Thanks for everything Beta990, and enjoy your real life !
Hum bad luck you retiring at this time because I've looked a bit more on playergrowth. I think I've decrypted the Phase variable of playergrowth a bit more allowing more tweaking of values. I tried only for May update, so it's mean only for AI players
Every phase is a part of range Min-Max, so P1_X is minimum age requirement and P2_X maxium for the P1-P2 pair, in the same way P2 is the min and P3 the max for P2-P3 pair.
For Y, I'm not 100% sure of the real signification of value, but I think that the higher the difference between Y min (for example P1_Y) and Y max (P2_Y) the faster/higher players will grow, depending on their potential and primary attributes I guess but I'm not sure because players can go higher than their potential. So maybe it's min and max average note for each group of stats...Meaning players can't have an higher or lower average note than those values and others parts maybe in the DB, make things increase accordingly of players particularities or it's just their base stats that make the deal with some percentages.
The higher the range is and the smoother will be the growth and more player will be counted in this panel so for example with :
MENTAL_P1_X = 17
MENTAL_P1_Y = 80
MENTAL_P2_X = 30
MENTAL_P2_Y = 100
MENTAL_P3_X = 35
MENTAL_P3_Y = 100
MENTAL_P4_X = 39
MENTAL_P4_Y = 95
Players from 17 to 30 years old will increase Morale stats.
Players from 30 to 35 years old will stay stable or maybe increase/decrease a little bit (I think because of others variables like max age_for_potential, negative growth etc)
And from 35 - 39 years old a decrease will occur, didn't try in detail but it should be a pretty low decrease due to the difference between P3_Y and P4_Y.
The one I think I will use at least for May update.
PHYS_P1_X = 16
PHYS_P1_Y = 65
PHYS_P2_X = 22
PHYS_P2_Y = 110
PHYS_P3_X = 32
PHYS_P3_Y = 110
PHYS_P4_X = 39
PHYS_P4_Y = 80
SKILL_P1_X = 16
SKILL_P1_Y = 70
SKILL_P2_X = 25
SKILL_P2_Y = 100
SKILL_P3_X = 35
SKILL_P3_Y = 105
SKILL_P4_X = 39
SKILL_P4_Y = 90
MENTAL_P1_X = 17
MENTAL_P1_Y = 80
MENTAL_P2_X = 30
MENTAL_P2_Y = 100
MENTAL_P3_X = 35
MENTAL_P3_Y = 105
MENTAL_P4_X = 39
MENTAL_P4_Y = 95
So in theory (and from what I saw generally in practice as well ) :
- Physical attributes
From 16 to 22 years old players stats here will increase as much as possible.
From 22 to 32 years old, they'll pretty much stay stable
From 32 - 39, decrease.
Same schema for the rest, my point was that players shouldn't loose so much stats so fast.
I've noticed some decrease with P3_Y at the same value the reason why I putted 105 but IMO skill and mental shouldn't decreases until you put "old" players on the bench the rest of their carrier. Look at old players that still highly skilled like ronaldihno etc). And mental well same way...Pirlo see everything without moving and it will not loose that till he keeps playing.
Well it's my personal view of the thing so maybe more experienced people in football can find better values ?
Players between 26-30 some have a little increase, 1 or 2 points in 2 seasons other doesn't...But maybe it's just a question of potential one was 85 OVR / 87 POT didn't increased and the other 83 OVR / 86 POT increased of 1 point.
For all of this I used vanilla file.
Combined with beta's file, seems that players and mainly highly youngs players win a bit faster than vanilla (but a bit less than beta's original file) for example Lucas (PSG) with beta's file goes to 88 and on my test 85. But in an other hand players of 26 years and more have better chance of increase.
For goalkeepers, except a compromise thing with gk_age_shift dunno ... Tested with many values actually 8 seems to be a good compromise between youngster and 26+ but it's have to be tested on 3-4 seasons I think.