Seeking clarity on type interactions

The interaction between strong/weak and resistant/vulnerable and attack/defense/stamina seem confusing at times. On one hand the first two categories seem analogous – that being strong against a type and being resistant to it mean the same thing (until we see that Fighting is listed as weak against Bug, but also resistant to Bug). Does strength affect the chance of an attack connecting? Or the damage done if it connects?

There are really only 4 combinations (strong+resistant, strong+vulnerable, weak+resistant, and weak+vulnerable) and it’s tempting to view the strong/weak as applying to attack and resistant/vulnerable as applying to defense; but it’s still a challenge to identify clearly and quickly which mons match up most favorably against which others in a conceptual way (without resorting to long hours on battle simulators).

I’m trying to find a writeup that makes sense of that stuff. Is there a definitive clarification already out there?

You have 2 sorts of type matchups: defence and offence. As an example: Electric is offensive strong against water (super effective), but defensive it’s neutral. Grass is also strong on offence against water, but defensive also (not very effective). And Pokémon with dual typing make it even more fun: Gengar is offensive strong against Psychic (Ghost > Psychic), but defensive weak (Psychic > Poison).
In your example Bug is offensive and defensive weak against Flying (not resistant, actually Bug doens’t have any resistances.). I hope this explains it a bit.

To follow your example, you note that for the dual type Gengar,

Offense:
Ghost > Psychic
Defense:
Poison < Psychic

Doesn’t the Offense comparison for Poison and Psychic matter? Or the Defense comparison for Ghost and Psychic? Which part cares about the Pokémon type and which part cares about the Move type? How do those semi-orthogonal things (pokemon type vs. move type) interact with each other in the battle?

Depends on the typings themselves, they dont make A resistant to B because B is weak to A

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Yeah, I get confused about what beat what and what is weak to what, so I just ask my son before we do a raid.

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Sure, @Necrozmadabest . The relationship between weak/strong and resistant/vulnerable isn’t causal. But it does seem properly ontological. (It’s not that one causes the other, but that the two attributes are complementary ways of expressing a shared reality.)

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Normally Ghost resists Psychic, but Gengars second typing als Poison changes that to vulnerable.

Ghost doesnt resist Psychic

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Ah, I see they have changed that from gen 2 indeed. In gen 1 they did as I always see when playing Red/Blue.

Gen 2 only introduced steel and dark while making psychic-types not immune to ghost, fire resistant to ice and bug not resistant to poison (or vice versa, they made poison resist bug, not sure)
The next change was the introduction of fairies and making steel not resist dark and ghost types

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