Now that I'm done with the Energizer project, I'd like to take what I've learned (and a few other things) and throw out some theories on how the game clock really works... I'll be using my Energizer Hare (Hare/Hare, 400 week lifespan) as the control subject throughout.

THEORY ONE: There are two variables at work, Current Week and Maximum Lifespan (CW and ML for short). ML is set by monster type at creation (400 for my Hare, 410 if he'd been created with a Mock/Plant Disc, etc.) CW starts at 1. When CW is greater than ML, shooting stars. That's the easy part.

THEORY TWO: Life stages (Childhood, Adolescence, Prime, etc.) are CALCULATED by species as percentages of Maximum Lifespan.

My Hare went through stages at fairly obvious week markers:

Childhood: Weeks 1-80. (20%)
Adolescence: Weeks 81-200. (30%)
Prime: Weeks 201-320. (30%)
Old Age: Weeks 321-400. (20%)

Now, there are substages within these (as RNA and others have speculated): for example, you'll get better stat results in week 240 than in week 315, because 240 is closer to the heart of Prime. But for simplicity's sake, we'll stick to these four.

I am assuming that variables that affect lifespan at creation (Mock and Plant Chips, monster subtypes, etc.) affect the Maximum Lifespan. It wouldn't make sense otherwise: what would Mock Chips do, set the Current Week to -10? So our Hare/Hare, 400 weeks, created with Mock chips would have a ML of 410 weeks. A Hare/Plant would have ML = 460, 470 if Mock or Plant Chips were used in creation. Recalculate as needed from that.

I have strong reason to suspect (from my own experience, RNA's findings and elsewhere) that different species have different life stage percentages, and suspect that longer-lived types will have longer Childhoods (among other things). The catch is that I don't know if subbreeds have an effect on these percentages yet, so I'll stick with purebred examples until I have a better grasp on how this works.

If anyone wants to take monsters from different life classes (say, a Naga, a Zuum and a Durahan), go light-light-light-rest to avoid lifespan hits and take notes on what weeks they enter each stage, please do, it'd be a BIG help. Or perhaps a Game Shark can zap them right to the critical weeks and you can see when they grow; I don't have one so I don't know if changes like that carry over.

And now, the BIG question for Nevistar/DP:

* Do factors that affect lifespan in mid-game (lifespan hits from stress/fatigue, Peaches, etc.) add or subtract from the CURRENT WEEK variable (i.e. dicking around with the monster's actual age, but leaving its status-screen age untouched), or add or subtract from the MAXIMUM LIFESPAN variable?

I'm not sure which is true, and it makes a big difference. I suspect the latter, but I'm not certain: if my monster is 5 years 0 months and I eat a Golden Peach, my monster is still 5 years old on the status sheet. He doesn't mystically "lose" 8 months or so, suggesting that it's Maximum Lifespan that's affected.

But one or the other is true. Empirical evidence: when I had a monster reach Prime and immediately fed it a Golden Peach, it SHRANK! One of two things happened here:

Let's say that Harvey the Hare is at Week 201 (first week of Prime for him). He eats a Golden Peach. Does he:

* have his Current Week adjusted by -50 (so he is now at Week 151, out of a maximum 400)?

It could be that ACTUAL weeks survived is kept as a separate variable for use with the Monster Age on the status screen. But what if you eat a Peach on Week 1? Do you lose the benefits because you can't subtract past Week 1?

Or does he:

* have his Maximum Lifespan adjusted by +50 (so he is still at Week 201, but now out of a maximum 450)? He would still shrink if the game recalculated the percentages on the fly. To wit, for this monster with ML 450:

Childhood: (450*.2) = Week 1-90.
Adolescence: (450*.3) = Week 91-225.
Prime: (450*.3) = Week 226-360.
Aging: (450*.2) = Week 361-450.

Whether he reverts to Week 150 of 400 or to Week 201 of 450, he's _still_ going to wind up in Adolescence after eating the Peach just then. The tricky bit is figuring out which, and you can do so by calculating how many MORE weeks it takes for him to "re-reach" Prime.

