You're in battle, and facing down an enemy Pokémon; a Jirachi, maybe, or a Heatran, or a Salamence, or something else that can run a lot of sets well. It can be pretty important to scout to guess the exact build of the Pokémon you're playing against. Still, just by looking at the Pokémon, you can figure out a lot about it.
Although battle simulators mostly just model the aspects of Pokémon that are "competitively relevant", like IVs, nature and gender, in an actual wifi game, or even a simulator game if all the relevant information is programmed, there's a lot more data than that:
There are probably many more ways to glean unexpected information from the opponent that I've mentioned here; one particularly interesting one, although it can easily be bluffed, is by measuring the amount of time an opponent takes to make a move (players tend to think longer when switching, for some reason). For all I know, it's possible to determine which move they selected by the power drain on their DS, which could be measured by the strength of its wifi signal, or something really stupid like that. Do people here have any tips on picking up this sort of signal from the opponent, or avoiding giving them away themselves? Any apparently amazing "predictions" you've pulled off using entirely deductive reasoning?
Although battle simulators mostly just model the aspects of Pokémon that are "competitively relevant", like IVs, nature and gender, in an actual wifi game, or even a simulator game if all the relevant information is programmed, there's a lot more data than that:
- Which ball is used to catch the Pokémon. This is visible when it's sent out, unless the ball is covered with Seals to hide its animation (and even that can only be done to some extent, and is unusual enough that that your opponent will wonder why you're trying to hide it). This can leak a lot of information if you're not careful; in particular if a Pokémon has any egg moves at all, it must have be in a Poké Ball (just as with all other Pokémon that hatch from eggs), barring the situation of Pokémon that get egg moves some other ways. Likewise, you can determine a Pokémon in any ball but a Poké Ball or Cherish Ball must have been caught wild, which puts some RNG-based restrictions on nature/gender/IV combinations. Most wifi players by now probably know that Poké Balls and Cherish Balls are the only balls you should put Pokémon in in order to give away as little information as possible, but there will always be some who use better-looking balls for style reasons, and that leaks a lot of information about the Pokémon's likely moveset. (In some cases, like Jirachi, you can use the presence or absence of a Cherish Ball to determine the possible presence or definite absence of event moves.) This is possibly the best-known "non-competitive" way of leaking information.
- Nicknames. Why would a nickname leak information? Because only a Pokémon's Original Trainer can nickname a Pokémon (barring RNGing for TID, SID, and setting a trainer name to fool the game into thinking that you are the original trainer, which is dubious at best; what would you think if you were facing a nicknamed Arceus, for instance; and is it theoretically possible to name a Celebi anything but CELEBI)? Pokémon that are redistributed around the community tend to be distributed without nicknames (if they were distributed nicknamed, then people would be able to recognise the build by the nickname); nicknaming a Pokémon is thus normally a sign that its owner caught it themself. This might seem like a pointless piece of information, but can be pretty revealing, as I'll explain later. (Unfortunately, experience isn't gained in link or wifi battles; if it were, a much easier way to determine OT status would be by observing the amount of experience gained upon level up.) A positive reason to nickname your own Pokémon, however, is to avoid revealing your entire team upon using the move Beat Up (which nevertheless reveals the base Attack value of each Pokémon in your team to an attentive opponent capable of doing the maths, another form of information leakage); whilst a rather niche move, it nevertheless sees some use in UU for killing Chansey.
- Shininess. Normally, a Pokémon's shininess is independent of its other stats (because it's possible to RNG-control for TID and SID, two of the stats that control shininess but nothing else); however, some event Pokémon are always released shiny (e.g. the legendary dog events being discussed in Stark at the moment) or non-shiny (e.g. a Pokémon Ranger Manaphy), although that doesn't give away much because the Cherish Ball is normally a bigger giveaway that the Pokémon is or isn't an event Pokémon. However, if, through the presence of nicknames or otherwise, you determine that two Pokémon have the same Original Trainer, suddenly shininess becomes a lot more than cosmetic; although it's easy enough to control shininess on bred Pokémon, if two non-bred Pokémon (determined by ball, legendary status, or whatever) are both shiny and have the same OT, then there's quite a restriction on what spreads are possible; in particular, they're rather more likely to have the same nature and IV spread than if neither, or only one, were shiny, because most shiny spreads are likely to have bad IVs, and only a very few, for any given trainer, will be competitively useful. This is only a partial information leakage, though; clever trainers can start multiple games, RNGing each for a different good spread to be shiny, and nicknaming the Pokémon before they trade them over to a common game, to bluff that they have the same spread.
