• Just wanted to let you know…

    I have been getting a coding error on your site using Firefox.

    The formatting of the old page is gone, and it is now very plain (though functional).

    The error code at the bottom of the screen is:
    Fatal error: Cannot redeclare debugarray() (previously declared in /home/froodnet/public_html/fn/f.php:172) in /home/froodnet/public_html/aacalc/body.php on line 147

    Just wanted to let you know.

    PS:  Were you finally able to get your own copy of the game with the donations you received?

  • 2007 AAR League

    I get the same error with IE6


  • I have seen that error with IE as well. Just FYI.

  • 2007 AAR League

    Woops.

    I should check in here more often. I’ve fixed that problem now.


  • I just noticed that it was repaired, Thank you!

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Startled me at first, wasn’t expecting it to get repaired!

    :)

  • 2007 AAR League

    Glad people have still been using it despite this glitch. And yes, I received enough to buy my own copy - I received only two donations, but each was for $20. One was from nscswitch, thank you again! Alas, my game has been prepared for play, but sits unused…

    I’ve been busy (I’m articling at a law office this year) so I haven’t been here in a while. I only noticed because someone (Lyle Wincentsen) e-mailed me a bug report - he said that having a super sub caused him to lose 100% of his battles - has anyone else seen that? Does anyone use super subs anyway? I think it was over at C-Sub that they basically trash all the scientific advances, including super subs.

    While I have your attention, I could use some suggestions on a new feature request I’ve received. The request is to add a feature that would abort attacks when a certain criteria is met. This would simulate what happens in real games, when attackers decide to cut their losses. Right now AACalc fights to the death every time, which is not always realistic especially if the attacker has a few bad rounds. Having some abort-threshold I think would make the odds calculator more realistic because the attacker would have fewer occurrences of being totally annihilated.

    At present there is one simple abort condition, which is that an attack can be called off once the attacker has only air units. But there are a lot of situations in which you might want to call off an attack.

    Here are my thoughts on implementing this:

    Add a row to the form called “Abort threshold” or “Attack ends if…”
    This would contain four inputs:
    Attacker punch is less than ____ % of defender punch
    Attacher count is less than ____ % of defender count
    Attacker has less than ____ surviving units
    Defender has less than ____  surviving units

    An attack would end when any of these conditions are met. The default value for each field would be 0, which would make the sim run as now - until one side is dead.
    The first two fields would allow you to decide based on when it becomes unlikely for the attack to succeed. Eg. once you have 50% of the punch of your opponent, odds are pretty stacked against you.

    The third option would allow the attacker to preserve certain units, in combination with the order of loss (OOL). Eg. attacking with 3 Arm 5 Inf, you might call off the attack when you only have 3 units left, in order to preserve your armor. Actually, this one might have to work together with the above two, because if you have 3 Arm left against one enemy Inf, any sane person would continue the attack to take the territory. You might also use this to ensure that you only take a territory if you will have enough left to defend it, if that is your objective.

    The fourth option would let you set certain objectives such as only fighting until you have destroyed all their subs, or their bombers, for example.

    Thoughts?


  • I think you are going to have to do a LOT of coding for no real gain.

    Those of us using for actual combat (instead of simulation) set the battle to run 1 round at a time, so we can abort after ANY round of combat.

    If you choose to add such a feature in, perhaps add a “roll 1 round at a time” option in addition to the “run X number of rounds” options already present (to make it more obivous to folks who may be newer to online Dicey’s that they can run it 1 round at a time).


  • And glad to know that you got your game!

    I am booked right now for games for a couple of months, but if you want added into my queue, I’ll make room for ya (but it will be a while before I am caught up).

    ONE CONDITION:
    We use DAAK dicey, not yours :-P

  • 2007 AAR League

    If I did this, I think I’d replace the field for # of rounds with a check box for “1 round at a time” - as I recall, my reason for allowing greater flexibility there was another proxy for what I’m talking about now - the ability to discontinue the battle if things go badly. And actually, there would not be a lot of coding involved. But as the form gets more complex, I might add a button for “Advanced features” to hide a lot of this stuff.