If I have time today, I'll make the following experiment:

My control Hare reaches Week 51. I feed him the Golden Peach, treating him with ld-ld-ld-rest for all of Childhood. One of two things has happened: either he's now at Week 1 of 400 again, or he's now at Week 51 of 450. How can I tell? If it's the former, he'll grow to Adolescence 80 weeks later in Week 131 (2 years, 8-9 months); if it's the latter, he'll grow to Adolescence after Week 90 (20% of the new ML), 40 weeks later (1 year, 10 months).

Why does any of this matter? There are a few things at work here, such as:

QUESTION: What's the best time to eat a Peach?

Obviously, the intention is to maximize Prime. The trick is that Prime will change according to which of the above interpretations of Peach effects is true.

IF IT'S THE FORMER, i.e. he reverts from Week 51/400 to 1/400 in the above example:

The best time to eat a Peach is clearly n weeks into Prime, where n is the number of weeks it changes lifespan by. So if Prime = 201-320, eating the Peach at Week 251 will give your monster 50 weeks of Prime, reset by the peach, then 120 more weeks of Prime for 170 total. Repeat as necessary with the Silver Peach to get 195 total in Prime, as it'll be "reliving" 75 Prime weeks.

IF IT'S THE LATTER, i.e. it goes from 51/400 to 51/450 in the above example:

Now you have to do a little calculation. Take the new, adjusted ML and multiply those percentages in again:

Golden Peach:
ML = now 450
Childhood = .2*450 = Weeks 1-90.
Adolescence = .3*450 = Weeks 91-225.
Prime = .3*450 = Weeks 226-360.
Old Age = .2*450 = Weeks 361-450.

So if you eat the Golden Peach on Week 226, you should NOT SHRINK back to Adolescence if this case is true. You'll have lived through Weeks 201-225 as Prime, then recalculated everything by eating the Peach, but you don't "relive" those weeks as if they were Adolescence, they're done. So in effect, you have:

Child: 1-90. Adole: 91-200. Prime: 201-360. Age: 361-450.

And repeat for the Silver Peach at Week 239:
ML=475
Child: 1-95. Adole: 96-238. Prime: 239-380. Age: 381-475.

(which makes your Prime really 201-380, since you "lived" Weeks 201-238 already).

But what if this case is true and you eat the Peaches on Week 1 and 2, for instance? You'd jump right to the numbers above for ML=475, but would be living weeks 201-238 as Adolescence instead of Prime. That's an extra 38 weeks of Prime by eating them at the right times!

QUESTION: When's the best time to go on Errantries?

The common wisdom has been "Don't go on Errantries in childhood, it sucks away lifespan." From what I understand of the system so far, this is quite untrue -- errantries DO suck away lifespan, but should do so from either all areas of life equally or from the stage of life you're in then. You're going to have to go on them sooner or later anyway (unless you want to go through life with Pat as your primary attack)...

It's been calculated that Errantries cause a minimum -5 week hit to your lifespan (three consecutive weeks where LI causes -1, -2 and -2). So:

CASE 1: Peaches/Lifespan hits affect your Current Week.

The test Hare goes on an Errantry in Week 50, out of 400. The Errantry lasts through Week 54, and I take the -5 lifespan hit over that period -- which means he's now in Week 59. He lost five weeks of Childhood. But so what? That's when his stat gains are at their LOWEST. He should still reach Adolescence in Week 81 by this theory, just five weeks earlier by the game calendar than expected.

CASE 2: Peaches/Lifespan hits affect your Maximum Lifespan.

This one's even more twisted. Let's say he goes on that errantry at Week 50 again. Max Lifespan goes down by 5 due to the lifespan hits. So let's recalculate:

ML=395
Childhood = Weeks 1-79.
Adolescence = Weeks 80-198.
Prime = Weeks 199-316.
Old Age = Weeks 317-395.

You're losing five weeks spread out over the life of your monster. Whether you take the Errantry early or late won't change that -- you'll still have n weeks remaining after it's over. However... when you're in Prime or late Adolescence, you're getting bigger stat gains from drills (particularly Hard Drills) than you are from Errantries. So you want to reserve those high-gain weeks for drilling, not for Errantries. If you're in childhood, you're trading cruddy stat gains for cruddy stat gains + new techniques. So do it already!

