Resource RBY Simple Questions & Simple Answers Thread

So this just happened to me in a game. Idk if this is a bug or a mechanic I don't know about. But I had tuaros out vs my opponent's machamp. Neither of us were statused. I used hyper beam, and he used low kick. The next turn my recharge was completely skipped and I was able to attack. Anyone know why? Only thing I can think of is maybe something funny happened with low kick's flinch effect? idk.
Low kick flinched, which clears the recharge flag but shows no message because Tauros had already moved.
 
if you flinch an hb user recharge is cancelled
but im not sure if it should apply when hit by a slower mon
This is what I was thinking. I thought flinch could only take effect if the pokemon using the flinch inducing move was faster. That's why I was confused. I don't even understand how this would work unless, unbeknownst to most, recharge effectively acts as a third move within the turn after your opponent attacks?

EDIT: Just looked through the thread, and a few posts back was another user asking the same thing I did, as they were in the same situation. Apparently it isn't a bug, but can we get actual confirmation that this is how cartridge works? Is there a thread detailing this anywhere?
 
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This is what I was thinking. I thought flinch could only take effect if the pokemon using the flinch inducing move was faster. That's why I was confused. I don't even understand how this would work unless, unbeknownst to most, recharge effectively acts as a third move within the turn after your opponent attacks?

EDIT: Just looked through the thread, and a few posts back was another user asking the same thing I did, as they were in the same situation. Apparently it isn't a bug, but can we get actual confirmation that this is how cartridge works? Is there a thread detailing this anywhere?
This is how cartridge works, I've reproduced it myself
 
This is how cartridge works, I've reproduced it myself
Awesome! :D So, I'm guessing recharge does effectively work as a third move in the turn, which would also explain why sleep inducing moves also cancel recharge. In essence, it seems like recharge actually lasts two turns instead of one. Whenever hyperbeam is used, a second recharge move is then also activated which lasts TWO turns (the turn hyper beam is used in and the next turn). So when the recharge turn is canceled by a sleep inducing move, for example, it is actually no different from a sleep inducing move canceling out a mulit-turn move like rage. We just weren't aware of recharge behaving as a multi-turn move.
 
You’re way overcomplicating it, getting flinched at any point, even after your move, just removes the “must recharge” flag. There’s no third turn or whatever you’re talking about here
 
Not a third turn. A third move within the turn. Flinch necessarily needs a space within which to work, unless I'm just completely misunderstanding how flinch works to begin with. We think of flinch usually only working on slower pokemon. You low kick, then during your opponent's move, flinch is activated. But flinch necessarily needs your opponent's move upon which to work... unless it doesn't, in which case most of us do not understand how this move works. But you say, "getting flinched at any point," as if that statement is the most obvious thing in the world. Most of us were under the impression that flinch only worked during our (slower) opponent's move.
 
You are still overcomplicating it, the flinch trigger just clears the recharge flag regardless of if the opponent is currently flinchable, there is no third move within the turn and they do not get flinched, it's a simple quirk of the game code
 
I think maybe I'm just nerdier than the average pokemon player lol (if that's possible), but I can't be alone in thinking this is so fascinating. You are saying flinch has unofficial undocumented properties so nonchalantly, whereas I really would love to dig into why this quirk exists. But let's not run in circles. A conversation for another day. :D
 
A good way to think about it would be that a move can still "inflict" flinch even if it goes second, it's just that normally getting flinched doesn't do anything in that case - the inflicted flinch goes away at the end of the turn before it can be "activated", but it still got applied, and thus can trigger side-effects like getting rid of Hyper Beam recharge.
 