    As I think about this, perhaps it is not necessary. The function of the sim is to show the raw probabilities, and the player’s role is to decide if they like those odds. Once the sim starts having to account for what the player might do in certain circumstances, it gets a little confusing what odds you’re really looking at.

    I’m a little hesitant to commit to an online game, I’m not sure if I can commit to coming up with a move every 24 hours. I guess its only for one country though each time. I’d be up for a team game maybe, does that happen here? 4 or 5 player?

    That said, throw me into the queue, and when my turn comes up I’ll see how things look, if that’s okay.

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    I agree.  An abort at would not be very helpful except in calculations.

    However, a counter suggestion would be to not include shore bombardment battleships in determining if allies survive.  My current work around (because if you attack with a BB support shot you have a 100% chance of survival regardless) is to not count the battleship and assume it will miss, when estimating odds on close battles.

  • 2007 AAR League

    That’s a great suggestion Jennifer. Hadn’t thought about that. I think I can work that in fairly easily.

    EDIT: Done. I also exclude them from casualties, so that it does not look like you are losing an extra 24 IPCs.

    Also, don’t tell anyone, but I also changed the 10,000x mode to secretly run the battle only 5,000x. I noticed my error log had grown to 2MB, all as a result of the page exceeding the 30 second time limit for the PHP interpreter. I ran it a few times and the odds seem to stay consistent within a 1% range, at least for a battle with about 15-20 units per side.

    Re the “abort at” feature, this obviously would be only for calculating odds, not for the Dicey function. The question is, would it be beneficial for that function?

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Perhaps it would be beneficial for estimation purposes, but to be perfectly honest, Dan, if you’re going to run the battle that close you’re going to want to save your fighters and bombers, probably not so much the tanks and artillery because you are trying to kill off your opponents tanks and fighters.

    I don’t know, just seems like a lot of extra work for next to no benefit, IMHO.

  • 2007 AAR League

    Well, I’ve added it, and found some interesting results. I’m going to start a new thread for discussing my Dicey, so I can put updates and requests for suggestions there instead of in different threads all over the place. Heading on over to make a new topic…

  • 2007 AAR League

    @Bradley1:

    Did you know that your AACalc and AACalc 2.0 results do not match for the same inputs?  Maybe it was just a fluke of what I input or the order in which I input them.  It’s a neat idea to have a type in input system in your 2.0 version.  But I think I will stick to your box and tab version, so please do not get rid of it.

    Can you tell me what you entered to get different results? Results will vary slightly each time anyway, eg. one time it will say 83.7% and next time it might say 82.1%.


  • In larger battles with a lot of low-hit probability units, you can get some pretty significant swings in the odds.  Running each sim only 1000 times you will get some varying answers.

    Run both 10K and you should get results within 1 point or so of each other.

    However, with the above listed, it comes out 0% attacker win every time, and only minor variation on most likely number of defending INF remaining alive, +/-  1 or 2 INF from 8 left.


  • Where is the Froodster these days?  Has he taken some time off?

  • 2007 AAR League

    Yeah, I’ve really slowed down here, sorry. Life is busy, I am loving my new job (firm web site: http://gangegoodmanfrench.ca/) and am doing some heavy home renos/land scaping.

    Actually, I think I’m losing my edge a bit with the AAR - I just played a DAAK game purely by e-mail and got slaughtered. Similar experience in the TripleA lobby. Maybe I need some more practice - someone challenge me to a game, that will get me checking in more again  :evil:


  • @Frood:

    Yeah, I’ve really slowed down here, sorry. Life is busy, I am loving my new job (firm web site: http://gangegoodmanfrench.ca/) and am doing some heavy home renos/land scaping.

    Actually, I think I’m losing my edge a bit with the AAR - I just played a DAAK game purely by e-mail and got slaughtered. Similar experience in the TripleA lobby. Maybe I need some more practice - someone challenge me to a game, that will get me checking in more again  :evil:

    are you going to do the 2-2 toronument? i’m sure you can get your pratice in there.it start on sept 1st.  i’m still looking for a partner. if so do you want to be my partner?

  • 2007 AAR League

    Maybe. Cystic Crypt is my usual doubles partner - we live in the same city so it’s convenient. I’ll see what he says.

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