Hi @catsquito, I am sorry I forgot to update my post from last week. Anyway, I am glad that you have figured things out.
The value of Ambient divisions(-ad) is meant to control diffuse inter-reflections by increasing or decreasing the amount of random sampling in the scene with higher or lower values respectively. The calculation for ASE is not affected by -ad for two reasons: firstly the calculation itself is meant to be direct as per LM-83-12…
…secondly, for the calculations done specifically within HB[+], we also convert all the geometry to black. This ensures that even the specular reflections are turned off. As a result of this none of the ambient parameters have any bearing on the results either. You can read more about the rationale for turning geometry black in the description for the direct sun part of the Five-Phase Method and also in Andy Mcneil’s presentation from the 2014 Radiance Workshop (pages 123-128).
Just keep in mind that unlike the 5165 sun set for the direct part of the Five-Phase Method, in HB[+], we use actual sunpath positions.
Regards,
Sarith