Yumi is on the Pinarello halo TT bike right now and this morning was the best pace partner experience in my entire time on Zwift. I’ve long suggested putting the PPs on TT bikes to keep a steadier pace (and it needs to be a TT bike for the better CdA, as we all know how it went when they just turned off draft for the bots but kept them on regular trons) and it was great to actually see it in practice. Good steady pace with zero surging due to group behavior, my average power over 70 minutes was within a watt of 2.9wkg (at 77.8kg for me today) which is the advertised effort for Yumi.
Given that the pace partners on halo bikes thing probably won’t last forever, the best way to permanently implement this would be to either stick them all on existing TT bikes, or to create a custom “tron trial” bike only for the bots with all the stats and characteristics of a TT bike (improved CdA, provides draft to others, but gets no draft benefits).
This was the single biggest improvement to the pace partner experience I’ve seen in my time here. Not sure if @shooj or @James_Zwift are the right people for implementing this but I’m sure one of you know who to talk to.
I don’t think you read my post. If you had, you’d have seen the sentence regarding that incident.
So once again, I’m not saying they need to just turn off draft for the pace partners. Putting them on a TT bike, like Yumi (and I assume some other bots) is on right now, results in approximately the same pace as before, but without the random surges caused by user behavior. This is because TT bikes have better CdA numbers than road bikes (like the standard Tron, which is what happened in the incident I refer to in my initial post) and as a result go faster.
Zwift accidentally testing something that users have been suggesting for years with well thought out reasoning, and it turns out to be a resounding success. Brilliant.
Yes Robopacers have draft and they are not using TT Bikes but the new HALO Bikes
I think @calfzilla is experiencing that Robopacers are a little faster because on a faster bike and PD5 acts better in this case because most of the riders in a group are holding the power of Yumi and not putting out more power as is the case with Coco and slower RB…they ussualy get much bigger group and most are pushing above RB power and that’s why it feels harder to move in the group.
Yumi is using the Pinarello Halo bike, which is a TT bike. Same bike that Big Mig is on.
Is there any way to verify whether they’ve set this particular pacer is getting a draft?
The day before it only took 2.35wkg to sit with coco, who I believe was on the specialized halo bike, which is not a TT and so would be slower just like before.
But I was regularly sitting out a few m in front of Yumi without the bot picking up extra speed.
Yes multiple of us saw that Connie, who is now on the pinarello halo TT, was getting draft. Other users in the pack who were on TT were not getting draft as expected however something seems hard-coded in the pacers that they are able to get draft. The downside is that being on a TT it means the pacers can be pulled even more than before. Connie has been a bit barren last week at the times I normally ride as it’s been much tougher than usual when someone is out front pulling. I’m not sure if this is intended by zwift or not.
