Child stat inheritance formula discrepancy

[Zoran]

In my current run of Conquest, I've just unlocked Ophelia's paralogue, and I noticed that her base stats seemed to be inconsistent with the formula given here:

Quote

Child’s Level 10 + N stats = Class base stats + [Child’s absolute base stats + (N x Child’s full growth rates); define the value inside these square bracket as “C”] + {[(Father’s personal stats – C; 0 if negative) + (Mother’s personal stats – C; 0 if negative)] / 4; cannot be higher than (C/10) +2 rounded down}

Another way of understanding this formula is this: compare each parent's personal stats (listed stats minus class bases) to whatever the child should have based on his or her personal bases and average growths. For example, if you're getting a child at level 17, the child's "Expected Absolute Base Stat" (EABS, the value called "C" in the formula) is their personal base stat, plus 7 times their growth rate in their starting class, rounded to the nearest integer. 0.5 rounds up, according to my testing.

If the father's personal stat is greater than the child's, record the difference between them as the variable F; otherwise, if the father's stat isn't bigger than the child's, count this as a 0. Do the same for the mother, recording this value as M. Then combine these two values.

According to the formula, this translates into bonus stats for the child as follows, in descending priority:

• If F + M is at least 16 and the child's EABS is at least 20, add 4.
• If F + M is at least 12 and the child's EABS is at least 10, add 3.
• If F + M is at least 8, add 2.
• If F + M is at least 4, add 1.
• Otherwise, add nothing.

Here's my situation. I'm recruiting Ophelia after chapter 18, so she is level 20. Without any stat inheritance from her parents, Odin and Elise, I would expect her to have this stat line:

Elise!Ophelia level 20, unmodified
+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| HP | STR | MAG | SKL | SPD | LCK | DEF | RES |
+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| 27 | 5   | 20  | 12  | 16  | 20  | 7   | 15  |
+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

This is accurate—if I edit my save to remove all stat growths from Elise and Odin, those are exactly the stats I see on her when I load up Paralogue 21. If I start the battle and have her use her Offspring Seal, she gets exactly the stats I would expect at Sorcerer level 2:

Elise!Ophelia at level 20, unmodified, promoted to Sorcerer level 2 with Offspring Seal
+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| HP | STR | MAG | SKL | SPD | LCK | DEF | RES |
+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| 28 | 5   | 24  | 13  | 20  | 21  | 9   | 19  |
+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

[An aside: the game rounds twice as it generates these stats—once when it produces Ophelia's stats at level 20, and once again when it computes the stat increases from the Offspring Seal. In Ophelia's case, she expects 19.5 Magic at level 20, so the game rounds this to 20. After promoting to Sorcerer and gaining one level, she would gain 3 Magic from promotion and a further 0.8 Magic from her growth rate, so the game rounds this 3.8 expected value to 4. A naive average stat calculation would give Ophelia 19.5 + 3.8 = 23.3 Magic, but she actually always has at least 24 if you recruit her at this time.]

However, in my actual save the parents obviously have gained stats. In my case, the three characters' actual personal stats are the following:

+-----------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
|                 | HP | STR | MAG | SKL | SPD | LCK | DEF | RES |
+-----------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| Father points:  | 18 | 15  | 12  | 19  | 14  | 21  | 13  | 8   |
+-----------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| Mother points:  | 16 | 6   | 22  | 7   | 17  | 21  | 11  | 15  |
+-----------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| Ophelia's EABS: | 11 | 5   | 14  | 9   | 13  | 19  | 4   | 10  |
+-----------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| F + M:          | 12 | 11  | 8   | 10  | 5   | 4   | 16  | 5   |
+-----------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| EXPECTED BONUS: | 3  | 2   | 2   | 2   | 1   | 1   | 2   | 1   |
+-----------------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

But the expected bonus value, according to my interpretation of the formula on the site, wasn't what I actually got in the game.

