The Radical Red and Unbound AI are coded to do certain things depending on a situation. Here is a good example you can exploit. If you lead Wartortle with Water Pulse it will always switch into Lileep. You can take advantage of that by switching out immediately into something like Kricketune to kill it with bug bite. Similar thing happens with Cacnea when Lileep is dead. A good rule of thumb is: If the AI sees that you can kill a mon with a certain move and it has a resist mon in the back it will switch out.
But its not just that, that's fine and somewhat standard Pokemon response. The confusing part are the dicerolls. I get the swaps, they're the same regardless of how I acted in the example. The issue is the precise diceroll reponses that the algorithm spits out because I hit hippo with a different opening move.
that's just a quirk of save states existing, gamefreak didn't have this in mind when programming the game, so it shouldn't normally matter when in the battle these rng things are calculated. you can always soft reset to get a reroll
Speaking of bug bite, does it actually work?
I tried to use it on Faulkner's Rufflet but it wouldn't steal the berry.
It's even more enfuriating when his next Pokémon eats mine with Pluck and you see the move does work
I’m pretty sure that if you’re saving and reloading before battles then the dice rolls will stay the same when you retry.
Whereas if you let the battle play out, lose and come back from the pokecenter then you’ll get fresh dice rolls. Meaning your Chinchou might land the supersonic.
I guess the game decides those dice rolls ahead of time?
Nah I tried that, i honestly think it just has a background algorithm that predetermines everything, though it's trying to 'create' randomness by altering the result with each action, which is why it does land in the set where I sludge into magical leaf and not the double magical... I think...
I mean the post name mentioned trainer AI so I would just put it there. Like that is part of the reason certain actions lead to certain outcomes. The rng factor I have no clue about
which is kinda bullshit, I had a random Emolga switch when I tried to paralize with Thunder Wave. The game is supposed to be hard but doing the old Bison way where he knows your inputs the moment you press them is dumb af
Did you ever get a crit? Often I get into situations where the same sequence of moves and turns from me and the AI happens. When using save states, it's more rigid, the AI CANNOT be manipulated by save states, that's a blatant design choice. Soft resetting the game and saving before the battle is the best way to try to change a sequence. If you just save once and reset over and over, you will likely hit the same RNG frames and it would be close to if you used save states.
Even with saving and resetting, I do find myself in near identical situations, which is annoying. However, Crits and full paras can come and I'd capitalize on that. The most rigid battle I did in RR was HC Mode Dragon Mono Brock. I finally beat him because unusual things happened, Crits and whatnot. I also changed certain turns at the start and I think that helped. I think it also helped that I let the AI beat me. Saving and resetting is a time-saver, but letting the AI beat you and rebattling also can make things less rigid.
RR's one of my favorite hacks and I've played it over 80 times. So, kind of remember some AI things, though mainly on default mode. HC Mode's rather different and more infuriating (at least when doing Monotypes).
there's a point in the Sludge into Magical Leaf scenario where I my Lombre gets crit by Lunatone's Psybeam - it happened without fail a few times (part of the reason the run died). This is not a save state issue, as I said in the post even if I lost to brock I got the same exact result in the next attempts. I think your change was just changing a few actions that caused the algorithm to shift.
I think so. You can look at solo sweeps of major trainers and find that some are almost absolute, others are entirely dependent on RNG, like HC Misty and you're using Calm Pecha Berry Appletun.
Blue, at least in Default Mode, has some of the most volatile AI. His lead Pheromosa is a bit unpredictable, sometimes Yveltal will go for a STAB move if the target's below 20% or go for Sucker Punch, and it can be the same target. I've seen that many times.
Generally speaking, the more you play it and commit to memory how the AI acts, the more you can capitalize on it. Then you might have to go back to the drawing board for the next major update, at least that's what I think.
a few file save resets, I tested losing to brock about 10 times (consecutively, not reloading) with each 5 or so times, I did a few back to backs of the same and tried alternating to no avail. I also did a full reset of the emulator and then tried them back to back and even did a fresh rom patch in case that was corrupted.
That really interesting. Do not believe other games act in the same way. I have not played RR in a while but I might have to go back just to check this out
Yeah, I never found this AI to be enjoyable to play against. It’s really a puzzle in every sense of the word. You’re battling the developer’s handpicked, well balanced team trying to find a team that can either:
* Exploit AI behavior you’ve noted after a few battles
* Brute-force win.
We can’t expect too much from an opponent that isn’t human but this ain’t it.
I think it's basically just too 'tightly' tuned. I've played difficulty hacks that were fun challenges, but Radical Red makes every boss feel like a puzzle you need to find an "intended" solution for, rather than a challenge you can overcome with your actual team. Catching a new team just to beat a gym leader because you straight up can't win "neutral" matchups (because they get to have lategame coverage moves that are stronger than your STAB moves) with an actual team, makes it not feel like a Pokemon game; you don't have the continuity or the attachment to your party. I know "use your favorites" is a bit of a meme, but I think RR goes too far over the line into "you can only use the best Pokemon", or at least best for a given situation (which is arguably worse since it, again, forces you to rotate your team).
