I was messing about in Hooktail Castle last night, trying to up my Power Bounce record and steal some Happy Heart Ps from Paratroopas to sell to the badge shop.
Firstly, I'll start by saying I'm sure the Power Bounce record is harder to improve on the Wii than it was on the Gamecube, because my all-time record is 26 and my 100% file's record is 23, but I couldn't get more than 14 with two Simplifiers on. I'm almost certain I got the two high scores on the Cube. Anyway, that's beside the point...
So then, this is what I worked out. This probably only applies to Superstar rank, and there will be differences depending on certain factors. This data was acquired during a few fights in the first room of Hooktail Castle, and the audience consisted of Toads, Koopas, Shy Guys or a combination of the three.
With two Simplifiers on (this may or may not make a difference), it seems that the most your Audience can increase by in one attack is 28. This breaks down as follows: 8 extra members for the Excellent attack, and 4 per Stylish up to a maximum of 5 Stylish moves, which is 20. So now we know that it IS worth doing more than one Stylish move - it may not help Star Power regeneration, but it certainly helps with increasing your Audience size.
An Excellent Power Bounce on its own adds 8 members. Add a single Stylish move, and it adds 12. A second, third and fourth makes it add 16, 20 and 24. Sixth and seventh etc. don't do anything.
Here's how it's worked out, at least at Superstar Rank:
Nice-2 = 2
Nice-1 = 3
Nice = 4
Good = 5
Great = 6
Wonderful = 7
Excellent = 8
Stylish x n = 4 x n, capped at 20
Add the highest Attack rank to the Stylish value, and this is how many audience members join at the end of the attack. Doing the Stylish move on Love Slap or Spring Jump doesn't add any extra Audience members, and we already know it doesn't add extra Star Power, so the game probably doesn't realise you've done a Stylish move.
The number that joins is constant while at Superstar rank; however, the number that leaves is not constant. It is halved when your Audience is 150 or below. If your Audience is only slightly above 150, a compromise occurs; if 20 would leave and you're at 160, it'll go down to 145. For the following, assume the Audience is well above 150.
Now, Kiss Thief is a special case. Instead of starting at 0, you start at -10 Audience members. A Stylish Nice Kiss Thief will cause two members to leave. This is worked out as follows: -10 + 4 + 4 = -2.
If you miss an attack due to fog, the audience doesn't start leaving. If you manage a Stylish or two, you'll still gain a few, I think. This needs checking; I'm not totally sure on this one.
If you fail an action command, the audience do not like that! You lose TWENTY members if you've got over 150. You can reduce this figure; let's say you do a Piercing Blow and fail the action command, but do Stylish x 4. Then, only four members will leave (-20 + 4x4).
After five turns, 10 members will leave at the end of each turn, due to the battle taking too long. Once your audience is at 150 or below, it'll halve to 5 leaving each turn. Punies are a special case; although they will all run away if anything happens on the crowd (except sleep), they will also fill up more quickly - the higher the percentage of Punies in the audience, the more will join after each successful attack.
If you get a BINGO when your audience is full, it won't make any difference to the way members leave or join. If your audience isn't full, though, it does seem to make a big difference. Getting a Mushroom, Flower or Star BINGO will increase your audience by half of its maximum size, and getting a Shine BINGO will fill it to max. However, it seems the game uses a different variable to store this new audience value - if your audience is 101 out of 200, let's say, and you get a Star BINGO to fill it to 200 then win the battle, next battle you'll only have a little over 101. However, while you're still in the same battle where you get the BINGO, the game will treat your audience of 200 as if it's an audience of 101 - far fewer members will leave when you mess up Action Commands, and even Kiss Thief doesn't seem to make members leave. I'm honestly not sure what's happening here, other than the fact that two separate variables are being used to store the audience numbers.
Well, that's that for the audience. More testing is required, but I think that's a decent start to working out how they join and leave.
Next up is Merlee's curse. It seems that the game checks to see if you've got the curse at the start of the enemies' turns and does things accordingly. If you kill all the enemies in a battle on the first turn without letting them do anything, you'll never see the curse activate except in the special case which I'll mention below.
Basically, if the curse is active, the game will seemingly randomly decide that something will happen in somewhere between 5 and 10 turns. This may not be random; it might be some sort of sequence, but I really don't know. Anyway, let's say the game decides it's 8 turns for the following example. This "value" may not be how the game actually calculates it, but it works for this explanation.
So, you start a battle with the value at 8. If the enemies get three turns then you win on the fourth turn, the value will now be 5. Next battle you win on the first turn, so the value stays at 5.
Next battle, you win it on the fourth turn again, so the value goes down to 2. Next battle after that, on Mario's second turn, the value is 1. As soon as Mario and partner have moved, but before the enemies move, the value drops to 0, and at this point, the game randomly picks one of four possible outcomes: ATT+3, DEF+3, EXP x2, Coins x2.
If it's DEF+3, it activates instantly. If it's ATT+3, it activates when Mario next attacks. If it's EXP x2, it activates at the end of the battle, and if it's Coins x2, it activates after the battle. As soon as it has activated, it resets the turn counter to somewhere between 5 and 10 again, and the cycle restarts (well, until the curse runs out).
Now, if it can't activate for some reason, then it is held in memory, EVEN IF YOU SAVE. Reasons why it might not activate are: if it's ATT+3 and Mario doesn't attack, or if it's Coins x2 and you don't win anything directly after the battle (e.g. Glitzville or boss fight). Also, while the game has one in memory ready to activate, the turn counter stops and you can't get another one. This means that if the game gives you ATT+3 or DEF+3 near the start of a boss battle, it can then give you EXP or Coins x2 a few turns later. However, this will not work the other way round - if it gives you EXP or Coins x2 in the first couple of turns, you then won't be able to get any more curse bonuses for the rest of the battle.
This is the special case I was talking about. If it's ATT+3 but Mario doesn't attack, it'll be held over until he does attack in another battle. This is the only time the curse will activate on Mario's first turn. If it's Coins x2 but you don't win anything directly from the battle, then it'll be held over until the end of the next battle, and again, you won't be able to get any curse bonuses until you do receive the Coins x2 bonus.
Finally, if the game has held an ATT+3 or Coins x2 bonus in memory, this can be cancelled by buying another curse from Merlee. This can be shown by saving with the bonus in memory, then going to fight the Spiky Goombas next to Merlee's pipe. Mario will get the bonus on the first turn. Now, reload and go to Merlee, then fight the Goombas, and Mario won't get the bonus.
Phew, I think that's about it. Sorry about the geekiness but I thought I should share what I know; it might be useful to someone. If I've not been clear about something and you need further explanation, please feel free to ask.
