Hey, I felt like poking around in Battle Network 2 again, and so I figured that posting what I've found so far is a better idea than leaving a bunch of files of research on my computer and wondering what I was doing a year later.
Since you're forced to get a Style Change at one point in the game, it would be a good idea to see how to get the best one for a TAS, especially as it costs time to switch back to NormalStyle. My experiments with RAM Search haven't helped me at all to find any of the running tallies that might go into deciding the next Style, and I couldn't get GameShark codes to work, but just by watching the beginning of WRAM during the part of the game where MegaMan gets his first Style Change, I noticed that 02000005 changes from 21 to 11 when that happens. So by setting 02000005 to 21 again, you can get MegaMan's very first Style Change... again!
Then, since the
save state hacking guide mentioned some more important stuff was saved in the D00's, I watched that area and noticed that a single byte at 02000DC1 controls the Style that MegaMan's currently wearing. Now, it doesn't control what Styles you actually own, so if you switch to any other Style, you'll lose the Style you cheated in with this method. But otherwise, the Style works just like normal in battle as long as you chose a valid value for it.
NormalStyle is 00, HubStyle is 28, and all the rest are made by combinations of course. To break it down, 01 is Electric, 02 is Heat, 03 is Aqua, 04 is Wood, 08 is Guts, 10 is Custom, 18 is Team, 20 is Shield, 40 is V2, and 80 is V3. Or to put it in a table:
|Electric| Heat | Aqua | Wood
------+--------+--------+--------+--------
Guts | 09 | 0A | 0B | 0C
------+--------+--------+--------+--------
Custom| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14
------+--------+--------+--------+--------
Team | 19 | 1A | 1B | 1C
------+--------+--------+--------+--------
Shield| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24
I wouldn't worry about V2, because what TAS would have time to fight another hundred battles to get that? I think the bump in damage rating would be offset by the message about the upgrade anyway.
Hopefully this bit of information will help someone find where Style Changes are calculated so that we can set the random parts of it up right early on. At the very least, it will allow you to play around with every style more quickly. A TAS will probably be forced to get Custom because of all the easy multiple chip selections done along the way, unless you can raise Attack soon enough that rapid-firing is often the best option and you get Guts, which could be helpful either for the doubled Attack or being able to shrug off any damage while you attack. Shield seems even less likely unless you've got strategies that require loads of defense to pull off, and I think Team is out of the question.
The random element could be important for the range the buster attack covers, what enemies will be weak to it, and what you'll be weak to if you have to withstand a lot of damage. I might have mentioned before that you fight ThunderMan once and MagnetMan twice, so if you can AreaSteal your way into the next column, Wood's Twister would be fairly devastating. With Heat's flamethrower you could get double damage on ShadowMan's grass, plus any Wood bosses if I can remember any... SnakeMan, if you can stun him long enough, maybe?
Charging time could be an issue with any of those special busters, where you might want to put any PowerUps you find into Charge unless you want to focus on Guts's double-damage shot. The time you have to hold the B button to get a charged shot depends on which element you have as well as how much you increased the Charge stat, so I made another table to show all the times in number of frames:
| Normal |Electric| Wood | Heat | Aqua
--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
CHARGE 1| Never | 181 | 171 | 141 | 121
--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
CHARGE 2| 171 | 151 | 141 | 121 | 101
--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
CHARGE 3| 141 | 131 | 111 | 101 | 81
--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
CHARGE 4| 111 | 111 | 81 | 81 | 61
--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
CHARGE 5| 71 | 91 | 61 | 61 | 41
HubStyle gets the same charge values as NormalStyle, but will be stuck with Guts's rapid values. It's funny to note that Wood starts out slower than Heat but catches up by level 4, and Electric starts out quicker than Normal but is truly slower by level 5. Now, these values don't include the time you actually spend firing, or the "cooldown", so you have to remember that, especially with the way Heat and Wood pin you down for a few seconds with their attacks.
If you're into rapid firing, I made a table for how many frames must elapse between shots if you're standing still, which depends on your Rapid level and the number of empty squares you're firing across, where 0 is hitting an enemy "point blank" and 5 is firing from the back with nothing in your row.
|5 panels|4 panels|3 panels|2 panels|1 panel |0 panels
-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
RAPID 1| 28 | 24 | 20 | 16 | 12 | 8
-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
RAPID 2| 24 | 21 | 18 | 14 | 11 | 7
-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
RAPID 3| 21 | 19 | 16 | 13 | 10 | 7
-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
RAPID 4| 19 | 17 | 14 | 11 | 9 | 6
-------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------+--------
RAPID 5| 16 | 14 | 12 | 10 | 8 | 6
But you have to remember the "scoot back and forth" trick to cancel the cooldown and fire once every 14 frames as long as you have room in your row, which works even with Guts style. If you had full Attack with Guts, that would still be a quicker way to deal 30 damage than Aqua's full charge because of the cooldown. Similarly, I don't know how useful Electric's ZapRing attack could be in a TAS when the point is to stun something but you have to wait so long to charge it up.
