Pokémon General Thread

Alright. Got all the way up to Lucian before his Alakazam finally knocked out all my party members.

There was only a bit of levelling up, but still.

Gloom actually shrinks substantially to evolve into Bellossom...

Also Unbound Hoopa is huge

Edited by Pryun on Mar 19th 2019 at 11:54:06 PM

Lets not forget how Dragonair gains a lot of mass, along with actual limbs.

Vemonat is actually bigger than I thought.

We need a size accurate Pokemon Snap 2 with all 807 Pokemon so that we can all fix the right sizes in our minds.

Edited by 32ndfreeze on Mar 20th 2019 at 3:20:18 AM

I dunno why you specified that it was the "actual coded size". There's no hacking involved there, that's just something ORAS had as a function in its Pokedex. I remember doing that a bunch and just watching Pokemon scroll past. All the Pokemon there are accurate to how large they're supposed to be according to their Pokedex height numbers (factoring in that for longer Pokemon, "height" translates to "length").

I thought it was going to be showing how big Pokemon actually are compared to each other in battle, which would have been much funnier, since this infamous picture of an in-battle Wailord shows that the scale used in combat isn't quite the same as the official scale.

Ugh I hate some of the official measurements. I'm convinced Japanese devs don't have a proper sense of scale for whatever reason. Also charizard Y is bigger than X, huh.

Given onix's weight there's probably some truth to that theory.

Onix is made of styrofoam spray-painted gray.

That's also why it's so pathetically weak.

Edited by Anomalocaris20 on Mar 19th 2019 at 1:36:13 PM

The weights are definitely nonsense, but I'm fine with all the heights. Just means that some Pokemon are smaller or larger than they appeared to be in the anime. I don't know why the weights are so bollacks, though.

I'm assuming the reason is so that the max weight is 999.9 Kilograms, which is how heavy Cosmoem and Celesteela are, the two heaviest Pokemon. I have no idea why they refuse to go any higher than that, it's not like real animals (many of which are represented as Pokemon) don't freqently weigh a Metric Ton or higher, so it's weird that they decided to put such a hard cap on Pokemon weight.

The only reason that I can think of is that it would screw with moves that deal damage based on the weight of the user or target, but the easy solution there is just to change the points at which those moves do more or less damage.

With weight, I believe it's a case of Writers Cant Do Math. The actual mathematics of how weight scales to size is not common knowledge and poorly understood by most.

Yeah, they just sort of ... Forget about density. Also, Pokémon are kinda magic so it wouldn't be so wild if some of them weighed more than the biggest real-life animals

They could put a minimum and maximum cap on actual mechanics affected by weight, then Pokédex entries could go as low/high as they want. Though they don't have as much of a problem with low - there are a few that weigh less than a kg

Edited by HalfFaust on Mar 20th 2019 at 3:27:05 AM

I remember getting my mind blown by the square-cube law, but that was the applied physics subject in the first year of a biology degree. Still, it makes plenty of sense.

Density is mass divided by volume. And volume is lenght times height times width.

As similar objects will have similar density, mass will have to increase the same way volume does (after all, 3/2 is the same as 60/40).

So, if you have a cube whose sides measure 1 meter, it will have a volume of 1x1x1 = 1 cubic meter. If you have a cube whose sides measure 2 meters, it will have a volume of 2x2x2 = 8 cubic meters. If they are made of the same material, and therefore have the same density, the second cube will weight 8 times more than the first one.

You can speed it up to get a rough estimate if you are dealing with living beings (or remains of those). For example, you have an 8 meter long Allosaurus, and you want to estimate the weight of a 12 meter long one. So, you get how much larger in lineal dimensions the latter is (12/8 = 1.5 times), then you use that to calculate how much larger it would be in cubic dimensions (1.5 x 1.5 x 1.5 = 3.375). So, if the 8 meter long animal weighted 1000 kg, the 12 meter one would weight 3375 kg.

Or, the opposite: You find an Allosaurus bone that weights twice as much as the same bone in your complete 8 meter specimen. You know how much larger it is in cubic dimensions then (2 times), so, to know about how much larger it would be in linear dimensions, you calculate a cube root of that factor (cube root of 2 ~= 1.25). Now you know you'd have a specimen 1.25 larger linearly, therefore that bone would belong to a roughly 10 meter long animal.