- Sprite. This is unlikely to be relevant except in the depths of never-ever-ever-used play, but maybe in a tournament with unusual rules, it could come up. A couple of Pokémon (Unown and Spinda) leak information about their PID (which determines nature and gender) from their sprite; for Unown, it hardly matters, due to the ability to breed Unown with arbitrary sprite/nature/IV combinations (although if it isn't in a Poké Ball, each Hidden Power is going to be restricted to one or two optimal IV combinations, and those are going to lead to "optimal shapes" for your Unown to be; rather a corner case that, though). Spinda, however, betrays its entire PID from its sprite, meaning that in theory, just looking at a Spinda, and careful measurement of its spots, will let you know what nature it is (and gender, but you could have determined that anyway). Should your opponent be mad enough to use a shiny Spinda, you can determine its PID, and thus their TID-XOR-SID value, and thus get an idea of the nature/IV possibilities of other non-bred shinies with the same OT. Pretty much completely irrelevant, of course, but it's pretty interesting just how much information can be leaked from something that seems completely irrelevant.
- Gender. Although marginally competitively relevant, most players are normally content to let Pokémon keep the genders they have "naturally". Most of the time (e.g. with bred Pokémon), this doesn't give anything away; however, with caught Pokémon, gender can give away a huge amount of information. One (probably the main) example of a random-gendered Pokémon that cannot be bred is Heatran, and watch this:
Pretty much anyone who's tried to use a Heatran, or similar legendary, on Shoddy is likely to know that some combinations of IVs are illegal with some natures. Lesser-known, though, is that the same applies to gender; an IV spread and nature will nearly always force a gender for legendary or fourth-generation non-bred non-chained Pokémon. Unlike many of the other leaks listed above, this is a pretty big one; assuming your opponent is using a flawless or flawless-but-for-hidden-power Heatran (a big assumption on wifi, but a much smaller one on Shoddy, where unfortunately this restriction is not implemented; a pity, due to its potential competitive relevance), you can rule out several possible IV/Nature combinations for it merely based on its gender, which could seriously help you later in the match, especially if you have a hint of what set it's running. (I calculated the above list as a result of a conversation with eric the espeon, by the way.) I wonder if it's ever a good idea to use suboptimal IVs on a Pokémon just to change its gender, and hide this particular form of leak?Code:
Naive: 30/31/31/31/31/31, Female Naive + HP Grass: 31/26/31/30/31/31, Male Naive + HP Electric: 31/31/31/30/31/31, Female Rash: 29/31/31/31/31/31, Female Rash: 31/31/31/31/28/31, Female Rash + HP Grass: 31/26/31/30/31/31, Male Rash + HP Electric: 31/29/31/30/31/31, Male Timid: 31/31/31/31/31/31, Female Timid + HP Grass: 31/ 2/31/30/31/31, Female Timid + HP Electric: 31/31/31/30/31/31, Female Modest: 31/31/31/31/31/31, Female Modest + HP Grass: 31/31/30/30/31/31, Male Calm: 31/ 0/31/31/31/31, Female
There are probably many more ways to glean unexpected information from the opponent that I've mentioned here; one particularly interesting one, although it can easily be bluffed, is by measuring the amount of time an opponent takes to make a move (players tend to think longer when switching, for some reason). For all I know, it's possible to determine which move they selected by the power drain on their DS, which could be measured by the strength of its wifi signal, or something really stupid like that. Do people here have any tips on picking up this sort of signal from the opponent, or avoiding giving them away themselves? Any apparently amazing "predictions" you've pulled off using entirely deductive reasoning?
