On the Nature of Pikmin

[ScherzoGavotte]

Note: I was requested to post this here, but the original is on r/OlimarMains.

Ahh Pikmin. Curious little fellows, aren't they? While we may understand some of their specific usages in battle, there is still much to be discovered about some of their general mechanics. Here, I will attempt to elucidate some of the properties that determine how many times a tossed pikmin will attack an opponent.

TL;DR:

• There are low percent limits and high percent limits for which a tossed pikmin will perform a certain number of attacks.
• The number of other physical attacks, but not the strength, seems to influence how many attacks a tossed pikmin will do.
• There might be a time-limit for how long a tossed pikmin can attack

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When a pikmin is thrown onto an enemy at 0%, it will attack it 11 times, and then pop off on its own. It will attack 11 times until the opponent reaches a certain percent, at which point it changes to 10 times. As your opponent's percent climbs higher, pikmin will attack fewer and fewer times, the minimum being twice before popping off.

• For instance, at 22%, you can throw a Red pikmin onto an enemy, and it will attack 11x (leaving the opponent effectively with 34% damage). But if you throw a Red when the enemy is at 23%, the Red pikmin will only attack 10 times. (It still ends up going to about 34% though, so not much difference)

This behavior seems to be true for all pikmin aside from Purple (which cannot attach). There are percent cutoffs for each time a pikmin does 1 less attack. Data suggests that there seems to be a lower and a higher cut off, but I cannot quite figure out which one will determine the number attacks (though I believe it's probably the upper limit).

• For instance, a Red will attack 11x when thrown on at 22% and will attack to bring the opponent to 34%. However, if you throw on a Yellow (or any color) pikmin and it attacks in between the original Red's 10th and 11th attack, the Pikmin will pop-off before performing the 11th attack.

The upper cutoff changes for White pikmin because they do more damage on each hit (~4 damage per hit, as opposed to ~1 damage per hit).

• Again, like the others, a White pikmin will attack 11x when thrown on at 22% (and if left unopposed will attack until the opponent reaches around 63%). But, again, throwing a Red pikmin on and letting it attack right before the white's 11th attack (adding an additional 1% damage) the white pikmin will pop off, effectively stopping at 10 attacks.

Here are the Lower and Higher percent cutoffs (nr = not recorded):
(disclaimer: I don't know how to make tables)

# of attacks | Percent (Low) | Percent (High (R/Y/B)) | Percent (High (W))
11x | 0-22% | 34% | ~63%
10x | 23-54% | 64% | ~89%
9x | 55-86% | 95% | ~120%
8x | 87-118% | 126% | ~148%
7x | 119-150% | 157% | ~175%
6x | 151-182% | 188% | nr
5x | 183-214% | 219% | nr
4x | 215-246% | 250% | nr
3x | 247-278% | 281% | nr
2x | ≥279% | ≥282% | nr

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The above information I have practiced and tested quite a few times, and I think it to be pretty accurate (although for the sake of quality, reproducible findings I'd request others to attempt this themselves). The following information is a bit hazier:
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The number of hits that the opponent takes from other attacks might influence the number of attacks the pikmin do.

• For example, at the R/Y/B upper limit (which is 3x at <281% and 2x at ≥282%), if you toss a Red pikmin on around 275 and do a single jab (+3%) in between the Red's 2nd and 3rd attacks, the pikmin will still perform its 3rd attack.
• But, if you start even lower and do 2 jabs, even if you don't exceed 281%, the pikmin might pop off after only 2x.

The strength of the other attacks probably doesn't matter, because I was able to perform a Fair and still have the pikmin attack a predictable amount of times, as long as it remained within the respective cutoff percentages.

Even more confusing is that there might be a time component.

• An opponent shielding attacks from a Yellow pikmin creates longer hitlag, extending the time between the pikmin's attacks. At 0%, an opponent shielding a Yellow will only result in the Yellow attacking 9x, whereas it would attack a non-shielding opponent 11x.

Thus far, this information doesn't seem to be of much real use for competitive play. However, I'd appreciate any feedback, questions, or opinions on how this might become practical info.

Regardless of its usefulness, I'll continue to explore the pikmins' attacks and will report back if I can deduce these weird mechanics. I encourage anyone else to explore this, at least to some extent, or to test my data for the sake of reproducibility.

Thanks for your time.

 

[koken]

Seems like a lot of work to me, so I have to say thank you for that.

I wish it could be applied at somehow on the competitive play -easily- and constantly.

Nevertheless you may discover something great.

Thank you for your analysis ^^.

 

[ScherzoGavotte]

Thank you for reading my long-winded post, friend. It means a lot.

I will certainly relay whatever I find as I proceed, whether or not we can use the data. At this point, it seems like this journey will conclude in some equation that takes time, %, and number of hits in order to determine how attached Pikmin will attack.

 

[koken]

I think it could be applied to the competitive level but only if you can remember all the maths involving this issue.
Applying this in the middle of a match could be almost impossible.

Maybe after reaching the necessary level of technical skills to compete, it can be applied.
Perhaps you could get a more easily applicable way to remember in order to made a decision in a simple way.

It's not the topic of the thread but I'm thinking something like:
0 - 50 Don't call pikmin
51 - 100 Call your pikmin after 3 hits to shield
100 - 150 don't throw your pikmin.

Did I explain myself correctly?

 

[ScherzoGavotte]

Yeah, I get where your going. Like you can simplify it to a general ruleset instead of trying to calculate it all the time. Good thoughts!