We released our 1st version of our Cff Manager Game App.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wCFFCyclingManagerGame
Description
Cycling for fun (CFF) is a cycling manager game . You get to establish your own team and compete against other managers in the most important cycling races. You are in charge of just about everything:
- Choose your own goals and be rewarded if you achieve them;
- Choose the race program for your team;
- Choose the race tactics;
- Manage the training schedules and training camps, to improve their skills;
- In search for the next champion you?ve guessed: transfer riders from other teams or scout the world for young talents;
- Hire staff to help improving the performance of your team;
- Race all the major races of cycling: the Grand Tours (Tour de France, Giro d'Italia,Vuelta a Espa?a), the Classic Monuments or the World Championships;
- Test your tactics and riders in other Tours and one day races.
The very first thing i would recommend is to ask a mentor to guide you. This can be done at the status page. If you select the i want to be helped option CFF will automatically couple you to a more experienced manager which in turn selected that he wouldnt mind helping new players. He will answer all your questions you might have!
The basics
Well, this is fairly straightforward. As manager of your own fantasy cycling team you are in charge of the entire team. You will have to select tactics, staff, training, sponsorship, you name it. All to make sure your riders will perform the best they can.
Your team and the stats
Before you can really start doing anything it is important to know what your dealing with in terms of cyclists. The riders that make up your team right now are not world class. They are good enough to compete in the 4th division you are starting in. CFF diferentiates 5 kinds of categories for riders and stages. It?s important to match your riders to the stages they are best fitted for (you know, making Contador ride Paris ? Roubaix would be less wise than to let him ride a grand tour).
CFF uses 5 main stats, all others are side stats. Main stats are represented by their own color is stage profiles. Climbing is brown, sprinting is green but the green section needs to be the last one to make it a sprint stage(its just a flat section otherwise), cobble sections are red, hills are blue and a timetrial has a stopwatch in the stage picture. These sections and stats can be combined. For instance to make a mountain hill stage or a sprint hill stage (like Milan ? Sanremo). The last color of sections that can occur are yellow sections. These are downhill sections.
All the other stats are side stats and are important too. I will give a brief description of all stats and when they are important.
Stamina is very easy. The more stamina the better a rider is at long distances. In mountain stages of 240km it counts a lot, in sprint stages of 120km it counts a lot less. It is important and used in every stage.
Sprint speaks for itself. Its important in all sprint stages. It also counts a little at hill and cobble stages.
Climbing, well thats climbing. Only counts in mountain stages and a climbing time trial.
Flat is used in stages with green sections and also a bit in hill and cobble stages. The more green sections there are, the more important this stat is.
Cobblestone only counts if there are red sections in the stage
Technique is a side stat which is important in every stage
Downhill only counts if there are some downhill(duhh) sections in the stage. Not only at yellow sections, also when climbing any categorised mountain
Hills are important in blue sections or when theres a 4th or 3rd category mountain in the stage
Aggressiveness is very important in hill and sprint stages and short timetrials (below 10km)
Teamwork is not very important but counts in every stage (about 3%) but is a bit more important for sprinters
Experience is an added bonus and a rider gets this for riding many races.
Before every race CFF couples percentages to stats that count in that stage. Combined they make up the global value. The higher a rider scores on this global value the better he is suited for the stage (Contador would get a high global value on mountain stages and a low one on cobble stages). No one knows exactly how much thes stats weigh in a stage. Which is exactly the core of this game: making the best estimation on which rider is suited for what race.
Lets take a mountain stage as an example. This stage is about 250km long and only has Brown sections. Climbing of course will count the most, say about 40%. The remaining 60% of the global value of the stage consist of the side stats. For this long mountain stage stamina is about 20%, downhill 25% and the rest (15%) is most likely a mix of technique and team work. When you are looking for an excellent climber it is important to have high climbing, stamina, downhill and technique values.
For the remaining races these stats and side stats are important:
Climbing: climbing, downhill, stamina and technique
Sprinting: Sprinting, flat, aggressiveness, stamina, technique and team work
Cobblestone: Cobble, technique, stamina and flat
Hills: Hill, downhill, aggressiveness, stamina, technique and flat
Time trial: TT, technique, stamina and flat (for short races as a rule of thumb you can switch out stamina for aggressiveness)
The previously mentioned main stats always make up fora bout 30-50% of the global value. A pure mountain stage will see climbing in the area of 50% while a cobble hill race like the Tour of Flandres will see cobble and hills closer to 30% each.
Now you?ve read this explanation about what stats are important for what riders you will most likely be able to make a good estimation about which riders in your starting team are good and which are not. If you have any questions left dont hesitate to send a message to a more experienced manager or ask them on this forum!
Riding stages, signing up cyclists and coming up with tactics.
All those stats are fun and all but this game is about winning stages and crushing the opposition.
For a race a cyclist can be givin any of three roles. Leader, domestique(helper) and a free role. You can have one leader who will get a bonus if he is in the same Group as a domestique. When using a leader and domestiques its important to set your tactics in a way to keep your domestiques as long as possible with your leader. A free role will not get any benefits or negative bonussses when racing. He is on his own and his team has no influence on him.
As you might have noticed there a stage consists of 5 sections. For each section you can choose a way to let your rider race: calm, normal, watcher, agressive, very agressive and full. Every setting costs a certain amount of energy. For any given stage a maximum of 12 energy points can be used. Using less is not wise because every energy point gives your rider a bonus, using less means less bonus. Using more will make your rider explode and fall back very far in the race. Calm uses 0 energy points, normal 1, watcher 2, agressive 3, very agressive 4 and you propably guessed it full uses 5 points.
Besides the energy points a rider can get a surface bonus on different sections. If you have a climber with a very high climbing stat on every brown section he gains a surface bonus to climbing. This bonus will be multiplied by your energy points used in that section. This means that its wise to use energy points on sections where your rider is strongest.
The tactics themselves is a bit of figuring out on your own. There are no right tactics for stages. It all depends on your riders and the stages. If you have questions on specific stages you can always ask them on this forum of course!
An exception are the time trials. These are easiest: you dont need to fill out tactics for these. They are being races on a different engine that cant be influenced.
Health, form? Whatsthat?
Health and form are very important in the performance of your riders. You will want to keep both of them as close to 100 as possible to perform optimal.
Form changes with the amount of stages a rider has raced. It will go up at first but after a while it goes down again. You will notice a drop in performance once the form reaches the low 90?s. Your rider will be almost useless when the form drops to around 80. An added effect is that your riders will train less fast when your form is below 90.
Every race costs health to race, your riders will be tired. To get the lost health back your riders will have to rest or by setting a rest threshhold. This can be done by selecting rest on the training page in the column to the far right. I mainly use the rest threshhold. If you set that to a certain amount, say 90, your rider will automatically skip a training and rest once his health drops below that number. He will not train but he will regain some of his health. Its worth finding out exactly how much health a rider loses when hes racing. You can set the rest level in a way that he regains his health to exactly 100 and not over.
Racing will cost a few health points, i believe its about 10-15. Training will cost one health point. Tactics in race doesn?t have any influence on the amount of health a rider loses.
All cyclists that need to score points for me are set to rest at 90 or 95. That way they are always good to race but they will lose some training.
My talents are set on a rest level of 50. I am not racing them to get points but i want to train them the most i can. It is viable to let them rest at a higher threshold at the start of the season to be able to make use of them in races.
Training
First of all there is no best thing to start training. There is no best cyclist in CFF, just like in real life. It is completely dependend on what you like to train. I like the hill classics so i started training hill cyclists, in the same way that there are cobble, mountain an whatnot else trainers.
Most ideal is to get a group of riders together that all need the same training. That way you have all of them train the specialty of your trainer. If a rider is training something else then what your trainer is specialised in he will train at 70% speed. Most optimal is to train whatever your trainer is specialised in.
Fresh blood.
There are a number of ways to attract new cyclists. Good youth can be signed by sending out your scouts. This can be done after every stage in your team page, its called pulling. You will get a rider between the ages of 19 and 22 with a minimum stat of 50 on the specialisation you pick. It is important to do this as often as you can. This is a perfect way to get some real gems in your team for cheap. Besides that it is also important to hire an international scout. He Works the same as your normal scout but you can choose in which country he searches.
You can also use the transfer market. I would suggest to wait a few days before bidding on cyclists. That way you have a bit better understanding of this game and the best stats for different riders before spending too much on bad riders. Transfers are being done during the night, at around 01:00.
There is also a draft. Every day a number of youth races are beeing ridden. All filled with 18 year old riders (if you sign one he will become 19 the moment he enters your team). You can add 5 riders to follow. Every day you will randomly see a stat of the rider and an indication of how good he is in that stat. 1 star means that he has 0-20 points in that skill, 2 stars mean 21-40, 3 mean 41-60 and the maximum is 4 stars, 60-80 (although many stats for youngsters are capped at 70). 4 times a season the draft is being carried out and you can contract a rider.
As a new team you also have the possibility to get 2 free riders. This is very important to do as you can get 2 very good riders early on and give your team a boost. IF you are not sure which one to sign ask! Its a shame if you pick not so good riders when there are real gems in the pool of free riders. (A good indication in CFF for a riders skill is to check if they have an icon. For each of the 5 main stats there are icons. Bronze, silver or gold. IF a rider has an icon or more this is a good indication of his skill.)
To end it all.
This welcome post is just the tip of the iceberg. But to prevent this post to be the same length as the Lord of the Rings trilogy i have limited it to these topics. I can only recommend to just look around in cff and experiment on your own. All ive written are just things to get you started. If you want to do it differently do it! There is no right way to play this game. There is a lot of knowledge on this forum and in the minds of the players so do not hesitate to ask questions. In the English forums or on the forums where they speak your language.
To really end this i will give you one more link. This is the English FAQ and holds a lot of information on different topics: FAQ
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wCFFCyclingManagerGame
Description
Cycling for fun (CFF) is a cycling manager game . You get to establish your own team and compete against other managers in the most important cycling races. You are in charge of just about everything:
- Choose your own goals and be rewarded if you achieve them;
- Choose the race program for your team;
- Choose the race tactics;
- Manage the training schedules and training camps, to improve their skills;
- In search for the next champion you?ve guessed: transfer riders from other teams or scout the world for young talents;
- Hire staff to help improving the performance of your team;
- Race all the major races of cycling: the Grand Tours (Tour de France, Giro d'Italia,Vuelta a Espa?a), the Classic Monuments or the World Championships;
- Test your tactics and riders in other Tours and one day races.
The very first thing i would recommend is to ask a mentor to guide you. This can be done at the status page. If you select the i want to be helped option CFF will automatically couple you to a more experienced manager which in turn selected that he wouldnt mind helping new players. He will answer all your questions you might have!
Short guide
The basics
Well, this is fairly straightforward. As manager of your own fantasy cycling team you are in charge of the entire team. You will have to select tactics, staff, training, sponsorship, you name it. All to make sure your riders will perform the best they can.
Your team and the stats
Before you can really start doing anything it is important to know what your dealing with in terms of cyclists. The riders that make up your team right now are not world class. They are good enough to compete in the 4th division you are starting in. CFF diferentiates 5 kinds of categories for riders and stages. It?s important to match your riders to the stages they are best fitted for (you know, making Contador ride Paris ? Roubaix would be less wise than to let him ride a grand tour).
CFF uses 5 main stats, all others are side stats. Main stats are represented by their own color is stage profiles. Climbing is brown, sprinting is green but the green section needs to be the last one to make it a sprint stage(its just a flat section otherwise), cobble sections are red, hills are blue and a timetrial has a stopwatch in the stage picture. These sections and stats can be combined. For instance to make a mountain hill stage or a sprint hill stage (like Milan ? Sanremo). The last color of sections that can occur are yellow sections. These are downhill sections.
