Read Me!
Some people find AACalc a bit confusing at first - here are some helpful instructions on how to use it.
Enter Units
As a first step, enter the units that will be involved in the battle. AACalc detects coastal bombardments and illegal combinations (eg. armor and subs) automatically. Check the AA box if the defending territory has an AA gun.
"Amphibious Assault"
Wait a minute, there is no checkbox for this. That's because AACalc will recognize it automatically. If you have a Battleship with an attacking land force, it will attack in pre-combat and then disappear from the battle. If you also include Destroyers, it is assumed that you have the combined bombardment technology, so there is no checkbox for that either.
Go to topDetermine your Order of Loss (OOL)
You can customize the order of loss for each side. This determines the order in which AACalc will remove units from each side as hits are scored.
"# Units to take land at all costs"
In a land battle, if a number is entered here (other than 0), that many land units will be preserved rather than air units, to ensure that the attacker is still able to take and hold a land territory. This has the effect of temporarily altering the attackers order of loss once it only has a given number of land units left.
Go to topDetermine abort/submerge conditions
Under this, you have a few choices:
Minimum attacker punch ratio
Punch is described in more detail below, but basically it is one way in which the strength of a force can be measured. If you enter a percentage in this box, AACalc will end the attack once the attackers punch falls below the specified percentage of the defenders punch. This can be a good idea because once you no longer have the advantage, it only tends to get worse. So this box allows you to specify how bad it can get before you cut and run.
# units must survive
Suppose you have some expensive units (battleships, fighters, or whatever) that you don't want to lose at any cost. if you enter how many of these there are, and ensure that they are ranked last in your Order of Loss (OOL, described below), then the attack will end once it becomes likely that these units will be killed in the next round of combat
"Att/Def subs chicken"
With this checked, subs will submerge when faced with an air-only enemy even if they are accompanying other units that they could serve as cannon fodder for. Subs will always submerge if there are only subs in the fleet and the enemy has only air units.
Go to topDetermine how many rounds of combat to run at a time
You can also enter how many rounds of combat to simulate or run. Leaving this at "all" runs the battle "to the death." Setting it to 1 is a good option for working out a battle one round at a time, giving the attacker a chance to cut their losses.
Note that when a battle is run just once and for a limited number of rounds :
- the unit counts in the form will be updated to reflect the situation going in to the next round of combat.
- the AA box will be unchecked, because they only fire once per battle.
- battleships and destroyers will disappear if the battle was an amphibious assault, since they have already executed the coastal bombardment.
Run Battle once or 1000s of times
AACalc can run a battle once or many times. If it is run just once, the dice will be shown and the result of a randomized battle displayed. In combination with the Send output by e-mail option this can be used to play A&A with a friend by e-mail.
If the battle is run thousands of times, AACalc will display the odds of either side coming out with any remaining units, or being wiped out. It will show the average results and also the spread of possible results.
Go to topDetermine Luck model to be used
AACalc has three luck models: Pure luck, Low luck and No luck.
"Pure Luck"
This runs the battle by rolling dice for every single hit.
"Low Luck"
Hits by both sides are determined by dividing the total Punch values of each force by six and rounding down. A die is then rolled for the remainder, so the maximum effect of luck is +1 hit for each side. Some people actually play the board game this way. Surprisingly, the outcomes of battles can still vary a fair amount, but running this thousands of times will provide more concentrated results than a "pure luck" run. It also runs faster than "Pure luck" does because far fewer dice are rolled.
"No Luck"
This resolves battles without any dice whatsoever. It starts from Punch values just as no luck does, but then determines the last hit as follows: a remainder of 1 or 2 misses, and a remainder of 3, 4, 5 or 6 scores a hit. It can only be run once, and not thousands of times, since every time is the same, but the result it comes up with is usually the most common result of running the battle thousands of times with one of the other two modes. Since it only runs once, you get to see the full history chart of every round of combat of the most common result. The battle might not end in stalemate if it is too close, since two single units attacking/defending on 2 or less will not be able to hit each other in this mode.
Go to topChoose your ruleset
You can run AACalc using the rules for Axis & Allies: Revised, Classic, Europe, or Larry Harris Tournament Rules (LHTR). These different versions have different rules and values for some units.
