I’m usually one of the ones outpacing the bot up the climbs–part of my training is always working on my climbing. And so it’s pretty common for the bot to catch up to me pretty fast on the other side, because I’m consciously easing up so it can come back to me. But then I ease up too much and have to put the screws to it when it blows by me.
As the French say, Case-of-rum, case-of-rum.
I’ve experienced the same thing joining a 1.8 w/kg robopacer but they were pushing 2.2w/kg minimum for the ride, even on the flats. Whatever pace I’d like to go I now select the next lowest robopacer.
Cleary, there is a bug in the pacer software. I regularly go on a 1.5w/kg recovery ride and invariably the robot surges - on a flat, on a climb, no rhyme or reason - up to ~3w/kg. Recovery goes out the window. I am not making this up.
I don’t know if this could be done (and I definitely don’t know about the surging, as I very rarely use the Robopacers), but would it be ‘programmatically’ possible to show the RP’s wkg based on the rider’s weight, instead of the RP’s weight? And, if so, would it be helpful? I would think that seeing the RPs wkg at the rider’s weight would make it easier for the rider to know how many watts they need to push, since they could then just do their best to match the RP’s wkg.
Or does this just move the target?
I’m riding Alpe du Zwift almost daily doing at least 1500-2000m+ per day. You could join.
None of the bots do proper hills unfortunately.
Sounds like those people thought you lot that took off ahead needed a bit of extra workout. This is where robopacers badly need to be on fastest TT bikes to prevent the influence of draft and faster riders messing with the pace.
I would take you up on that if I had any reliability or regularity in my workout schedule 
The bots don’t do big climbs, but part of what I work on is hitting those shorter climbs harder. Yesterday for example was Sugar Cookie, with that beginning climb up over the bridge to the Bypass. I think there’s a lot of utility to be had in being faster up that length of climb without hurting myself too much, lol.
Totally agree about putting the bots on TT bikes.
I was about 70 minutes into a 90 minute ride with Genie the other day when some comedian went just in front of the bot and sat there, I’d kind of lost my sense of humour by then 
It was obvious what they were doing and others commented as well. Totally broke the pack up.
I guess the other side of that argument is if they were on TT bikes then everyone riding with them would still be drafting off each other and would therefore have to do far below the advertised w/kg to stay with the bot
Genocide is inexcusable, there are excuses for this.
Those people can also ride with the next higher robopacer and will get a workout closer to what they want. Or they can apply the “Wannie increased weight” fix… 
While everyone else will get the steadier pace they are looking for.
We need a video recording to show once and for all the effects of this, otherwise it just ends up with “robopacer can’t go faster” etc type comments.
I’ve seen this happen plenty of times but get told it isn’t possible.
I want a robopacer that teleports to the top of the Alpe and then…
Anquetil rode up ADZ a few times, I got screenshots of it.
But y’all didn’t like robopacers that go up hills and prefer the flatlander variety so that’s definitely the best solution.
again, the same argument could be made the other way, if you can’t keep up with the robopacer with draft enabled then ride with the next one down.
I’d go for a climby pacer. Even though I said before that I tend to be out front of the bot on shorter climbs, I do try to generally stick near them (I keep the elastic drop multiplier band from snapping)–and for a longer climb I think I would benefit from better regular pacing.
So you want to keep seeing robopacers that have huge surges of pace multiple times per lap due to drafting faster riders?
Or is that just a wind up?
It doesn’t bother me because I won’t ride with the robopacer groups until the pack dynamics and this surging of pace is fixed.
I don’t mind either way, but you were saying people should ride with a faster one if they were too slow without draft so I dont see how that is different to riding with a slower one now if the draft makes them too fast?
It’s not about the absolute speed, it’s about the consistency.
Pacers getting affected by the draft means the pace surges. If you’re in the draft it’s probably fine either way, but if a little gap opens up that could be the difference between someone being able to stay on or not.
The more surging of pace the better, it will get more people complaining about it and maybe something will be done. It never used to be quite that bad. So it’s probably a combination of the surging when following draft and the pack dynamics making it more difficult for people to remain with the group because of the blocking and being pushed away from the draft by other riders.
Do they still run the Summit Seeker bots the last weekend of the month?
Just rode with Yumi, and I noticed a couple places where there were small injections of speed (still nothing like 1.5 or 2x wattage). Where they seemed to come was after very brief rises that led into gentle descents. For example a couple of spots coming down from the Makuri countryside to the islands. We’d hit a small rise, and because there is a delay in Yumi’s wattage adapting to the terrain, she would be up to her usual climbing wattage of 3.2w/kg only after the small rise was done and we were descending again. And then it would take her a couple of seconds to return to her lower descending wattage.