Copyediting Battle Tree Mechanics and Guide [GP 0/2]

Oglemi

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Part 1: Introduction, Mechanic and AI


Greetings and welcome on this article focused on the latest iteration of Pokemon post-game Battle Facilities: the BATTLE TREE!

After beating the Elite 4, Poni Plains finally become accessible, and after beating Dexio and getting the ability to use Mega Evolution plus the Alakazite, the player is finally asked to confront Red or Blue (it's possible to choose either with no difference outside of the Pokemon used) in order to gain access to the facility. The Battle Tree reintroduces most mechanics we are were familiar with from in the ORAS Battle Maison, however reducing the amount of modes available to the player due to Triples and Rotation battles not being present at all in Sun/Moon.
In similar fashion to other "first set of titles" of previous gens, there's no Tutors available for BPs (they are however available in UltraSun and UltraMoon), but several evolutionary items, held combat items, and Mega Stones are available for buying. The character which enables IV checking is also present at the facility, and will enable IV checking from the PC after the player has hatched 20 Eggs and talks with him.

Please note paragraph structure is important when writing. Please remove all line breaks and form paragraphs as I have done in this GP check, it makes things easier on the HTMLer later.

Victories in any mode will award the player with Batte Points (or BPs) that can be used either at the nearby vendors or the Royale Dome to buy items. In Normal battles, the player will get 1 BP per victory upwards to 10, then 2 BP per victory in battles up to the 20, and a final bonus of 20 for beating the Legend. In Super battles, the player will receive 2 BP for battles 1-10, 3 for battles 11-20, 4 for battles 21-30, 5 for battles 31-40, 6 for battles 41-50, a bonus of 50 BPs for beating the Battle Legend at 50, and 7 BP per victory afterward.

The Battle Tree allows the player to challenge the AI in Singles, Doubles, and Multi Battles, the latter also allowing to play with any AI Trainer beaten in the other 2 modes if you choose decided to invest 10 BP in "recruiting" them. In similar fashion to Maison, the player is asked to complete the normal mode before being allowed into the Super mode of a category, once more having to win 20 battles in a row and then face a easier version of the "Battle Legend", in this case Red for Singles, Blue for Doubles, and both at same time for Multis at the 20th battle. Red will also gift the Kanto starters' Mega Stones once beaten for the first time in Singles. The difficulty, however, is considerably higher bigger compared to previous battle facilities, as enemy Trainers will have access to Z-Crystals and eventually Mega Stones and legendary Pokemon, with the only actual roster advantage for the player being access to the Tapus and Ultra Beasts that the AI does not have in any set.

[note for HTML editing: the following section would greatly benefit for readability if put on some tables rather than a list]
Every time a streak ends (to loss or retreat), the following day after you will be rewarded with the following prizes, depending on how many battles in a row you went through before the ending.
5 Wins: Moomoo Milk
10 Wins: PP Up
20 Wins: Rare Candy
30 Wins: Bottle Cap
40 Wins: PP Max
50 Wins: Ability Capsule (Gold Bottle Cap in USUM)
100 Wins: Lansat Berry
200 Wins: Starf Berry


There's also 3 vendor NPCs on the left, which can trade your Battle Points for evolutionary items, important battle items, or Mega Stones.
Specifically, you can get the following evolutionary items from the first vendor:
King's Rock 32BP
Deep Sea Tooth 32BP
Deep Sea Scale 32BP
Dragon Scale 32BP
Up-Grade 32BP
Dubious Disc 32BP
Protector 32BP
Electirizer 32BP
Magmarizer 32BP
Reaper Cloth 32BP
Whipped Dream 32BP
Sachet 32BP

