I've noticed that if I stay out too late or work myself to exhaustion during the day, I'll only have half my maximum energy the next morning.
However, exhaustion does not seem to necessarily guarantee a half-energy day and neither does staying up late; I've done both of those individually without any problems.
What are the conditions that trigger the half energy penalty? What can I do to get the most out of a working day while avoiding it?
Best Answer
I bit the bullet and decompiled the source code, and here's what I've been able to glean from it.
In summary, there are two factors that contribute to an energy penalty:
These two factors are applied cumulatively, so it's possible to wake with even less than half your energy.
One important (and possibly unintuitive) thing to keep in mind is that, as long as you're not exhausted, the energy you go to bed with has absolutely no effect on the energy you wake up with. If you go to bed late, it's entirely possible to wake up with less energy than you went to bed with. And if you work yourself down to near-exhaustion (but not full exhaustion) and go to bed early, you'll wake up with full energy.
Here's the step-by-step process of how your energy is calculated when you wake up:
You lose a fraction of your energy based on how far past midnight it is. The formula's a bit complicated to describe, so here's a table (note the sudden leaps at 1:00am and 2:00am):