PrintThe standard approach to overlay simply produces a set of polygons, each of them inheriting all the properties of the 'parent' polygons whose intersection formed them.
The most fundamental problem with simple overlay is that it is 'black and white,' allowing only yes/no answers. The input layers divide the study region into areas that are of interest or not on the criterion in question. The output layer identifies the area that is of interest on all the input criteria. This is a very limiting approach.
Other problems that follow from this all boil down to the same thing: an implicit assumption that there is no measurement error, whether of attributes or of spatial extents, which is unreasonable. There is always error.