The second vendor will offer the following equippable items:
Toxic Orb 16BP
Flame Orb 16BP
Iron Ball 16BP
Ring Target 16BP
White Herb 32BP
Mental Herb 32BP
Power Herb 32BP
Focus Sash 32BP
Air Balloon 32BP
Red Card 32BP
Eject Button 32BP
Weakness Policy 32BP
Choice Band 48BP
Choice Specs 48BP
Choice Scarf 48BP
Life Orb 48BP
Rocky Helmet 48BP
Assault Vest 48BP
Safety Goggles 48BP
Terrain Extender 48BP
Protective Pads 48BP

And the third vendor will offer all the Mega Stones for the Pokemon present in the base Alolan Pokédex for 64 BPs, or all the Mega Stones except Diancite if playing on UltraSun or UltraMoon.
Specifically, Gengarite, Scizorite, Pinsirite, Aerodactylite, Lucarionite, Kangaskhanite, Gyaradosite, Absolite, Alakazite, Garchompite, Sablenite, Metagrossite, Sharpedonite, Slowbronite, Glalitite, and Salamencite.



BATTLE TREE MECHANICS

In this section, we'll cover on the rules used by the facility. Those rules affect both the player and the AI.
First, a quick rundown of what is allowed to be used in the Battle Tree.
1) Pokemon allowed
The Battle Tree allows the use of the entire Pokedex, including most event Pokemon but excluding Mythical Pokemon and cover legendaries (usually referred by GameFreak and Nintendo as "Restricted Legendaries"). This means that every legendary Pokemon outside of those is allowed, like the Kanto Birds, Regis, Latis, etc. In fact, several post-40 victories AI trainers will feature several legendaries if not mono-legendary team compositions, while also featuring Mega Evolutions occasionally, so the player has to keep in mind that using suboptimal Pokemon will inevitably result in a pure power disadvantage once the first easy AI sets are left behind. As usual, the Species Clause is active, so your team must feature up to 6 Pokemon with different Pokedex number.
I think it would just be easier to include a list of the Pokemon NOT allowed, rather than trying to explain the ones that ARE allowed.

2) Items allowed
Every item available is allowed on the Tree, with the usual Item Clause (a team cannot have item duplicates). It's worth mentioning that while the AI Trainers are coded to respect the Item Clause, there's still the possibility of an AI Trainer generating with several Mega Stones or Z-Crystals, resulting effectively in unusable items. The biggest known "offender" is generally Wally whose available Pokemon are only 4 with 3 of them having a Mega version, thus often being generated with one or more unusable Megas. (This sentence is confusing, Wally only shows up with four Pokemon with three of them having a Mega? I would reword or just scrap this sentence.) Consumable items are not consumed on use, nor is using Fling, Thief, or similar mechanics is permanent, since the Facility replicates PvP mechanics. Note that the Item Clause applies to the entire team box submitted, even Pokemon that are in the team but not selected to be used, so you are not able to register a box with two Pokemon holding the same item even if you only intend to use one at time.

3) Moves/Abilities allowed
Differently from what one might be used to by playing on Showdown, there's no actual ruleset in regard to how moves are used move clause. You can put as many Pokemon to sleep as you wish, evasion and OHKO moves are allowed, and Smeargle can essentially be run with any move existent in the game. The same goes for abilities; all abilities are allowed, including the usually competitively banned Moody, Snow/Sand Veil, and even unreleased ones. The AI can in fact generate with unreleased abilities (currently, the only ones being the Hidden Abilities of Oranguru, Passimian, and Heatran), and there's a few AI sets that do run items not available in the current games (such as Custap and Enigma Berries).

4) Pokemon levels
Also a returning feature from the latest facilities, all the Pokemon in the player's team will be temporarily downleveled to 50, even if normally they could not exist below that level as they evolve later. However, they are not leveled up to 50, so any Pokemon below 50 will remain at that level.