This means that Errantries in Old Age are also more efficient -- the lifespan hit would be the same, but you're "using up" weeks while on Errantry where you won't gain as much. The problem is that when you're in Old Age, you don't have much time left, period. ;)

The experiment for this will be taking my Hare and waiting until Week 30 or so, then going on two Errantries (after resting to 0,0 first for each, of course) and being otherwise unstressed through Childhood. When will it grow to Adolescence -- at Week 70 (the two -5 hits having "moved up" Current Week by ten) or at Week 78 (new ML = 390, times *.2 for being a Hare)?

The other catches are that (a) you can't go on Kawrea errantries until you're in B Class (i.e. somewhat later in life), and (b) you need a decent stat level (280, I believe) to gain certain techniques in that stat's errantry. With the overall negative effect of errantries, this is going to put quite a premium on learning techniques from parent monsters, because those mid-to-late-years errantries will be sucking life out of the time period where you want it most. (I feel sorry for Wrackies. What do they have, nine Specials? Eeegh.)

QUESTION: What about the Magic Bananas?

It doesn't matter which way the theory goes for them. When you get the -10 Loyalty/+1 Week effect, either:

a) they subtract one from your Current Week counter (which gets used up when the week ends, but you were at 51/400 and you STAY at 51/400 at the end of the week), or:

b) they add one to your Maximum Lifespan (so you were at 51/400, you're now at 52/401, same number of weeks remaining).

Same effect, although there is the small matter that the longer your ML is, the longer your Prime will be, so if (b) is true it'll have a miniscule effect on the length of your Prime per individual Banana. (Though overall it'll have a significant lengthening effect if done right.) If (a) is true, though, you could keep running-in-place via Bananas indefinitely on the same week in the heart of Prime -- which may be the foundation of DP's training method.

And as long as you're getting the +1 Life/-10 Loyalty every week (which there's no visible way to tell once Loyalty hits 0, I suppose, apart from a Game Shark)... I see no reason why the MB/MB/MB/MB Infinite Life trick shouldn't work. It would require an infinite number of game resets, but some people already seem to have no problem with that. ;)

More to come once I do some experimenting and see if I can work out which interpretation is accurate.

(Is anyone still reading this?)

Being that I am not a woman of numbers, I must just bow to your superior reasoning ability, and try calculating what's happening with my monster.

However, I can pretty accurately say that yes, the 'growth' periods _do_ happen once a specific area of lifespan has been reached. I can judge, with relatively good accuracy, how long a monster is going to remain in its stages now, with my training style. The numbers aren't as long as they _could_ be (signifying lifespan hits somewhere, which I plan to work out so I can fix), but the general growth of my monsters is pretty much a straight number, throughout. For instance: both Garuda and Phoenix (lifespan 500) ended up entering their first growth at 2y 11m, on the nose.

Yup, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. Thanks!

A quick run-though with a Silver Peach indicated that the Peaches may simply subtract weeks from the monster's age (Current Week), while (of course) not displaying it on the status screen. Pity, as it'd be more elegant the other way. This makes the when-to-eat-a-peach question academic (50 or 25 weeks after Prime starts).

Which still leaves the question of what happens if you eat a Peach in Week 1, but...

The errantry experiments will take place once I get back from upstate, next week sometime.

Well I was reading and wondering at the same time...if you had a Leaf Hare who had been combined using plant disc chips would that affect the lifespan?(as in 470 instead of 460) I mean you can't get a +2 on drills so the effects of disc chips and mains and subs are not additive in this manner at least, so I believe the only way to increase the lifespan of a plant main or sub would be to use mock disc chips and for a mock main or sub use plant disc chips. Please keep in mind I was (keyword)believing. I have no idea if my concept is true or not just an idea.
*._\

after a day of pondering your findings, including a time i was raising a battlerocks thru infancy, one question comes to the forefront.

you are right - it is taken as a given that "you dont battle or go to errantry as a baby". nate also is on the record as saying, if you extend early infancy by giving milk, the other stages are kept to their maximum length.

my question is, if energizer bunny had gone to an early errantry or battle, thus cutting short its infancy, would it have affected more than just the immediate lifespan loss? in other words, can later stages reach their maximum length if infancy is shortened, even if no further lifespan loss occurs?

if only the one week/two weeks/whatever is lost, and only the infancy is affected, we can throw out many of the cherished notions of mr2. beat the crap out of those babies, if you need a tech, the point loss is minimal, and no effect beyond that which would be felt in stage 3 is suffered.