth team has few disadvantages. How the youth team is financed is still a question. The main disadvantage is that managers are no longer able to name all their youth riders in the main team.

[flockmastoR]

I do not think it should be a priority, and I see some issues with training those youth riders. You either lack side skills or create riders that are not possible at the moment, like training a flat guy only sprint and flat getting a brilliant launcher (or even sprinter) with very little mountain. TT is another thing. If you do not train it, you get a cheap guy with way below 50 TT, or you allow climbers to have more TT if they compromise on flat.

Why? depends on how the training is implemented. When you are young, you maybe need to train all skills, you dont get much out of focusing a single skill.

Lets say you get 50% when you give one slot for a 19 year old (no matter what the skill), but for the second slot, you just get 5% more, for the third slot you get 3% more, for the fourth 2% then only 1%

means you get 63% max compared to only 50% when you cover it. Would result in training all skills (or all except from those you want to avoid, TT for flat riders maybe).

I don't say that those numbers make sense, but you get my idea. about the combined values, I guess that needs more thinking what that would mean.

[Radunion]

Why? depends on how the training is implemented. When you are young, you maybe need to train all skills, you dont get much out of focusing a single skill.

Lets say you get 50% when you give one slot for a 19 year old (no matter what the skill), but for the second slot, you just get 5% more, for the third slot you get 3% more, for the fourth 2% then only 1%

means you get 63% max compared to only 50% when you cover it. Would result in training all skills (or all except from those you want to avoid, TT for flat riders maybe).

I don't say that those numbers make sense, but you get my idea. about the combined values, I guess that needs more thinking what that would mean.

It would be a completely different training system where you still need luck, but can not influence it much. We still should keep the logic of the current system. It does not matter what you train first and what second; you can affect the spread, but not the mean (expected value).

[flockmastoR]

Why? depends on how the training is implemented. When you are young, you maybe need to train all skills, you dont get much out of focusing a single skill.

Lets say you get 50% when you give one slot for a 19 year old (no matter what the skill), but for the second slot, you just get 5% more, for the third slot you get 3% more, for the fourth 2% then only 1%

means you get 63% max compared to only 50% when you cover it. Would result in training all skills (or all except from those you want to avoid, TT for flat riders maybe).

I don't say that those numbers make sense, but you get my idea. about the combined values, I guess that needs more thinking what that would mean.

It would be a completely different training system where you still need luck, but can not influence it much. We still should keep the logic of the current system. It does not matter what you train first and what second; you can affect the spread, but not the mean (expected value).

I don't see why this is a problem (having a completely different training system). Maybe we could think about trainable skills and untrainable skills (Veranlagung) which can be different for different types (that could solve the skill combination issues, a young climber cannot train TT but has a good TT potential. No type can train downhill you just get the potential of up to 79. A flat rider can train sprint (for becoming a Max 74 with 66 sprint but a potential classic cannot train it). All just ideas. When we don't want those riders to outperform the regular ones, the expected value is kind of not interesting. But you can propose a system that has more potential actions/decisions to take if that's what you missing.

For me a system with as little affect on the regular transfer market as possible is the goal at the time of the introduction (with a possibility to change the balance later on if we decide it makes sense).