Hi, figured I'd answer this for you here. Recharging and flinching are both what are called "volatile status conditions." These are conditions like confusion, flinch, Ingrain, etc. that are not reflected as a permanent status like poison or burn. Basically, the way RBY's game code works is that any time a flinch happens, it removes the recharge volatile status flag if the flinched mon has it. This is done to prevent you from repeatedly flinching something on recharge so it can't ever move; partial trapping moves also clear the recharge flag for this reason. The game is also coded such that the flinch volatile status automatically clears at the end of each turn, which is why you never see a message or flinch if the Pokemon inflicting the flinch goes second. The devs missed the very obvious issue here that flinching a Pokemon after they had already moved still results in the flinch clearing the recharge flag, even though flinch gets cleared right after, before the next turn. Basically, it's a coding oversight.
Ah, so flinch is affecting faster pokemon all the time, we simply never notice, because it gets cleared immediately after. We are only ever made privy to this in rare instances, such as when recharge is made to skip. So I was wrong in calling recharge a "move," but I was right in that it does seem to last two turns. It's a volatile status that last two turns which can be replaced by the flinch volatile status, which is then immediately cleared. My intuitions weren't too far off. Thanks for all the information. Never knew about volatile status conditions before. That's super interesting!
I suppose technically it lasts from the end of one mon’s turn till the end of its next turn, which is a bit weird in terms of game time, but it’s still a 1 turn long recharge. It’s just measured from when the mon acts rather than the turn counter, if that makes sense
Sabelette explained it thoroughly to me. I'll leave this here for anyone else who runs into this quirk.
 
Dude what the fuck is SU, these tiers don't make any sense. Smogon seriously needs to adopt a numerical convention. I already don't know which of PU or ZU is supposed to be higher, never mind idk QU or whatever else people come up with

edit: although I get why stuff like OU/UU/NU wouldn't like this because those terms have been around forever (I disagree btw), I think anything below NU shouldn't persist with meaningless letters and should instead use numbers so it's actually clear where they fit within the system

old man yells at sky.jpeg
 
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Dude what the fuck is SU, these tiers don't make any sense. Smogon seriously needs to adopt a numerical convention. I already don't know which of PU or ZU is supposed to be higher, never mind idk QU or whatever else people come up with

edit: although I get why stuff like OU/UU/NU wouldn't like this because those terms have been around forever (I disagree btw), I think anything below NU shouldn't persist with meaningless letters and should instead use numbers so it's actually clear where they fit within the system

old man yells at sky.jpeg
it goes OU UU NU PU ZU SU. using a hybrid letter/number system would confuse people, especially given that the number system is a pokemonperfect legacy and people (mostly me) sometimes still refer to old 2U 3U 4U with those names and they were fairly different tiers

i think the system is fine, you just need to learn what they are once and then you will just know forever
 
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The frustrating thing about that is that we didn't do that on Pokemon Perfect to be different, it was because we saw it as an upgrade. I'm pretty sure Lutra's said that the numerical convention was intended to improve upon smogon's convention and not just be a PP thing
 
what's so special about the big three? I'm really new to RBY OU and I was wondering what about each member of the big three makes them essential to every team. don't get me wrong, I'm not considering taking one of them off my team I'm just curious about each one of them and their roles. Tarous seems really good, I understand why people use them on every team but what is it about Chansey and Lax that makes them so important?

thanks! :D
 
what's so special about the big three? I'm really new to RBY OU and I was wondering what about each member of the big three makes them essential to every team. don't get me wrong, I'm not considering taking one of them off my team I'm just curious about each one of them and their roles. Tarous seems really good, I understand why people use them on every team but what is it about Chansey and Lax that makes them so important?

thanks! :D
Snorlax is really strong, and very few pokemon can safely switch into his Body Slam: Cloyster is one of the best options, but it hates being paralyzed 30% of the time. Gengar has to fear Earthquake; and Rhydon has both of these problems at once. The safest switch-in to Snorlax is often Snorlax itself - this is because Normal types cannot be paralyzed by Body Slam (it's one of the quirks of this generation) so a Reflect+Rest Snorlax is virtually unbreakable by an enemy Snorlax, albeit a bit passive. But as we just explained, even Body Slam by itself is rather hard to switch into, so this set is still quite threatening. If you are not running a Reflect+Rest Snorlax to wall the enemy Snorlax, then you still likely would appreciate one of the many offensive variations of Snorlax (4 attacks, 3 attacks + Counter, or various Amnesia sets) as they all amp up Snorlax's threat level to eleven and they can often generate 2-for-1 trades if set up in the right conditions.

