Empty Answer Close VS. Close

[FryedChikin]

Hello,
We are trying to generate some reports about number of tickets created in a department's queue and number of tickets closed in department's queue. I believe these have to be set up as two different reports, so I've set up the X-Axis to be the open time range and the closed time range (respectively). The Value Series are the queues the department has. I've also set restrictions to NEW TICKETS and CLOSED/MERGED tickets.

The two reports show what we want (Months with the number of tickets created/closed), but there seems to be a huge discrepancy. By the numbers we are seeing, we should have around 300 tickets open, but in reality we only have around 50. Some queues that should have an equal number of open and closed tickets (such as new hires which are always closed) are showing that 50 tickets are unaccounted for, which cannot be the case.

My question is if there is a difference between closing a ticket via the empty answer response (responding to the customer and selecting the 'closed successful' option for next ticket state) and clicking on the CLOSE button (which seems to be an internal note setting the next state) that could be causing these out of whack numbers? Some tickets are closed via the Close button because the ticket comes from a distribution list which really doesn't need to be notified or because they were filed by an agent to account for work done outside of otrs.

Side question:
When creating these stat reports, what is the difference between state type and state? I'm seeing state type having generic "closed," "open," etc. while state having "closed successful," "open," etc.. Would searching for tickets in one field be different from the other? OTRS and the ticketing report was kind of just dropped onto my lap so I have limited info in regards to the backend stuff. I do know that our OTRS is version 3.7.7 sitting on a rhel server.

Let me know if more clarification is needed.