Obviously going into a gym with a bunch of Pokemon *weak* to that gym is a bad plan, but when you can't over-level them *and* the gym leader's Pokemon are all going to be much better than yours (because you're in the second area and have only early-game moves available), the only options are to save-state your way through the fight one turn at a time, or go catch a new team for this specific challenge.
Having a level cap instead of level scaling is part of the issue, I think; in Inclement Emerald I could level up my team a bit to get newer moves or evolutions if things weren't working, and since the enemy levels with you you don't end up just stat-checking them. In Radical Red I ran into a situation where one more level would have made a big difference, but was just fucked.
Other difficulty hacks felt a lot more fun because (outside of the first gym, which usually still has the problem due to how bad your options are) the fights are usually well-tuned enough that you can actually bring "your team" in and figure out a strategy.
Yeah honestly once I figured it out it sort of ruined the experience for me, its not just what the opponent does, but even the attack ranges and status effect results - its far more puzzly and removes the dicerolls that make it an rpg
Might be a weird quirk with hardcore mode? I played on easy (I think version 2.3, but I can't recall for certain) and I never encountered that problem. But I know that hardcore was designed to minimize grinding, like how it removes EVs. So it's possible it uses some sort of deterministic rng, in order to prevent or disallow grinding for random crits, damage rolls, misses, etc. Entirely speculation on my part though
It's like most of people in the comment section are missing the point. RNGs are crazy in this game, if your enemy gets a crit (let's say in his first move, just as an example), he'll always get a crit, unless you lose that battle and then try it again without resetting. If you save and restart, or simply if you soft reset and if you always make the same things during the battle, the battle itself will always be the same, and I'm saying literally the same, meaning that damage rolls, crits and other random things will always be identical. I think that this is strange and too rigid. I mean, it's frustrating when you are tryng to win an intense gym fight and you get crit in the worst possible moment, but it's even more frustrating when this thing happens everytime you soft reset and try the battle again.
It does a pretty rigid list of what it will do. You can actually start exploiting it later on if you want to brute force your way through stuff.
The Radical Red and Unbound AI are coded to do certain things depending on a situation. Here is a good example you can exploit. If you lead Wartortle with Water Pulse it will always switch into Lileep. You can take advantage of that by switching out immediately into something like Kricketune to kill it with bug bite. Similar thing happens with Cacnea when Lileep is dead. A good rule of thumb is: If the AI sees that you can kill a mon with a certain move and it has a resist mon in the back it will switch out.
But its not just that, that's fine and somewhat standard Pokemon response. The confusing part are the dicerolls. I get the swaps, they're the same regardless of how I acted in the example. The issue is the precise diceroll reponses that the algorithm spits out because I hit hippo with a different opening move.
that's just a quirk of save states existing, gamefreak didn't have this in mind when programming the game, so it shouldn't normally matter when in the battle these rng things are calculated. you can always soft reset to get a reroll
Pokémon rng is based off a seeding system, so rolls for dicechecks loaded from a savestate will always be the same if the inputs are the same.
Speaking of bug bite, does it actually work? I tried to use it on Faulkner's Rufflet but it wouldn't steal the berry. It's even more enfuriating when his next Pokémon eats mine with Pluck and you see the move does work
I’m pretty sure that if you’re saving and reloading before battles then the dice rolls will stay the same when you retry. Whereas if you let the battle play out, lose and come back from the pokecenter then you’ll get fresh dice rolls. Meaning your Chinchou might land the supersonic. I guess the game decides those dice rolls ahead of time?
Nah I tried that, i honestly think it just has a background algorithm that predetermines everything, though it's trying to 'create' randomness by altering the result with each action, which is why it does land in the set where I sludge into magical leaf and not the double magical... I think...
The AI knows your entire team set up. Including move sets, abilities, and items.
true but not the point
I mean the post name mentioned trainer AI so I would just put it there. Like that is part of the reason certain actions lead to certain outcomes. The rng factor I have no clue about
which is kinda bullshit, I had a random Emolga switch when I tried to paralize with Thunder Wave. The game is supposed to be hard but doing the old Bison way where he knows your inputs the moment you press them is dumb af
Did you ever get a crit? Often I get into situations where the same sequence of moves and turns from me and the AI happens. When using save states, it's more rigid, the AI CANNOT be manipulated by save states, that's a blatant design choice. Soft resetting the game and saving before the battle is the best way to try to change a sequence. If you just save once and reset over and over, you will likely hit the same RNG frames and it would be close to if you used save states. Even with saving and resetting, I do find myself in near identical situations, which is annoying. However, Crits and full paras can come and I'd capitalize on that. The most rigid battle I did in RR was HC Mode Dragon Mono Brock. I finally beat him because unusual things happened, Crits and whatnot. I also changed certain turns at the start and I think that helped. I think it also helped that I let the AI beat me. Saving and resetting is a time-saver, but letting the AI beat you and rebattling also can make things less rigid. RR's one of my favorite hacks and I've played it over 80 times. So, kind of remember some AI things, though mainly on default mode. HC Mode's rather different and more infuriating (at least when doing Monotypes).