Go to topPBEM (Play-by-E-mail) options
Here you can enter e-mail addresses and other information about the battle so that the results can be sent and even recorded with a proper description of what was going on. This is useful for playing against other people online, sort of like post-card chess except that you are sending the dice by e-mail for both players to see.
As a bare minimum, you can enter your and their e-mail addresses separated by spaces on the bottom line of the form. The outcome of the battle will be e-mailed to all the e-mail addresses entered.
It is also a good idea to enter the name of the territory where the battle is taking place - that way your opponent knows which battle is being administered.
The Battle round # can usually be left alone - it is automatically incremented with each round of combat and resets when a battle ends or you click "Clear form".
Go to topRecording results under a Game ID #
The "Game ID" line is special and a newer addition to AA Calc.
To use this, you must first create a Game ID #, which you can do by clicking the "Game ID" link.
Creating a Game ID
On the Create Game ID page, you can enter an e-mail address for each side (the Axis and the Allies), and also specify the rules to be used for the game.
You can also enter a password so that only people who know the password can record / roll battles under your Game ID #. If that is no concern, then you can also leave the password blank.
The "Create Game ID" will also handle a blind bid if you wish to use that to determine which player will play the Axis. Just indicate that you wish to use a bid and enter your bid and your bid allocation. The other player will be sent an e-mail that will enable them to respond to the bid.
Using the Game ID
Enter the Game ID # and the password. You must also specify a Turn ID, such as "UK1" for the first UK player's turn, and so forth. This is necessary because the recorded results are grouped together under the turns during which they take place.
Confirming recorded results
Click on the "Confirm PBEM results" link on the side. Enter your game # (here no password is required) and then just select the turn for which you wish to review combat results!
Submit the form
There are four submit buttons that are pretty self-explanatory. "Run" runs the battle or simulation. "Clear form" clears the form.
"Swap units"
This will toggle the attackers and defenders forces. Useful if you entered them on the wrong sides, or you want to see how the battle would run if the other side was attacking you.
"Evaluate units"
This will just display a chart measuring the respective strength and cost of each side's forces.
Go to topUnderstanding the output
The statistics: Count, IPC Cost, and Punch
The first column, "Count", is simply the number of units on each side, except that undamaged battleships are counted as 2 units. You can think of this as the "hit points" for each side - how many times they can be hit before nothing is left.
IPC cost is also obvious - it's what all the stuff is worth. This stat tells you whether a battle is economically advisable
The Punch values are determined by adding up the die rolls that all the units hit at on offense and defense - the attack values are sometimes also called oPunch (for offensive) and defensive values called dPunch. Example: a force of 4 infantry will have an oPunch of 4 and a dPunch of 8. Heavy bombers have an oPunch of 8, since they attack twice at 4. Note also that battleships in a coastal bombardment disappear from the attacking force after round 0 without being recorded as casualties, since the player still has the units.
On each line of the chart, losses for either side are indicated in grey, while active forces are shown with colored bars corresponding to each side.
Average outcomes
When a battle is run 5,000x or 1,000x, a chart is displayed with overall probabilities. For each side, the chart shows the average number of units surviving and the IPC and punch values of these surviving units. These averages include all the outcomes where each side has nothing surviving.
Also displayed are the overall odds of each side surviving the battle, and a breakdown of how often each side survives with any given number of units.
Single battles
When the battle is run just once, historical statistics showing the results at every round of combat are displayed. Any dice that are rolled and / or calculations performed in resolving combat are also shown.
The chart also displays this information for each round of the battle, so you can see the history and the point at which one side or the other starts taking serious damage (ie. when the cannon fodder is gone). If you hover your mouse pointer over a bar on the chart, you will see a pop-up that shows what units that bar represents. This will not work in "5,000x" mode since the results are not whole numbers of units, and each of the 5,000 battles has different results each round.
The first lines displayed, "Initial", reflect the values of the forces that have been committed to the battle.
Go to topFeedback
If you have any suggestions, or even just found AACalc useful, please drop me a line at rempel c/o gmail.com. Thanks for checking it out!