NT Calendar

[ophiuko]

As I'm NT manager this season, I've been looking at stages from past season, and I've realized that the same pattern has been repeating since the beginning of the NT competitions, as follows:

Stage 1. Hills or flat hills. Always 25 ºC good weather.
Stage 2. Mountain or flat mountain. Always 7 ºC, cold and wind level 3.
Stage 3. Flat sprint. Always 13 ºC, good weather, wind level 1.
Stage 4. Flat TT. Always 0 ºC, cold and wind level 1.
Stage 5. Cobble-hill. Always 8 ºC and cold.
Stage 6. Always 8 ºC and cold. Stage type is variable. The stage types until now have been: flat mountain, flat TT, flat mountain, flat hills, hill TT, flat sprint and hill TT.
Stage 7. Flat cobble. Always 24 ºC and good weather.

I think the repeated weather should be a bug. It makes no sense to have four stages with could every season.

About the stage types, my suggestion is to increase the variability, not only 1 stage is random. Right now, there are specific riders who will never be able to be selected for the NT, like hill-climbers, mountain TTers, hill sprinters or mountain sprinters. Although it makes sense to have some fixed stages, like hills in the first stage or cobble/sprint, I would not make more than 2 or 3 stages fixed, increasing the chance of other types of stages to be in the calendar, and, of course, increasing the chance of other NT teams to win the championship, since some nationalities are focused on specific types of riders.

[agtxla]

about weather:
the data don't be stored... so for the past stage you see the weather of the current season

[ophiuko]

Oh. Good to know, thanks. Then, my only suggestion is about the stages.

[Aurora Australis]

about weather:
the data don't be stored... so for the past stage you see the weather of the current season

However you could see it with race previews I did for 3 season, and race previews others have done; note I haven't checked to see whether ophiuko's post is accurate, I don't think the weather part is.

[Vos]

As I'm NT manager this season, I've been looking at stages from past season, and I've realized that the same pattern has been repeating since the beginning of the NT competitions, as follows:

( Vos note : in blue the link towards the NT races of the very first NT season in CFF3 )

Stage 1. Hills or flat hills. Always 25 ºC good weather.
https://cyclingforfun.org/smf/index.php?topic=401.msg6164#msg6164
Stage 2. Mountain or flat mountain. Always 7 ºC, cold and wind level 3.
https://cyclingforfun.org/smf/index.php?topic=401.msg6715#msg6715
Stage 3. Flat sprint. Always 13 ºC, good weather, wind level 1.
https://cyclingforfun.org/smf/index.php?topic=401.msg7201#msg7201
Stage 4. Flat TT. Always 0 ºC, cold and wind level 1.
https://cyclingforfun.org/smf/index.php?topic=401.msg7774#msg7774
Stage 5. Cobble-hill. Always 8 ºC and cold.
https://cyclingforfun.org/smf/index.php?topic=401.msg8180#msg8180
Stage 6. Always 8 ºC and cold. Stage type is variable. The stage types until now have been: flat mountain, flat TT, flat mountain, flat hills, hill TT, flat sprint and hill TT.
https://cyclingforfun.org/smf/index.php?topic=401.msg8457#msg8457
Stage 7. Flat cobble. Always 24 ºC and good weather.
https://cyclingforfun.org/smf/index.php?topic=401.msg8761#msg8761

I think the repeated weather should be a bug. It makes no sense to have four stages with could every season.

About the stage types, my suggestion is to increase the variability, not only 1 stage is random. Right now, there are specific riders who will never be able to be selected for the NT, like hill-climbers, mountain TTers, hill sprinters or mountain sprinters. Although it makes sense to have some fixed stages, like hills in the first stage or cobble/sprint, I would not make more than 2 or 3 stages fixed, increasing the chance of other types of stages to be in the calendar, and, of course, increasing the chance of other NT teams to win the championship, since some nationalities are focused on specific types of riders.

Very good detective work, ophiuko, well done !
The NT calendar should be better in CFF3, I agree.

In CFF2 it was more random than it is now, just one flat TT race (out of 10 races) was certain every season.
It is very remarkable that in the total of 7 NT seasons in CFF3 there never was a hills-climb, climb-TT, climb-sprint and hills-sprint.
Especially hills-climb and hills-sprint was very common in CFF2, climb-TT just sometimes and climb-sprint was rare, just 3 times or so in 30 seasons, among them 2 in China what is a climb-hills-sprint race.

The other (less important) subject ; the weather icons.
If that is also more or less the same everytime, it should be more random too.
But maybe that was already random, I cannot look at the previous NT seasons.
However, the weather icons of the very first NT season (= CFF3 season 2 ) are stored by an excellent Australian NT manager.  
Below the NT race in your quote, I added the link ( in blue ) of the NT race of the very first NT season in CFF3.
Compared to the first NT season, it seems to me the weather icons are most times random.

[WinterIsComing]

Weather icon data for NT is not stored indeed, like agtxla already said. That was already the case in CFF2. So only thd weather icons for this season show up, also in races that have been raced in other weather conditions in different seasons.

Totally agree with the variability issues in the calendar.

[ophiuko]

OK, thanks everyone for the info. It is clear that weather is not an issue, is just that is not stored when you look at past seasons.

So then, the pattern in stages would be the next one:

Stage 1. Hills or flat hills.
Stage 2. Mountain or flat mountain.
Stage 3. Flat sprint.
Stage 4. Flat TT.
Stage 5. Cobble-hill.
Stage 6. Stage type is variable. The stage types until now have been: flat mountain, flat TT, flat mountain, flat hills, hill TT, flat sprint and hill TT.
Stage 7. Flat cobble.

I've added a poll to the topic, just informative.

[EpoGlucK]

Totally agree about variability, there is no fun in checking the stages of the  calendar, for some of the riders there is no competition at all.

Would like to see full variable calendar ^^

[kirin]

I also agree with this

[horace_vr]

I think the title is mis-leading; the stages are variable, only the stage-type is fixed.
Otherwise I agree with the general idea expressed here, to have more variability in order to allow all riders to have a shot at glory

[oscacom]

For me perfect 100% random but for you sure I receive a lot of messages if you have a great specialist and in 3-4 years he can't race any NT race.

[Aurora Australis]

I don't see any problem with most of the races being a set type, with just one or two variable, the issue is of the available races being in too narrow of a field each season.  It would be good if there was a possibility of sprint-hills or mount-hills every couple of seasons for instance.  Will comment more if Osca decided to change the NT calendar formula.

[EpoGlucK]

I don't see any problem with most of the races being a set type, with just one or two variable, the issue is of the available races being in too narrow of a field each season.  It would be good if there was a possibility of sprint-hills or mount-hills every couple of seasons for instance.  Will comment more if Osca decided to change the NT calendar formula.

There are lote of kind of stages out of the calendar, not just mont-hills and sprint-hills.

[oscacom]

I don't see any problem with most of the races being a set type, with just one or two variable, the issue is of the available races being in too narrow of a field each season.  It would be good if there was a possibility of sprint-hills or mount-hills every couple of seasons for instance.  Will comment more if Osca decided to change the NT calendar formula.

With only 7 races, difficult find fix stages to agree everybody.

[Franky]

I'm against a totally random calendar, I think that at least we should have 4 of this 5 types mountain (pure, climb, hills), TT (pure, flat, hills), hills (pure, flat), cobb (pure, hills), sprint (pure, hills) as a fixed races and 3 totally random.