Elise!Ophelia level 20 (after Ch. 18) with inheritance
+----------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
|          | HP | STR | MAG | SKL | SPD | LCK | DEF | RES |
+----------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| Expected | 30 | 7   | 22  | 14  | 17  | 21  | 9   | 16  |
+----------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+
| Actual   | 30 | 7   | 21  | 14  | 16  | 20  | 9   | 16  |
+----------+----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+

I only got one extra point of Magic instead of two, and I didn't get any bonus points in Speed or Luck. I thought this was really weird, so I did some more save editing to investigate.

In my test file, I have Elise!Ophelia's, Nyx!Nina's, and Selena!Soleil's paralogues unlocked. I removed all stat gains from their mothers, then gave their fathers exactly the amount of growth I would need in each stat to set their personal values to 4 points higher than their daughters' level 20 Expected Absolute Base Stats. Thus the values of F should all be 4 and the values for M should all be 0. [In Soleil's case, her Magic EABS is 1 and Selena's innate Magic base is 3, so I gave Laslow 3 points in Magic to make M + F equal 4.] With this setup, I expect to get 1 bonus point in every stat on all three characters.

I did not get that. Ophelia only gained 1 point in HP, STR, SKL, and DEF. Soleil only got MAG, LCK, and RES. Nina got 1 extra point in most stats, but not in MAG or SPD.

At first I thought there was some very weird rounding issue going on, but I got suspicious of the fact that these three kids were generally missing the bonus points in their best stats. My guess was that in the inheritance formula, the EABS ("C") was calculated based on the child's stats at their effective level after using their Offspring Seal. For instance, since at this point Ophelia's Offspring Seal would boost her to level 2 promoted, I thought perhaps she counted as level 22 (or maybe 21) for EABS purposes. Since Ophelia has good Magic, Speed, and Luck growths, the extra two levels would make those stats higher, and therefore her parents wouldn't beat Ophelia in those areas by enough anymore.

And in my main file, this explains the discrepancy perfectly: if her parents' stats are compared against those of a theoretical level 22 Dark Mage Ophelia, she should get a bonus stat spread of 3-2-1-2-0-0-2-1, which is exactly what I did get. Meanwhile, when I unplay Chapter 18 with the save editor and then load up Ophelia's paralogue, she also joins at level 20, but this time she doesn't get an Offspring Seal. Here, she gets the full 3-2-2-2-1-1-2-1 that I was expecting in the first place.

Problem solved, right? But this doesn't work for what I see in the test file with Ophelia, Nina, and Soleil where I rigged up all the parents' stats. The kids were all supposed to inherit +1 in every stat, but they didn't. However, the stats I'm missing don't match the ones I should be missing if the game is comparing against the kids' level 22 stats.

For example, Nina did get HP +1 but didn't get MAG +1. According to my computations, Outlaw Nina gains 1 HP going from level 20 to level 22 (8.00 to 8.60) but doesn't gain any Magic (9.50 to 10.40). I would therefore expect her to inherit the one extra point of Magic (Niles still has 4 more Magic points than her) but not HP (since Niles now only beats her by 3).

Anyone have any ideas on what could explain this discrepancy?

Edited June 16, 2019 by Zoran

[joshcja]

I have no idea why the game drops kidbases as their base level increases, but I can confirm that it is a thing.

Thanks for posting this so I can stop wondering if I'm on the crazy pills

[Thomaswzy]

Hi Zoran,

I stumbled onto this as I was reading the SA Forum on your Conquest LP and I read that you think the stat inheritance formula can be inconsistent and then found this. There are two things that might be wrong in this version of stat inheritance calculations (that you might have fixed later and still see inconsistencies). The first is that the child personal bases should be rounded once at level 20 and then another time after gaining levels with the offspring seal. The second is that after chapter 18, the child actually only levels up once to level 2. I think these address the error you see in your example with Nina (from the stats it seems to be Nyx!Nina). Nina's personal base HP will be 8 from auto-level up to 20, and then leveling up once in any of her promotions will net her less than 0.5, which doesn't round up, and her personal magic will round to 10 after auto-leveling to level 20, and then if the one level was gained in adventurer, the magic would round up to 11, which is no longer more than 4 below Niles's personal magic in this experiment. I don't know if this could account for all the discrepancies you found, but if it does that'd be great since I'm also trying to figure this out myself.