that dude has definitely studied the weird GCN presenter hand gestures manual
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That is absolutely awesome for knowing whether or not to try to chase onto the next group or what speed you need to be going so that you can more easily hook onto the group that’s catching you (or to keep them from catching you). I’ve long thought that the rider list should have speed, not power. If this has them both, that would be worth the price of admission for me. Add in their draft widget for TTT race optimization? I don’t like messing with new tech (because I tend to break more than I fix), but it sounds like it’d be worth the hassle.
Now if someone could get me an overlay that shows me the elevation profile of the actual route I’m riding (like zwiftpower live does, it can’t be hard) instead of whatever the **** Zwift shows me, that would be something.
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This will promote sandbagging in Zwift racing when you can watch the overall watts/kg and stay at or under the watts/kg so that you don’t “cat up”. I see this as being a way to cheat the new category enforcement system that Zwift put in place. In the C cat for women we see a lot of this happening. Backing off so they don’t go over and cat up to B. Last season of ZRL it was the weight doping with people changing their weight in the pen of the race to be lighter and faster. Now this! So many on my team getting frustrated with the hacks/cheats going on. I am personally a little creeped out that others can see my data while Zwifting. I am not hiding anything but do others need to see my heart rate? Seems like a personal data privacy thing to me. Not a fan of this at all.
I think we have to discount ZRL as it still uses old ZP cats therefore the most prone to sandbagging. even without sauce it’s very easy to monitor your power.
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The sauce overlay allows you to know your watts/kg average during the race. This is real time data to push it to the limit. Not just looking at ZP later or trying to guess the overall watts/kg. This is a different level of power monitoring.
I do think the discussion on cheating or atleast enabling sandbagging and the graphic overlay needs to be split in 2.
Sauce as a graphic overlay is fantastic and looks great.
It does however do the exact same things that Zwift Activity Monitor did/does and many people had issues with this being used to support sandbagging and the like - It gives you rolling 5-8 min power, 20 min power etc…
Blocking ZAM but then leaving this open to use could be construed as being hypocritical.
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There are a number of not-overly-complex ways to do that already. The easiest is to use a head-unit monitoring the same power source as Zwift and set up a data field for 20min power.
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Zwift haven’t blocked one or the other just sauce found a workaround post the encryption being applied which i’m sure ZAM could also do. I had more of an issue with ZAM as that power monitoring seemed to be it’s number 1 feature where as sauce does a lot more.
As you say though there is 2 streams here and the overlay stuff is most useful the groups gaps etc are more accurate than zwifts own data.
The whole issue of monitoring power is never going to be fixed so continuing to fight against users doing it is going to be fruitless as there is multiple ways to monitoring it enough to sandbag a category.
Ranking system will fix that then this whole argument goes away.
Fix the game not the players
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I wonder… I havent tried this as I’m an A so sandbagging isnt an issue we have to deal with. knowing the cat limits is it possible to race in a way to drop those riders? Could it just be a matter of a different race strategy to draw those sandbaggers out or force them to back off at the limits?
1 Like
Previously there were very few races where a 20min effort was required so it was hard to force that.
Now woth CE looking at the short time frame, but you need everyone to do it, as one person going off the front will never stay away due to the blob effect, so people just sit in.
Depends on weight really unless you are a heavier rider than them it’s impossible to push them to the cat limits.
Heavy riders will always have an advantage (excluding the super light weights sneaking under stupid wattage floors) as they can stay within cat limits where as a lighter rider likely has to push over the w/kg limits just to keep up.
If they are a light sandbagger then sure one tactic would be to keep the pace really high but usually there is enough draft to keep it within limits
True, but im not sure I can live that long
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with you on that.
in my view it’s the extra customisation and information that sauce brings enhances the zwift experience rather than the tools that could aid sandbagging. Losing the good parts of sauce just because it’s one or many ways riders can aid sandbagging would be a shame.
Sandbagging has been happening before ZAM, before sauce and will continue with or without them.
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Gordon
Couldn’t agree more.
Extra customisation should add to the experience and encourage riders to push themselves past previous bests and to race smartly.
I used ZAM before the ‘recent change’ and after the first ride it was a couple of the most boring rides I have experienced. Did we really sign up to Zwift to ride to a mediocre standard or did we sign up to ride faster and further and get fitter.
With a tiny bit of effort Zwift does, sort of, provide you some of this information anyway - during a ride bring up the menu option, click it, check your 5 min and 20 min power numbers, check those power numbers against your paper conversion table to wkg and hit the Back button. Repeat every few minutes and then don’t feel good about yourself for doing it.
2 Likes
Hi Amy, I installed Sauce for Zwift but just cannot find the average watts/kg feature that you say is there. I’ve located the ave. w/kg per lap but not an ongoing, ride average. Could you point me in the right direction?? Cheers. 
And you’re probably 25.
I think lap is the same thing. It won’t auto count a lap you click it so the lap average will be average.
Remember to reset before the event starts or it will count your warmup.
That would be nice!
Not super on topic- but how exactly do you assign categories to a results-based system? You can’t use power because a good rider that’s heavy and a good rider that’s light will have drastically different power levels. The only thing that comes to mind is taking the ranks (like how ZwiftPower has 0-600) and making even groups based on ranking #s (like 201-300, 301-400)?
Is there any other ways?