Pro Cycling Manager 2024 – Feature Requests

Excellent bringing Cyanide up on the lack of women's representation!

Ability to re-sign contracts with existing riders before 1August.

Some indication of likely demands (e.g. a range) before opening dossiers.

Riders take a few days to accept contracts so can weigh up alternative offers, but if transfers become more competitive it would need more transfer points to engage with more riders.

Equipment ratings shown when choosing equipment supplier contracts.

Promotion/relegation based on results.

Something which tells you how many race days are currently in your calendar to help judge the right amount of races to sign up for.

I would like to see some kind of scouting for riders over the age of 18, to magically know everything about every rider as soon as they are done as juniors is really a bad design.
A new engine would be cool. Then they could fix cars and motorbikes in the field, and how turns work. It's normal in races that positioning in to corners are important but when the sprint starts 3 km out a corner with 500 m left where everybody takes a rest and reaccelerate makes no sense. Also perhaps they could getting water a bit less tedious with better passing mechanics or something.
I would also like to see you have more control over your u23 squad, beeing able to ride their races and in general make them more integrated, like they are irl.
Also would like a better ai and options for when you put your riders on auto, a lot of the time it feels like the ai overrides your instructions while beeing on auto. Like you have put a leader, but the ai disagrees and makes their leader taking position at the front into a climb instead of the raider you have put as a leader. Would be nice as I like playing a gm more than a sports director.
Probably some more things but can't remember them at the top of my head.

I was actually wondering the other day if there might be a women's DB on the steam workshop. SI is much bigger than Cyanide and women's football bigger than women's cycling and they still haven't done it in FM, although I know they have said they would so it feels unlikely anytime soon in PCM. I remember seeing someone working on a women's FM database years ago before SI announced they would include it.

– definitive yes on your idea to change the transfer market!. Being able to sign all riders at first of August is weird and way too gamey. The drafting system is better. I think an interaction system with more things to discuss. (Leadership Grand tour for example etc) Would make it also better
– 100% on objectives influence
– 100% on the map: got some ideas written underneath how
– 100% on the last and finances system. You should be in charge haha! Hail decathlon gamer!

Own ideas: a working map that shows the finish, rather than the already not functioning map we have since the beginning. Being able to check out the road. With a drone for example, so you can scout the stage. Would be awesome. Now you can change the camera to the sprint and finish but that's terrible and not doing anything for you. They could just remove those cameras.
– Riders wanting improved deal, better role or otherwise don't stay.
– face generator, all riders looking the same is cringy

Some less important feature ideas:
– making absolute leaders and race leaders unable to protect others (as an option) more RP

First of all, I love that you are taking the time and putting so much effort in addressing all this. Now here are my suggestions:

Sponsorships & Objectives:

– Change the sponsoring and related sponsorobjectives mechanic. 1 august is the sponsor renewal date but objectives are sometimes after the date of renewal or changing sponsor. It does not make any sense to have any goals set if they do not really have an impact for next year.

– Concerning signing with sponsors, it would be nice to be able to negotiate on an earlier stage with potential sponsors. This way I would also be able to use my riders dossier to build up interest from riders that will match the countries of interest for my potential new sponsor. Or as mentioned in your video, to be able to see and negotiate the goals with the sponsor for the coming season, so I at least know which riders from which nations I would need to obtain these objectives. (for example I have a German sponsor, who wants a TT top 3 in the nationals, but I do not know that when I'm signing riders, and it turns out that I do not have any German rider capable of riding a decent TT. If I had have know this beforehand I would have signed a good German TT rider).

– auto remove an objective from a rider when a race is removed from the planner screen

– On the objectives page, I would love to be able to enter exact dates and manaully set ranges when I want riders to reach a certain fitness or when to take a break, instead of the chunks of weeks you can select currently.

Game mechanics:

– Really important to me. Give actual timegaps when there are splits at the finish. Very often when there are gaps between riders/groups they are not given. It is almost gamebreaking, having done so much effort to get that 7 seconds gap, and when the results page shows, finding out that the gap is not given.

– I would love to have some more up-to-date, more immersive commentary during the races. It seems the same audio is being used over and over again. I'd like commentary that is interesting and relevant during the race, for example, the commentator notices that a favorite is struggling, or they notice that it seems a certain team is setting up to attack. Or that during a windy section a team is going to the front trying to break the peloton. Something along those lines. Just to make it all more dynamic and immersive. Also a new narrator would be nice. I have been hearing the same voices for so many years now.

Planner

– Being able to filter on riders attributes/skills in the Planner screen.

Finances

– Not having to pay my salaries to staff/riders only from the sponspor money. I have a huge bank account from earnings during races but I'm not able to do much with that. It is just sitting on the bank while I struggle to sign riders because the sponsor money input is capped and it is the only way to spend money, at least for signing riders. I also very much agree on taking into account facilities costs, travelling costs, hotel costs, etc. and having that cost money. Money is such a big thing in this game, let it play a bigger role on a broader scale of things.

Dossiers:

– Have an option to show interest levels from a certain % to higher, instead of how it set up now, having to select them in set ranges.

One massive feature that I thinks needs to be resolved! Is the broken strategy screen while racing.

Right now the strategy domestique system is simply not working. When you give your rider the leader role, he doesn't ride in a break away, when you select it. Or go for any points. When you put your riders as team mates of the leader. Rather than automatically protecting them they sometimes don't do it all or start unwanted pacing.

