When I started the game just after it leaked, I remember that in one of the first battles, against Mai's Munchlax, Aerial Ace was doing visibly and consistently more damage than Aqua Jet when used by my Oshawott.
I thought it was weird, so I reset a few times the game to do the same battle again, with and without Swords Dance modifier, same thing. Aerial Ace ALWAYS did more than Aqua Jet. Even though both are physical, used by the same Pokemon against the exact same opponent.
Normally they should do roughly the same, no?
>Aerial Ace = 60
>Aqua Jet = 40 * 1.5 = 60
And yet that's not what was happening. So I went through the game kinda assuming that STAB was slightly nerfed, to something like 1.25x normal damage instead of the usual 1.5x, which seems in line with this game logic of making Pokemon a bit more tanky.
Yet, even though it has been a good while now since the games released, I never saw any data mining address this being the case, or anyone else mention a similar experience at all. So I'm starting to wonder if I was wrong in my assumption.
Did I miss something? Did I misinterpret how STAB ever worked? Or did PLA change something regarding this too?