(And all those are rough estimates because animals don't cleanly scale linearly, as bone and muscle strenght is determined by section area, and thus increases not linearly or to the cube, but to the square, and so body shapes tend to change and larger animals are squatter)

So, back to Pokemon, say, Steelix is almost a 5% longer than Onix (9.2/8.8 = 1.045), yet almost twice as heavy (400/210 = 1.9); running the calcs makes it about 81% denser, which makes sense comparing rocks and soil to compressed metal.

However, steel has a density of 8000 kg/cubic meter. Even water has a density of 1000 kg/cubic meter. And there are plenty of Pokemon which take up a volume of more than a cubic meter, and not a single one of them weights a ton.

Remember, animals have a density slighty below that of water (fat and air make up plenty of our volume), but animals that weight a ton tend to be 5 feet to the shoulder, and animals 6 feet to the shoulder start getting into the 3 ton range.

Pokemon has very heavy small critters, and very light large critters.

(And those sizes are coded, in the way the Pokedex is just making a parade, the size data was already in XY, and remains in gen VII games, with not only Lets Go using it for the overworld. Dhelmise is shockingly huge.◊)

A lot of the sizes kind of make sense (dimension-wise, not weight), you just don't expect them because you normally see them in battle

Dhelmise makes a lot more sense when you really process what it actually is. It's a big-ass ship's anchor. The anchor is attached to the wheel with a chain, that's not the small wheel people use to steer with, that's a huge-ass wheel used to raise and lower the anchor. One of the "eyes" is a compass, which means that big-ass wheel was laid horizontally when it was originally attached to the ship. Those bars on the outside were meant to be pushed by one person, each, it was at least a two-person job to turn that wheel.

The way the wheel is held by the Pokemon led a lot of people to think that wheel was the small wheel people use for steering, but it's actually a huge-ass wheel that probably could've been used as a table, and it was used for raising and lowering the big-ass anchor needed for the big-ass ship it was attached to.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Mar 20th 2019 at 6:54:23 AM

It bugs me that Snorlax is as small as he is. He's only as big as a rather tall, obese human. He seems like he should at least be another half meter taller.

...Come to think of it, didn't all his early sprites have him lying down? I wonder if his height was originally supposed to be his height in that pose. From back to belly, instead of head to foot.

Then again, it's a toss-up how Pokémon heights are supposed to be measured by in the first place.

Heights are measured along the longest dimension. It’s not that ambiguous.

Snorlax is the size of a bear. A very fat bear, but a bear.

I'm thinking of giving my Infernape Flamethrower.

I feel like it needs a stronger fire attack than Flame Wheel, and since its Special Attack is the same as it's Attack Stat (according to Bulbapedia, but I'm playing a gen IV game, so that could have changed), I figure it's a fair trade.

What do you guys think?

Edited by HandsomeRob on Mar 20th 2019 at 3:34:38 AM

Check its actual Attack and Special Attack stats, and go with whichever is higher. You might have EVs, IVs, and a Nature that heavily benefits one over the other.

flame wheel is pretty weak, even if it's special attack is lower the BP difference and Infernape having decent special attack means it'll probably deal more on average. We're talking a 60 bP move vs a 95 one.

That's a good thought. I forgot about those stats.

Also, it's a matter of not wasting it either. I'd hate to give it away when there are others who might benefit from it more.

Man, I'll be glad to get to later games where TM's are reusable.

For the record, playing Platinum for those wondering.

Yeah. That's more or less what I was thinking. Even if my Infernape has a higher Attack than Special Attack, Flamethrower is still much stronger.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Mar 20th 2019 at 3:40:44 AM

Flamethrower is one of the handful of TMs you can obtain more than once (since it's a Game Corner prize), so if you have another Pokemon that needs it, you can just go and win/buy the coins for another one.

Fireblast would be my choice

Well, that settles that.

Meh. One of the few things I'm savvy about with this series is Accuracy trumps power.

I'd rather a slightly weaker attack that's more likely to hit (barring any accuracy lowering tricks) over a more powerful attack with lower accuracy and PP.

Fire Blast has an accuracy of 85%, higher than most inaccurate attacks.

The Power x Accuracy factor is 120 x 0.85 = 102. Higher than Flamethrower's 95, higher than Earthquake's 100.

And, for the record, Hydro Pump has 80% accuracy, so it has a factor of 96, just slighty above Surf's 95. Thunder and Blizzard have 70% accuracy, so the factor is 84, far below Thunderbolt and Ice Beam's 95.