As a test I think you should do completely different bots on the Makuri map to the Watopia one. Rather than re-creating A, B, C & D’s wattages, instead have ones named E, F, G & H on Makuri at say 1.0, 2.0, 2.9 and 3.6 and see how many people follow those as a trial.
Also an idea is to open up the full island to the bots rather than having them all doing the Yumezi part only. Two can do Yumezi routes as now (one flat, one hilly), one can be dedicated to Neokyo, while the final one will do one of the long routes that cover both parts of the island. Of course the routes will be on rotation as the ones on Watopia are.
Personally I was surprised when they added 4 pace partners to Makuri and they were the exact same w/kg as the 4 in Watopia given the requests for different w/kg bots.
My guess is if you tallied up the feedback requests for “Give me the exact same bots on a different city” vs. requests for “Bots with a different w/kg”… You would get a clear answer on what people would rather have.
I think it was to test that they worked well on another world too and is part of several things we will be doing with Pace Partners (which includes different W/Kg options and also that their outputs vary on terrain).
Hopefully the lack of participation on Makuri bots don’t push the team away from more bots of different w/kg.
In my case for instance, I am happy with Coco for Z2, but would love one for Z3 between Coco and Brevet every once in a while - Brevet is in my Z4 I believe, and A bot is just gonna drop me after 15 seconds so I ignore that one. I would always use the Watopia Coco (not Makuri) because there will be more people on it, which translates into more conversation, more ride-ons, more drafting - so more drops, but if there was one between Coco and Brevet I would probably select that one sometimes regardless of what city it was on etc…
So there is the solution to your problem, convert the entire tick tock, Tempus and Sand and Sequoias to gravel. (ducks because everyone is throwing things)
The routes in Watopia are generally more fun, with the exception of the jungle which most seem to avoid if they can.
At the times I ride I see BB in Watopia with some 30 or so riders and AA with around 10. When AA started riding different routes away from Jungle more people joined.
I will do 65-70km with AA bot sometimes when it isn’t going through the jungle and we even get some chats going on depending on who turns up.
I agree, I ride with Diesel but find the jump to 2.5 too much to enjoy and hang on.
Is there no way to put say 1.5 to 2.0 and so on and you position yourself in the peleton ie front or back based on power. I have tried to sit on the front of Diesel, but I end up too far ahead and lose the drop multiplier. I do enjoy the pace partners (only used for first time this week) but would like it to have more range in regards to watts/kg with the pacer.
CC normally works well for me for a long Z2 ride on the flat routes, but I found out when it does Sand and Sequoias route it was very difficult for me not to go off the front riding through Titan’s Grove. Seems like the pace partner slows going up but doesn’t speed up on the downs at the same rate so the average pace slows way down to the point I have to soft pedal to stay close even on the bigger climb.
For flat routes and I’d guess sustained climbs it works ok for me, but I will probably ride by myself the next time I want a Z2 ride and CC is on Sand and Sequoias…
This was mentioned above in 1-2 posts but perhaps bears repeating and emphasizing:
The usual human behavior (unless one specifically fights it) seems to be for wattage to increase on upgrades and decrease on downgrades. The pace partners should behave the same. The wattage per kg listed should probably be what the bot does on a flat course, with the value varying +/- X %. My own intuitive guess/suggestion would be +/- 20%; thus, DD would go 1.5 W/kg on flats, up to 1.8 on upgrades, and 1.2 on downgrades. Some experimentation with the variance percentage would of course be warranted.
As to large numbers of riders, another way to split things up would be to provide both a flat and a hilly option for DD and CC, at least, or maybe for all of them, with no change of wattage. As an example, DD-flat could ride Tempus, whereas DD-hilly would be riding Sand and Sequoias. Of course, one would have to be careful which hilly route would be assigned: assigning Road to the Sky to DD would be inadvisable.
This would be about right and ideal. Especially found unnatural for myself, is the inexplicable auto-braking that I guess was at some point time thought to be a great idea. So unlike IRL is working up a hill and then thinking you can coast a bit going down on the other side; instead dropping to 0 and standing on the side of the road. Or unnaturally coasting down to 0mph from eg. 20mph in about 6 seconds on flat road while drafting in a large PP pack.
So, I finally tried a B Brevet pace partner ride. I was very surprised because while I thought I was going to need to average 250-270W to stick with Brevet I only averaged 225W for the hour I was riding with them (This was on Sand and Sequoias today). For Cadence (also on Sand and Sequoias) I average 180W, so the gap isn’t anywhere near as much as I thought it would be.
I’m not sure if Brevet was riding slower than usual today or if that is normal. My weight is in at 76kg (probably need to re-weigh after Easter turkey/chocolate), so lighter than Brevet, but I still thought I would need more than a 225W average.
That is not to say more pace partners aren’t needed, I just thought Brevet was more of a gap from Cadence from what I had read.
Brevet is a 3wkg (240w) hour ride for me - though I find it almost impossible to find any motivation to ride with Brevet on a flat route…
When riding on figure 8 it’s quite an enjoyable hour with the 2 KOM climbs…
I agree with Wannie.
I’m 66 kg and have to put out 106 Watts which is 1.6 W/kg.
Could that be a matter of bike choice?
My 106 Watts correspond to the Tron-Bike.
I’m 70kg and generally have to ride at 2.4/2.5 to stay with Coco. I think the D Partner might be a slightly different story because of his weight (we will review this)
Tron bike will be absolutely fine. I would work on positioning yourself just ahead of the Pace Partner for the best benefit of the draft.
Thanks for the quick reply!
That could be one or the reason. It’s really hard to stay close to Diesel on inclines. When I’m 30 m ahead of him on top, I have to wait and if this isn’t perfect timed, he overtakes me downhill with much higher speed so that I have to push hard to get back to the group.
This requires extra power which could cause the output on average.
(ducks because everyone is throwing things)