Is there a power-up that temporarily increases the draft effect when you want to bring someone back to the group/race peloton? Like rubberbanding during a short while?
The coffee break does that, but it’s hit or miss whether the rider using it attaches to you or someone else nearby, and they may also switch to tracking someone else that you pass. For example if it’s just you and one other rider, great they hit coffee break and you hit the gas. But if you pass a second rider off the back, the person you’re towing may switch to them and then the game is over.
I’ve already noticed that the coffee break is connected to someone. But it’s not clear to me on what basis? Someone riding at the same speed when you activate the coffee break? In other words, if you’re towing someone and you accelerate to get back to the group, does the person you’re towing then drop off your wheel?
I can’t tell how it works. Towing someone past another rider is risky. Sometimes it’s fine, other times not. They’ve never explained how it’s supposed to function so I can’t tell if it’s working properly or not.
I learned that if you choose to ride with a robopacer it doesn’t attach you to the robopacer during a coffee break! Which I assumed would be the case but seems not so - it has attached me to riders who go off on a different route or stop pedalling so I lose the group and the sweat drop multiplier.
For the past month or so, using the coffee break to sweep he become more of a challenge. It seems if a passing a rider with lower power or someone in the group being towed begins to pedal the coffee break rider(s) attach to the lowest powered rider and will detach from the sweep. In the past I don’t recall that happening. Coffee Breaks are still a good way to help riders that might have a tech issue and are struggling to get back into group.
That’s been my experience for as long as the feature has existed but there seems to be a lot of randomness involved
I was watching a race on Zwift in New York, and just after the corkscrew before the Manhattan Bridge, a rider activated a coffee break in a group of about a dozen riders. The coffee break rider started accelerating away from that group, climbing towards the sprint on Manhattan Bridge, and eventually was 4 seconds in front of the group, solo.
That should never happen.
I thought there are no coffee breaks in races 
I misspoke.
It was a large group ride with rider positioning.
The benefit of a coffee break during an event is clear. With robo-pacers, you can just as easily pause and then jump back to the desired pacer. Using certain powerups can make it easier to tow someone along. But that doesn’t help the person hitching a ride, or at least not any more than the draft you generate. It sometimes takes (too) long to pull someone back into the main group, which can cause problems for you. A turbo sweep function would be useful. I’ll try to see if the coffee break is useful for this.
That’s true. With robopacers it’s not really necessary. You just teleport back to the robopacer. I’ve done that a few times when I’ve been doing longer rides with robopacer groups. I tend to split the ride into hour blocks with a few minutes to get off the bike and move around (because of my hip). I just teleport back to the group when I’m ready.
4 seconds ahead? That must be strong Starbucks coffee! If there’s one thing I enjoy most in the US, it’s your coffee 
I have coffee break’d a rider who coffee’d me. I stopped pedaling and he went ahead a bit, then my coffee made me sling up to him, past him, where he slung back in front. It only works with two riders but I’m sure it can be exploited for evil purposes.
For getting a rider back to a group (in a group ride) then tweaking the existing teleport function so individual riders teleport back to the main group or the beacon riders would be simple and might keep more riders in the event for longer. Some folk are just too exhausted to continue even with someone trying to sweep them back.
Better to adapt/use the existing features rather than adding completely new functions and having more complexity (more things that can break).