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The title isn't very clear so I'll try to explain it here. Let's say you have a Sunkern versus another Sunkern, both with 31 IVs, neutral nature, and no EVs (which totals to 96) in Attack and Defense. Both Sunkern go for Double-Edge on that turn. Can the moment you select the attack Double-Edge affect how much damage Double-Edge will do? Could you select the move at a precise moment for it to do its maximum damage at 102, or even time it for a critical hit at 153? For those of you who don't know the damage equation:

The Modifier takes a random number from 0.85 to 1 and multiplies the final damage by that, so you almost never know what set amount of damage an attack will do. What I'm asking for is that by selecting a move at a specific moment or frame, can you manipulate the damage so that you always do the set amount you want? For example, if you somehow time selecting a move at the correct moment repeatedly, would it do 153 damage every time in the Sunkern situation above?

I'm also wondering if the same can be done for speed ties and secondary effects like Scald burning. I don't know much about RNG in Pokemon games either. This isn't specific to one game. Thanks :)

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I have heard of really super mathy people actually doing RNG battles so that every move crits, flinches, freezes, etc., but only against each other in a controlled environment and I can't find a source. So in theory, yes. In practice, no.
Well, I found this thread:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/manipulating-rng-in-battles-predicting-luck.69020/
As well as this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Xtg-79YOEQ
As you can see, everything that was determined by RNG happened. Focus Band, AncientPower boosts, accuracy, flinching, all of it.  The thing is I have no clue how it works, so I can't really answer :\
That video was actually amazing. I just really hope that it was luck or some hacking device that caused all that. This kind of thing would completely change competitive.

Also, why did they mega evolve twice...?
Woah, I didn't notice the double Mega Evolving (because I was only half paying attention). I read the comments and I remember from the Nugget Bridge thread there was a lot of hacking and stuff involved in order to manipulate the RNG, so for a normal person the odds of successfully manipulating the RNG is approximately 3,720 to 1. Competitive is safe for now.

Double Mega-ing is probably a side effect of editing the files.
My point is that RNG is pure luck and there's always a very tiny chance that all the numbers will align perfectly. In this case it just took some RNG manipulation (which is different from hacking but I don't have a sweet clue how to explain it.)

2 Answers

1 vote
 
Best answer

The answer is yes. Data mining yields that RNG is based on player actions and events. To test this, I had to use an external save device, similar to what emulators use, so I could save my game mid battle. It seems all RNG in NPC battles are are determined by player in put. So I put it to a more comparable test.

Ten people battled each other on their 3DS 30 times over a few hours. They were given the same teams, all Blissey, same stats, no item, using Thunder. I chose Thunder because of its imperfect accuracy, chance to paralyze and of course, chance to critical.

Some players, however, were told to move their attack icon numerous times before attacking. Others were asked to go into their menus and move a bit, etc... Then, players were asked to attack at the same time, or as close to it as possible.

Then players were asked to do the same on battle SIM.

What I noticed in game was that the players who went into their Pokemon menu got critical hits and more hits then those that didn't, but those that circled their move list before selecting Thunder got paralysis often. It was very interesting. I also noted that when thunder was in the Top right corner, the Blissey had paralysis more often then bottom left, bottom right or top left.

On battle SIM, the results were different with completely different correlations.

I couldn't collect enough data to figure out every little thing that RNG checked, but enough at least to confirm that, in game at least, RNG is player affected. Maybe I'll go back to this study if I get the time and the funding.

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Thats actually kinda terrifying. Knowing how easy it is to make the odds just a little more slightly in your favor lol. Thanks for sharing this info. I'd guess that the battle sim yielded different results because of the difference in how it randomizes chance? Probably from the difference in coding. I'm no expert though. Either way, thanks for going out of your way to study this.
My pleasure! I had the data lying around, so... thank YOU for giving me a question to use it on. lol
4 votes

I'm pretty sure what you're asking is if the random number in the damage calculation can somehow be manipulated by an outside factor, such as the timing of the move. I would have to say no, because that random number, as far as we know, is purely random and unaffected by any outside factors.

According to Bulbapedia, random is a random number between .85 to 1.00. That is all that is said about this value; nothing about it being affected by any outside factors. Serebii says the same thing: RandomNumber is simply a Random Number between 85 and 100.

I looked on the Bulbapedia page for secondary effects, and it also said nothing about being able to manipulate them with outside factors- there's just a random chance for them to happen. I'm assuming at this point that the same thing goes for speed ties and other RNG things of that nature.

Of course, there might be some super brainy, mathy, and/or clever process that I would never be able to come up with, but for the average player, there is no way to manipulate the RNG (for now, at least).

I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your question or didn't answer everything; if I did, please tell me and I will try again to answer it correctly.

Additional Effects
Bulbapedia Damage Page
Serebii Damage Page

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Sorry, I can't give you BA cause of what Astronautical put. I can't verify what the hell happened in that replay either though. It could've just been some hacked battle, although, I have no idea how you'd even do that.

Perhaps it is better to keep this up as the only answer though.
I understand. I have no idea what to make of it either. Like I said in the answer, there very well might be a super complicated way to manipulate the RNG that no one knows about, but for now, if you were to randomly participate in a Wifi Battle there wouldn't be a certain way to play that would manipulate that random number in the Damage Equation.
But maybe I could get an upvote ;)
Thank you :)