The way the player selects Pokemon in Battle Tree is identical to Battle Spot and VGC: you are asked to enter with a selected team that fits the Clauses (either one of the saved teams, a QR team, or your party), and select 3 for Singles, 4 for Doubles, 2 for Multis. For Multi Battles, the Clauses are applied per Trainer, which means the 2 Trainers (valid for both AI and players) can have duplicated Pokemon, duplicated items, and as well use one Mega Evolution and Z-Move each if they so please. Once your Party is selected, you will continue to battle with it in the same order until you either decide to take a break or lose. Taking a break has no effect on the ongoing streak, so you are allowed to freely swap things around in between battles if you decide so, and even change your partner for Multi Battles. You are also allowed to Scout the Trainer you just beat to use in Multi Battle with AI for 10 BP, and it will use the first 2 Pokemon it had in that specific battle (so the lead + the 2nd Pokemon if it was Singles, or the two leads if it was Doubles).

Every AI Trainer has a fixed set of Pokemon to access with, with the IVs depending on the number of current battles. The Pokemon that the Trainer is generated with which are completely random and vary each time you battle them, so expecially for Trainers with particularly big rosters, every battle will likely be different from the others. Most Trainers also feature several sets of the same Pokemon, which means it's uncertain which set the Pokemon is running until it either reveals a move or the item equipped. The abilities the AI Pokemon are generated with which is also random, with 33% chance for each ability including the Hidden Ability. A Pokemon that only has a normal ability and a Hidden one will have 66% chance to generate with the normal ability and 33% to have its Hidden Ability. However, if you Scout a Trainer, his Pokemon will always have the abilities they had at the moment of the recruitment when used in a later Multi battle.


I'm going to stop here, I'm editing way too much. Please proofread this for spelling errors and sentence structure, correct the paragraph formatting, and please fix the capitalization consistency. This is way too long of an article for me to be highlighting 10 things in every paragraph. Please take a look at the in-game section of the Grammar Standards to see what should be capitalized (all instances of Trainer, Egg, Mega Evolution, Z-Move, etc.)
 
Unbreakable we talked about "noviceproof" teams for a bit on discord, I did make a list for singles with the cooperation of A (you can see it at the bottom of post 2 of the guide), however doubles is a much harder job to fit in a guide due to how much more variables there are unfortunately.
I don't quite think a link to discord is fitting in a guide (or is it?) But if people think it would be it's quickly done when passing to the copyediting i suppose :p
I don't really remember seeing that conversation on Discord, but the closest thing to "novice-proof" Doubles team I can think of are KangaKoko and PheroLele. Basically, anything that can hit incredibly hard on their own, but at the same time doesn't need a heavy amount of support and synergize relatively well. Preferably, any singular Pokemon on the team wouldn't have any major weakness on their own either, like Kommo-o would have to opposing Fairy types, or a majority of weather or Trick Room teams. The only other "novice-proof" team I can think of perhaps that isn't raw offense is Oranguru + Hariyama, simply because of how straightforward it is to set up Trick Room.

Granted, these are just some two-Pokemon cores to build around, building a backline is still somewhat difficult. But perhaps listing some generally strong Pokemon, like Aegislash, Celesteela, and Garchomp, that function pretty well in the back, or like Araquanid in the case of Trick Room. Though, the idea of "novice-proof" teams, in both Singles and Doubles, can probably fit into another article, or a Part 2 of sorts.
 
I'm going to stop here, I'm editing way too much. Please proofread this for spelling errors and sentence structure, correct the paragraph formatting, and please fix the capitalization consistency. This is way too long of an article for me to be highlighting 10 things in every paragraph. Please take a look at the in-game section of the Grammar Standards to see what should be capitalized (all instances of Trainer, Egg, Mega Evolution, Z-Move, etc.)
Hello Oglemi, thank you, I'll do a recheck of all the capitalization and formatting in the next days.

Should I poke you or post somewhere once that's sorted?
 
Hello Oglemi, thank you, I'll do a recheck of all the capitalization and formatting in the next days.

Should I poke you or post somewhere once that's sorted?
There, I've implemented the changes suggested as well as re-paragraphed and attempted to correct every capitalization imprecision.
I've tried to follow the GP guide step by step, hopefully this time I did not miss anything else.
 

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