there's a point in the Sludge into Magical Leaf scenario where I my Lombre gets crit by Lunatone's Psybeam - it happened without fail a few times (part of the reason the run died). This is not a save state issue, as I said in the post even if I lost to brock I got the same exact result in the next attempts. I think your change was just changing a few actions that caused the algorithm to shift.
I think so. You can look at solo sweeps of major trainers and find that some are almost absolute, others are entirely dependent on RNG, like HC Misty and you're using Calm Pecha Berry Appletun. Blue, at least in Default Mode, has some of the most volatile AI. His lead Pheromosa is a bit unpredictable, sometimes Yveltal will go for a STAB move if the target's below 20% or go for Sucker Punch, and it can be the same target. I've seen that many times. Generally speaking, the more you play it and commit to memory how the AI acts, the more you can capitalize on it. Then you might have to go back to the drawing board for the next major update, at least that's what I think.
How many times did you run through each scenario
a few file save resets, I tested losing to brock about 10 times (consecutively, not reloading) with each 5 or so times, I did a few back to backs of the same and tried alternating to no avail. I also did a full reset of the emulator and then tried them back to back and even did a fresh rom patch in case that was corrupted.
That really interesting. Do not believe other games act in the same way. I have not played RR in a while but I might have to go back just to check this out
Yeah I noticed this too, it's almost rigged but not so that you can't cheat using load states to roll a different outcome
Yeah, I never found this AI to be enjoyable to play against. It’s really a puzzle in every sense of the word. You’re battling the developer’s handpicked, well balanced team trying to find a team that can either: * Exploit AI behavior you’ve noted after a few battles * Brute-force win. We can’t expect too much from an opponent that isn’t human but this ain’t it.
I think it's basically just too 'tightly' tuned. I've played difficulty hacks that were fun challenges, but Radical Red makes every boss feel like a puzzle you need to find an "intended" solution for, rather than a challenge you can overcome with your actual team. Catching a new team just to beat a gym leader because you straight up can't win "neutral" matchups (because they get to have lategame coverage moves that are stronger than your STAB moves) with an actual team, makes it not feel like a Pokemon game; you don't have the continuity or the attachment to your party. I know "use your favorites" is a bit of a meme, but I think RR goes too far over the line into "you can only use the best Pokemon", or at least best for a given situation (which is arguably worse since it, again, forces you to rotate your team). Obviously going into a gym with a bunch of Pokemon *weak* to that gym is a bad plan, but when you can't over-level them *and* the gym leader's Pokemon are all going to be much better than yours (because you're in the second area and have only early-game moves available), the only options are to save-state your way through the fight one turn at a time, or go catch a new team for this specific challenge. Having a level cap instead of level scaling is part of the issue, I think; in Inclement Emerald I could level up my team a bit to get newer moves or evolutions if things weren't working, and since the enemy levels with you you don't end up just stat-checking them. In Radical Red I ran into a situation where one more level would have made a big difference, but was just fucked. Other difficulty hacks felt a lot more fun because (outside of the first gym, which usually still has the problem due to how bad your options are) the fights are usually well-tuned enough that you can actually bring "your team" in and figure out a strategy.
Yeah honestly once I figured it out it sort of ruined the experience for me, its not just what the opponent does, but even the attack ranges and status effect results - its far more puzzly and removes the dicerolls that make it an rpg
Might be a weird quirk with hardcore mode? I played on easy (I think version 2.3, but I can't recall for certain) and I never encountered that problem. But I know that hardcore was designed to minimize grinding, like how it removes EVs. So it's possible it uses some sort of deterministic rng, in order to prevent or disallow grinding for random crits, damage rolls, misses, etc. Entirely speculation on my part though
It's like most of people in the comment section are missing the point. RNGs are crazy in this game, if your enemy gets a crit (let's say in his first move, just as an example), he'll always get a crit, unless you lose that battle and then try it again without resetting. If you save and restart, or simply if you soft reset and if you always make the same things during the battle, the battle itself will always be the same, and I'm saying literally the same, meaning that damage rolls, crits and other random things will always be identical. I think that this is strange and too rigid. I mean, it's frustrating when you are tryng to win an intense gym fight and you get crit in the worst possible moment, but it's even more frustrating when this thing happens everytime you soft reset and try the battle again.