All the other stats are side stats and are important too. I will give a brief description of all stats and when they are important.
Stamina is very easy. The more stamina the better a rider is at long distances. In mountain stages of 240km it counts a lot, in sprint stages of 120km it counts a lot less. It is important and used in every stage.
Sprint speaks for itself. Its important in all sprint stages. It also counts a little at hill and cobble stages.
Climbing, well thats climbing. Only counts in mountain stages and a climbing time trial.
Flat is used in stages with green sections and also a bit in hill and cobble stages. The more green sections there are, the more important this stat is.
Cobblestone only counts if there are red sections in the stage
Technique is a side stat which is important in every stage
Downhill only counts if there are some downhill(duhh) sections in the stage. Not only at yellow sections, also when climbing any categorised mountain
Hills are important in blue sections or when theres a 4th or 3rd category mountain in the stage
Aggressiveness is very important in hill and sprint stages and short timetrials (below 10km)
Teamwork is not very important but counts in every stage (about 3%) but is a bit more important for sprinters
Experience is an added bonus and a rider gets this for riding many races.
Before every race CFF couples percentages to stats that count in that stage. Combined they make up the global value. The higher a rider scores on this global value the better he is suited for the stage (Contador would get a high global value on mountain stages and a low one on cobble stages). No one knows exactly how much thes stats weigh in a stage. Which is exactly the core of this game: making the best estimation on which rider is suited for what race.
Lets take a mountain stage as an example. This stage is about 250km long and only has Brown sections. Climbing of course will count the most, say about 40%. The remaining 60% of the global value of the stage consist of the side stats. For this long mountain stage stamina is about 20%, downhill 25% and the rest (15%) is most likely a mix of technique and team work. When you are looking for an excellent climber it is important to have high climbing, stamina, downhill and technique values.
For the remaining races these stats and side stats are important:
Climbing: climbing, downhill, stamina and technique
Sprinting: Sprinting, flat, aggressiveness, stamina, technique and team work
Cobblestone: Cobble, technique, stamina and flat
Hills: Hill, downhill, aggressiveness, stamina, technique and flat
Time trial: TT, technique, stamina and flat (for short races as a rule of thumb you can switch out stamina for aggressiveness)
The previously mentioned main stats always make up fora bout 30-50% of the global value. A pure mountain stage will see climbing in the area of 50% while a cobble hill race like the Tour of Flandres will see cobble and hills closer to 30% each.
Now you?ve read this explanation about what stats are important for what riders you will most likely be able to make a good estimation about which riders in your starting team are good and which are not. If you have any questions left dont hesitate to send a message to a more experienced manager or ask them on this forum!
Riding stages, signing up cyclists and coming up with tactics.
All those stats are fun and all but this game is about winning stages and crushing the opposition.
For a race a cyclist can be givin any of three roles. Leader, domestique(helper) and a free role. You can have one leader who will get a bonus if he is in the same Group as a domestique. When using a leader and domestiques its important to set your tactics in a way to keep your domestiques as long as possible with your leader. A free role will not get any benefits or negative bonussses when racing. He is on his own and his team has no influence on him.
As you might have noticed there a stage consists of 5 sections. For each section you can choose a way to let your rider race: calm, normal, watcher, agressive, very agressive and full. Every setting costs a certain amount of energy. For any given stage a maximum of 12 energy points can be used. Using less is not wise because every energy point gives your rider a bonus, using less means less bonus. Using more will make your rider explode and fall back very far in the race. Calm uses 0 energy points, normal 1, watcher 2, agressive 3, very agressive 4 and you propably guessed it full uses 5 points.
Besides the energy points a rider can get a surface bonus on different sections. If you have a climber with a very high climbing stat on every brown section he gains a surface bonus to climbing. This bonus will be multiplied by your energy points used in that section. This means that its wise to use energy points on sections where your rider is strongest.
The tactics themselves is a bit of figuring out on your own. There are no right tactics for stages. It all depends on your riders and the stages. If you have questions on specific stages you can always ask them on this forum of course!