A solver:
– replace team mate with protection duty and pacing duty. So when on automatic they'll do that.
– going for points and going along with attacks should just be fixed, terrible bug that hasn't been fixed in forever.

– Further that sun on the screen that sometimes shows up really needs to go. It's annoying, doesn't add anything and even remains when using the helicopter.

A feature I would like to see is reputation and media impact. In real life there are large teams and small teams. some teams contribute more, some teams are percieved as rivals. We as the audience who watch cycling on TV will have our opinion on a team affected by how the riders act. For example, does a team contribute to the workload or are they free-riding? is a team performing above or below expectations?
This inter-team reputation could then affect how likely your riders are allowed to get in a breakaway, or how others will work with you in a breakaway group. And your media/public reputation would allow for a different type of sponsor objectives, i.e. keep your public reputation above a certain threshold for a bonus or something like that.

Make the game look like it was released after 2010

Being able to promote cyclist from your development team to your main squad & offer them a contract. Paying for them so why not if you leave space, be able to promote them. It's what Jumbo leaves spot open for every season. Would be quite realistic.

Also why am I getting outsprinted in the 4/5th stage for sprint points by some sprinter, who has 0 sprinter points and no team leader that's remotely in the GC. Makes zero sense, just gamey stuff that breaks immersion.

All really good points! Overall, PCM should get closer to what FM is, or should be. Especially for riders growth, team management… all of that

I'd like to see:
1. Add AI faces for new riders. It's really easy nowadays to generate hundreds of suitable rider faces, it took me a few hours to do so and add them manually. It would be straight forward to create a database of AI generated faces to randomly assign when a rider is generated.
2. Sponsor objectives that aren't exclusively results based. In reality, a small team in a big race might have a sponsor objective to spend Xkm in the breakaway, or win an intermediate sprint. They already have some of these in the Pro Racer mode.
3. Change the morale system from smiley faces to a progress bar – presumably this is already what happens in the background, the smiley faces are just not helpful. Ideally, they'd have several bars (the way that a game like sims does) so we know if our rider is about to get unhappy because he's been in too many, or too few races.
4. Replace the gel system in this game with the feed system from TDF.
5. Fix the team roles system. I should be able to assign everyone to teammate, the way someone like Ineos would. Instead I am forced to leave 2 on free role.
6. Improved AI for starting position. If I have assigned a rider to try and get in the breakaway, or to hunt KoM points, he would make his way towards the front during the neutralised start. However, on PCM it's purely random, and he might start right at the back. It makes winning the KoM jersey on stage 1 far too important.
7. Fix the time gaps
8. Add more logic to sponsor regions. If you have a team based in South Africa, full of African riders. The game should be able to recognise that your current roster would appeal more to African sponsors. It makes no sense that on your Lions playthrough, you'll be having offers from countries like Belgium, Italy etc that make no sense for your team. Again, I don't feel like this is hard to work out, just have the engine look up which unassigned sponsors your team would appeal to, rather than random.
9. Could fix 8 by having sponsor interest be more similar to team interest in pro racer mode, so that we can see who we might sign with, and what type of riders they would want. One of the many downsides of the random sponsor selection is that it comes after you've spent all your dossier points speaking to riders who may be of zero interest to your new sponsor.

Agree with every suggestion you made, although some are to me not that high prio (equipment, facilities, training overhaul…). For women's cycling I fully agree but realistically I don't think it makes sense to implement it before the new engine. Let's not have them waste time and resources on creating graphics and assets for women's cycling in an old engine, only to have to redo it the next year.
Finances should come automatically with enhancing other areas. If you add more equipment options, more facilites, include travel or have more different staff members, finances gets more complicated automatically too.

Some ideas/priorities I have:

Pre-race actions before the live race begins including:
– Starting positions (and the ability to influence them. You should be able to tell one of your guys to get ready to be in the breakaway.)
– Caretaker availability (where do you put your caretakers with water bottles across the course). This could be linked with a new staff role or could be a job trainers do. A masseur could be added as well, that has an effect on recuperation only. Having to divide where your staff goes to (travel) could be nice to manage and make choices too.
– Team talk with role promises. If you tell a rider he's going to be the team leader, it should have a negative morale effect if you force him to work for someone else.

More career immersion and team building challenges:
– Experience matters (a team with only youngster should have a disadvantage because of the lack of experience). Right now, building up your team is basically signing talented youngsters with 3 year contracts and that gets you a long way already. Why would I pay triple for an experienced rider if I can build up a new one very cheap.
– Rider traits to diversify riders
Van Aert –> consistent (is not subject to a lot of day form)
Van Der Poel –> unpredictable (subject to a lot of changes in form)
Tim Declercq –> model teammate (gets a boost when doing teammate duties)
+ traits that make your riders ignore demands, expect higher or lower salaries, like or dislike to travel a lot, need a lot of training or need a lot of races to build up form, etc…
– Relationships between riders (brothers, friends, …) making them more likely to sign with the same team. But also rivalries between riders making them unlikely to sign with the same team.

Agree with the lack of sprint crashes but also:
– Small injuries during races (falls now either cause a DNF or no harm at all. More realistic would be a race form penalty or some specific harm during climbing, cobbles or sprint).
– More illnesses during stage races and more recuperation effects after being in the breakaway all day. In Grand Tours, the breakaways are often the same guys over and over again. This shouldn't be possible.

So you basically want a whole new game