In this post we take a look at the final patch for V1.0 and delve deeper into what is coming with the next big V1.1 milestone update in mid November.

Version 1.0.7 Funding Bug Fixed

A bug in version 1.0.5 and 1.0.6 made your funding fall back to that of the previous season after loading a V1.0.4 savegame. For example, if you had advanced your funding from level 4 to 6 after a very successful season, then you would find yourself with a massive budget shortfall by being back to funding level 4. Before version 1.0.7, that blocked you from even progressing further in a running season.


That's the culprit! Quick, edit him!

While the underlying issue has been fixed in 1.0.7 for any new game you start, unfortunately the symptoms of the bug cannot be fixed from our end. BUT there is a way to manually rectify the issue by changing one number in a specific file! I’ve made a step by step guide for you on how to manually apply the fix for you to be able to continue your career, you can find the guide here.

We can also help you get back up and running if you provide us with your affected savegame on our Discord server. If you haven't already, you can join us here. Sorry for the trouble. :(

Note that all branches of the game you have access to are now running that latest version 1.0.7.
Now that is out of the way, it is time for us to focus our efforts on the next big milestone, V1.1!

Version 1.1 Main Features

• Limited peloton energy and attack. One big gameplay issue you surely have run into yourself is that the peloton is very sticky in situations where you would not expect it to. When the tour favorites are battling it out on the king mountain stage of the tour on the final epic climb, and the pack has been reduced down to the last three riders… and the big blob of about ~100 faceless riders, you rightfully wonder what is going on! The peloton sure seems stronger than most tracked riders in those situations.
Our solution to this is to make the peloton function more like a singular rider, with energy, attack, and all the other stats. In V1.0 the peloton does have a maximum speed, but never runs out of resources. With V1.1 we’re changing that to follow the rules all the other riders have to follow. Diminishing E/t as energy is drained, diminishing A/t as attack is maxxed out repeatedly, is combined with perfectly neutral traits (zero in everything) and an energy and attack pool that depends on both the league the race is run in and on how many teams are participating. What that means in practice is that on easy stages the peloton will be very sticky and be able to follow the occasional hard move to finish the stage in a mass sprint. On tough stages that will look different, where the specialists no longer get the benefit of peloton protection (while weaker riders suffer due to the peloton not being an option), and the leaders will have to fight it out alone in front. The peloton will run out of resources and slow down like a normal rider would.
• Time limit blocked by peloton. As you likely have noticed participating in three-week tours, they tend to end with over half the field being decimated by DNF finishes. There are two main reasons for that: the peloton having infinite resources while the riders don’t, and that the riders who barely can hand on to P3 tend to get eliminated by the time limit at some point on one of the tough stages. The latter should not really happen and that is where the solution lies (apart from finite peloton resources to slow it down). We just don’t allow the time limit marker to ride past the peloton! Nice and easy.
• Revamped momentum blocking system. Momentum blocking is supposed to simulate that it is very hard to attack when the pace is really high already. The current design of the mechanic works sometimes, but often fails miserably at achieving that goal. In V1.0 for every two attack points spent in a move, one node in front of the leadout rider’s new position is blocked off to other riders in that group. The issue with that is how inconsistent it is.
Example 1: We ride on the flat, 10 free movement points. Bobby has an E/t of 10 and uses all of that to set a strong pace of 20. No momentum blocking would occur. Dicky has 6 E/t and rides a pace of 20 also, using 4 attack points. He would block off two nodes because of that. This seems inconsistent in this scenario. Example 2: Up a steep slope someone who is out of energy and uses 6 attack points to move a grand total of 9 nodes would block off 3 nodes, while a champion climber spending 3 energy to set the same pace would block off nothing. Again, inconsistent, unintuitive, and just not good for gameplay. Our solution to this is to base momentum blocking on the amount of slipstream a group (behind the relay) would get by following the move that is made. That means easy terrain ridden at a good pace gives a lot of momentum blocking (because it generates a lot of slipstream) even without attack points. Across steep climbs however, which have strong slipstream penalties, you will see very little momentum blocking. That means attacking on climbs is easy, on the flat it is not! As it should be. Big momentum block in the flat setting a mighty pace of 28, attacking this is nigh on impossible. Momentum blocking will be much more important as a mechanic, more visible, and more intuitive.
• Modding & Workshop support. The game is built from the ground up to be very moddable in everything except for art assets. With V1.1 we want to open up proper modding support by exposing the necessary files, which conveniently are .csv files, i.e. just text files that anyone can edit. The first set of files we want to open to modding are the rider and team database. Those are all the teams and riders you see in career mode and single races. Also, we are going to provide the spreadsheets that make those files, to make their editing even easier. With the addition of Steam Workshop support, this will make making and installing mods very convenient.
• Rider approval system. You probably have seen the placeholder UI for it in the repositioning phase underneath the riders. An approval system is going to rate how liked riders are by all the other riders. If Dicky hangs out at the rear of an escape group and wants to leech himself to victory, this rating would go down quickly and the other escapees would likely either stop riding or attack Dicky to get rid of him. Of course, the necessary AI behaviors for this would have to be implemented as well. Overall, this should create some interesting tactical decisions and add a lot of flavor to the game.
• Improved jersey colors and picker. The current jersey color picker is… *ahem* not great, nor is it intuitive. As such we’ve planned a redesign of the color picker to give you more options in a much easier to use way. That will allow more customization on your team jersey, but also will make for better competitor jerseys with good color schemes. Brown mush begone!
A draft of the new color picker. Easy to navigate, more options, and quick.
• Options menu… options. Our options menu basically is the absolute bare minimum we could get away with. We focused on game mechanics and bugs over giving you options in V1.0. Now that we have some more time, we want to add more reasonable settings and functionality. For example, on the list are options for inverting camera movement control direction, making races you don’t participate in auto-sim, showing the specializations of competitors (e.g. “lvl 8 Baroudeur”) instead of their “real” name, and implement those existing but greyed out options.
• Polish and fixes. Of course we will fix and polish up a lot of smaller things not on this list. There are more issues to address and points of friction to apply lube to. We want V1.1 to feel more solid than before and getting rid of a bunch of small issues definitely helps with that.

Development Timeline

Like we mentioned in our last bigger update post, we are now continuing development of The Cyclist: Tactics on a 2 days per week basis. The features listed here, along with all the small fixes, polish, and required AI changes and upgrades, will take us an estimated 16 days of development to bring to an open beta stage and shortly thereafter release. At two days per week that means about 8 weeks of development time, i.e. some time mid November.

We expect to have to provide a few V1.1.x patches before signing off on the V1.1 milestone, although naturally fewer than we had for V1.0. Once that is done, we plan on starting development of V1.2. What that one will contain shall be discussed when development is started like here for V1.1!

In the meantime, we hope you are enjoying your time with the game despite the various flaws and issues it certainly still has. Sorry again for the funding bug issue, that was a nasty one.

We’ll likely update you with some progress as it is presentable.
Cheers!