An exception are the time trials. These are easiest: you dont need to fill out tactics for these. They are being races on a different engine that cant be influenced.
Health, form? Whatsthat?
Health and form are very important in the performance of your riders. You will want to keep both of them as close to 100 as possible to perform optimal.
Form changes with the amount of stages a rider has raced. It will go up at first but after a while it goes down again. You will notice a drop in performance once the form reaches the low 90?s. Your rider will be almost useless when the form drops to around 80. An added effect is that your riders will train less fast when your form is below 90.
Every race costs health to race, your riders will be tired. To get the lost health back your riders will have to rest or by setting a rest threshhold. This can be done by selecting rest on the training page in the column to the far right. I mainly use the rest threshhold. If you set that to a certain amount, say 90, your rider will automatically skip a training and rest once his health drops below that number. He will not train but he will regain some of his health. Its worth finding out exactly how much health a rider loses when hes racing. You can set the rest level in a way that he regains his health to exactly 100 and not over.
Racing will cost a few health points, i believe its about 10-15. Training will cost one health point. Tactics in race doesn?t have any influence on the amount of health a rider loses.
All cyclists that need to score points for me are set to rest at 90 or 95. That way they are always good to race but they will lose some training.
My talents are set on a rest level of 50. I am not racing them to get points but i want to train them the most i can. It is viable to let them rest at a higher threshold at the start of the season to be able to make use of them in races.
Training
First of all there is no best thing to start training. There is no best cyclist in CFF, just like in real life. It is completely dependend on what you like to train. I like the hill classics so i started training hill cyclists, in the same way that there are cobble, mountain an whatnot else trainers.
Most ideal is to get a group of riders together that all need the same training. That way you have all of them train the specialty of your trainer. If a rider is training something else then what your trainer is specialised in he will train at 70% speed. Most optimal is to train whatever your trainer is specialised in.
Fresh blood.
There are a number of ways to attract new cyclists. Good youth can be signed by sending out your scouts. This can be done after every stage in your team page, its called pulling. You will get a rider between the ages of 19 and 22 with a minimum stat of 50 on the specialisation you pick. It is important to do this as often as you can. This is a perfect way to get some real gems in your team for cheap. Besides that it is also important to hire an international scout. He Works the same as your normal scout but you can choose in which country he searches.
You can also use the transfer market. I would suggest to wait a few days before bidding on cyclists. That way you have a bit better understanding of this game and the best stats for different riders before spending too much on bad riders. Transfers are being done during the night, at around 01:00.
There is also a draft. Every day a number of youth races are beeing ridden. All filled with 18 year old riders (if you sign one he will become 19 the moment he enters your team). You can add 5 riders to follow. Every day you will randomly see a stat of the rider and an indication of how good he is in that stat. 1 star means that he has 0-20 points in that skill, 2 stars mean 21-40, 3 mean 41-60 and the maximum is 4 stars, 60-80 (although many stats for youngsters are capped at 70). 4 times a season the draft is being carried out and you can contract a rider.
As a new team you also have the possibility to get 2 free riders. This is very important to do as you can get 2 very good riders early on and give your team a boost. IF you are not sure which one to sign ask! Its a shame if you pick not so good riders when there are real gems in the pool of free riders. (A good indication in CFF for a riders skill is to check if they have an icon. For each of the 5 main stats there are icons. Bronze, silver or gold. IF a rider has an icon or more this is a good indication of his skill.)
To end it all.
This welcome post is just the tip of the iceberg. But to prevent this post to be the same length as the Lord of the Rings trilogy i have limited it to these topics. I can only recommend to just look around in cff and experiment on your own. All ive written are just things to get you started. If you want to do it differently do it! There is no right way to play this game. There is a lot of knowledge on this forum and in the minds of the players so do not hesitate to ask questions. In the English forums or on the forums where they speak your language.
To really end this i will give you one more link. This is the English FAQ and holds a lot of information on different topics: FAQ
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