Exercise equipment and lowered efficiency

[=^..^= Jay.h]

I've been working on finishing the game with the lowest in-game day count for a while now, and coming to the end of the game has always been the biggest hurdle.

Starting just after winning the rookie league, and continuing until the end, I've noticed the exercise equipment isn't as efficient as it is at the start of the game.

For example: On the very first day, if I grind out on bench pressing and the dip station, I can get just over 500 strength xp for the day (544 being the highest I've seen recently) and lose 36/45 due to stat decay (I don't always reach level 5). At the end of the game, by using the same equipment (whether it's at Silver's Gym or using the basement equipment) I can barely get over 300xp for the day and lose 117 from stat decay (due to being at level 13). This is with all 3 "Some Motivation" perks.

It's even worse for Stamina/Agility training since I don't invest in the perks for those skills. At the end game I can barely get 200xp for the day if I focus on just one stat. Yet at the start of the game I can easily get up to 500xp using the same equipment BEFORE any training perks are applied.

Am I doing something wrong or is this intended?

[Malthusians]

Are you training every day? There's a cooldown timer to get back to peak training efficiency, and if you train every day that's not enough to fully reset. Does that match what you're seeing? Do you go back to higher XP if you take more time off?

There are a couple machines in the basement/purchasable from the store that don't have the same cooldown timer as one of the gym equipment, but yeah most do.

At the end of the game when you don't have anything else to do but train (it's easy to get enough money to not even need to sleep), yeah, I don't think there's anything you can do about it except figure out the training mix/timing that gives you the most XP/day over a long period.

[=^..^= Jay.h]

Actually it looks like I figured out what's going on, and it's unfortunately nothing to do with a cooldown timer.

Basically the bench gives extremely high amounts of xp compared to the other machines. Going by the stats shown in the sporting goods store, the bench is rated at 3x the amount of xp gain from the speed bag and treadmill. I just finished a 65 day run and sure enough I could still get the 544xp in str from the bench and dip machines but only 220ish from the agi/sta training. I checked at numerous points throughout the game and it never changed.

This does show a critical flaw though: str can properly maintained throughout the entire game, but agi/sta cannot. The stat decay for str at lvl 15 is around 30% (less with the Some Motivation buffs) while the stat decay at level 12 for the other two can easily be 50-60% (220xp gained, 117xp lost).

[=^..^= Jay.h]

Actually, I just double checked again, and apparently I was mixing up numbers (I was going back and forth between a wiki site for the game and the game itself, I need to pay closer attention).

So according to a wiki source, the bench press gives 139xp over the course of 21 clock ticks. Speed bag is 170 over 32 ticks, and treadmill is 142 over 19 ticks. Granted this was done with very rudimentary testing, but it still leaves me very confused as to why I can consistently get so much more str experience over the other two throughout the game.

Does the initial perk you choose (strong arms, strong legs, fast runner) affect training?

**Edit**
Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you say cooldown timer are you referring to the experience orb graphic? Last time I checked, the pieces missing from those orbs only means you can use the machine for less time, not the workout efficiency. To get around this, I exit/enter a machine over and over again to get a freebie exp orb repeatedly.

[Malthusians]

Ha, yeah I thought that partial bubbles give less XP per time spent. Just goes to show how little one has to actually know to finish, heh...