Chansey is simply by far the best answer to very many Special threats; she has access to the potent Thunder Wave + Soft-Boiled combination, which allows it to outlast virtually anything in a 1v1 (even some Physical threats!) as long as they don't have recovery themselves, since Chansey can simply paralyze them and then spam heal until they FP. She is rather toothless offensively, but she still has the tools (through Seismic Toss or the notorious Ice Beam+Thunderbolt combo) to force the enemy to reposition and/or spend turns healing, at which point she can safely switch out to more threatening teammates. What sets Chansey apart from other users for the Thunder Wave + Recover combo (Alakazam, Starmie) is just how hard she is to kill: Alakazam's physical defense leaves much to be desired and he is easy pickings for Snorlax (whose Body Slam kills in 2 hits), whereas Starmie has to contend with an Electric weakness that leaves her exposed to the various Thunderbolt users in the tier. However, almost nothing can kill Chansey in 2 hits - Rhydon is the closest but he is himself 2HKOed by Ice Beam, and naturally slower. The Normal-types can get there with Body Slam + Hyper Beam, but obviously the Hyper Beam is contingent on getting the correct read on whether the opponent will stay or not. This means it is extremely hard to break Chansey out of her TWave + SoftBoiled cycles, and it reinforces the most reliable answer (paralyzing the Chansey and then switching to Snorlax) as a dominant metagame force, too
 
Snorlax is really strong, and very few pokemon can safely switch into his Body Slam: Cloyster is one of the best options, but it hates being paralyzed 30% of the time. Gengar has to fear Earthquake; and Rhydon has both of these problems at once. The safest switch-in to Snorlax is often Snorlax itself - this is because Normal types cannot be paralyzed by Body Slam (it's one of the quirks of this generation) so a Reflect+Rest Snorlax is virtually unbreakable by an enemy Snorlax, albeit a bit passive. But as we just explained, even Body Slam by itself is rather hard to switch into, so this set is still quite threatening. If you are not running a Reflect+Rest Snorlax to wall the enemy Snorlax, then you still likely would appreciate one of the many offensive variations of Snorlax (4 attacks, 3 attacks + Counter, or various Amnesia sets) as they all amp up Snorlax's threat level to eleven and they can often generate 2-for-1 trades if set up in the right conditions.

Chansey is simply by far the best answer to very many Special threats; she has access to the potent Thunder Wave + Soft-Boiled combination, which allows it to outlast virtually anything in a 1v1 (even some Physical threats!) as long as they don't have recovery themselves, since Chansey can simply paralyze them and then spam heal until they FP. She is rather toothless offensively, but she still has the tools (through Seismic Toss or the notorious Ice Beam+Thunderbolt combo) to force the enemy to reposition and/or spend turns healing, at which point she can safely switch out to more threatening teammates. What sets Chansey apart from other users for the Thunder Wave + Recover combo (Alakazam, Starmie) is just how hard she is to kill: Alakazam's physical defense leaves much to be desired and he is easy pickings for Snorlax (whose Body Slam kills in 2 hits), whereas Starmie has to contend with an Electric weakness that leaves her exposed to the various Thunderbolt users in the tier. However, almost nothing can kill Chansey in 2 hits - Rhydon is the closest but he is himself 2HKOed by Ice Beam, and naturally slower. The Normal-types can get there with Body Slam + Hyper Beam, but obviously the Hyper Beam is contingent on getting the correct read on whether the opponent will stay or not. This means it is extremely hard to break Chansey out of her TWave + SoftBoiled cycles, and it reinforces the most reliable answer (paralyzing the Chansey and then switching to Snorlax) as a dominant metagame force, too
I understand much better now, thank you for taking the time to explain!
 
Hi, does anyone know if there was any follow-up to this https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/outdated-new-rby-sleep-mechanics-discovery.3745689/ I was out of the loop for a while and I can't find anything posted after that thread regarding whether it was confirmed and if it would be implemented in Showdown.
Literally if you just scroll down in that thread
1750080369639.png
 
Literally if you just scroll down in that threadView attachment 748426
I saw this, but also read in Shellnut's last message:
I'll probably remain silent for the next bit (to avoid accidentally saying anything wrong) while I go through the code on how the initial generation of those 10 numbers works more rigorously and analyze whether any arithmetic relationships are preserved under these operations.
So I wasn't entirely sure of whether it had been updated since the thread was tagged as "Outdated" rather than "Solved" or something like that. I assume then that it was never updated and simply the claim was wrong to begin with right? Thanks in any case.
 
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