ADV Draft Baseball League Other

What is Battle Factory?

In short, Battle Factory is an in-game challenge in Pokemon Emerald that has a player try to win as many consecutive matches as possible with rental Pokemon with predetermined statistics and moves.

In long, Battle Factory is as described above with many different quirks. Firstly, the matches are done in sets of seven ("rounds"), and at the beginning of each round a draft of six rental Pokemon is presented to the player. The player chooses three of the six to use throughout the round. At the end of each successful battle, however, the player can swap one of their Pokemon for a Pokemon they had just faced. However, the swapped Pokemon are weaker than their draftable counterparts due to their individual values being lower. Despite this, there are clear cases where swapping is the preferable option.

Additionally, before the beginning of every battle there is a scientist that tells you information about the upcoming opponent. If the opponent has 2 or more Pokemon of a certain type, the scientist will tell you said type so long as there is no conflict (i.e. a team of Swampert, Whiscash, and Alakazam will not give you a type despite having two Ground-type and two Water-type Pokemon). If the opponent has a certain number of Pokemon moves that fall under certain categories, the scientist will also tell you this information in the form of a phrase or "battle style". This information can help inform decisions when it comes to both swapping Pokemon out and drafting an initial team. This information also, crucially, helps deduce what Pokemon moves you could potentially see during a battle.

Finally, there are four challenges the Battle Factory offers: singles and doubles, and level 50 or level 100 ("open level") variants of each. I got my start doing Level 50 Doubles. In singles formats, every 21st battle is against a boss named "Factory Head Noland"--but he is not ever an opponent in doubles formats.

For more information on the Battle Factory, the Bulbapedia Article does an excellent job of explaining the specifics of what I've listed above alongside other quirks.

Why All of This?

As I've mentioned in my ADV Draft post, I am fascinated by things with a finite but large set of constraints and a set of arbitrary rules around them. I stumbled upon a YouTube video posted by LRXC detailing how he broke the record for the (at the time) longest streak in Level 50 singles. I watched because it featured one of my favorite creators at the time, Jimothy Cool. Despite the video being an hour long, I was sucked into the narrative and thought this was an enticing challenge. Watching a few of LRXC's streams of Level 50 doubles attempts over the next few days simply confirmed my interest, and I worked on streaks of my own.

The reason why I'm doing a writeup of this run is due to the method in which it was achieved. Usually, conventional wisdom dictates that Battle Factory runs should be done with the aid of external resources such as damage calculators, opponent logic trees, and a fan-made program called Battle Factory Buddy that deduces what sets are available. I do usually do Battle Factory runs with these resources available--however, I had done the majority of this run on my phone at an airport and on a plane that was four hours delayed. Therefore, especially while in the air, I did not have access to any of these things besides a spreadsheet of rental Pokemon that I had previously downloaded. I screen recorded most of the matches from Match 29 onward to my phone, with the exception of a few in the middle of the streak due to my phone running out of storage. Once I noticed the phone storage issue, I corrected course by deleting some apps and recorded the rest of the run.

Because of this, I'm writing up a short description of the Pokemon I saw, moves I clicked, and my thought process behind it in every battle faced. I'll be the first to admit I got lucky by having drafts presented to me at the beginning of each round which ranged from decent to very good, with the exception of the final round that I eventually lost on. My goal for Battle Factory is to get a quadruple-hundred: streaks of 100 or more across all four challenges. Seeing as this is my first one and I don't think I'll revisit Level 50 doubles, I want to memorialize the streak on my website instead of writing a forum post about it.

A warning from here on out: The buttons below that show different matches are full of Pokemon jargon.

The Streak

I've stored each round of the streak below. Each button changes the below frame to a writeup of that round. I'm going to be attaching recordings as I am able to get them off of my phone. In early rounds, I mark elevations with *. In all rounds, I mark swapped Pokemon with ^. The streak itself is 102 battles long, in the Level 50 doubles format.

I certainly didn't play optimally, as I had no access to the calculations or Battle Buddy which I am often relying on--however, I am very happy with finally hitting 100, and am proud of the intuition I've gained through hours in the Battle Factory to the point where I could take a string of lucky drafts all the way to my goal. 102 battles and 46 swaps later, here we are: