vega12

Also, radiation levels in Tokyo have risen to 23 times the normal levels according to one report. That is still of no immediate danger, but shows that in the event of a real catastrophe at the reactors, even a couple hundred kilometers might not be far enough. Hopefully that is just my over-reacting imagination though.

To play: drums (and I wish piano) To listen: piano, cello, oboe, electric bass

Thanks a lot! It makes me really happy to know that I one of my songs can bring enjoyment to others ^^. I just hope that you don't get too disappointed by the rest of my music; it tends to go downhill the further back in time you go

First time posting any music I've made on OCR in many years. I've been keeping at computer music for these past years, but at a very slow, recreational pace. Nevertheless, I think I've gotten to a point where some of the stuff I make it getting closer to being, I guess, presentable music in a sense. Here is my most recent song. It is an orchestral song that I made in FL studio using a couple soundfonts (it's how I started making music and the only way I've learned so far ). Let me know what you think of it if you have any opinion to share. Getting high quality sound isn't something I've really striven for very much, but I won't shy away from comments on that aspect as I do know I could improve a lot in that area too. Link to Google doc folder If you don't want to download to listen, you can stream it from my site at: https://sites.google.com/site/projecteutopia/home/music

That is perfectly safe to use (assuming it doesn't do anything it doesn't advertise ...). All it does is check for new replays, and moves them to an achieve folder to save them permanently. You can then search and look at various stats pulled from the replays.

Yes, the GSL is pretty fun to watch. It's almost round of 16 now too, so the quality of the games should be going up too soon. And Tasteless + Artosis is a good casting combo. As for the Zerg fast expand, remember that while having a 2nd hatchery means increased production from the extra larva (queens also help in this regard), by having all units spawn at the hatchery the zerg player always has to balance making drones and making army units. So if you leave the zerg alone and they are allowed to power drones, they will have a monster economy. So small things like pushing with a small army to force the zerg to build more army units than they would like and maybe some spine crawlers will help stop their drone count from growing too fast. Whenever you have a chance to put pressure on a zerg player, you always should. Of course, don't get carried away with pressure and throw units away, but pressure leads to a weaker zerg economy. This is why early 2 gate pressure is so popular, and also why it is going to be nerfed in the next patch a bit.

QFT Not only do battles not take place in a vacuum, but people tend to forget that in order to get a unit, you must invest both time and resources into the tech for it. Time and money you might not be able to invest in it for other more pressing reasons. It's not as simple as, see x, build y. Sure, if you get into a battle, say PvT and they have a big bio ball you might go, "wow, a psi storm right now would be great!". And yeah, right now any unit would be great. The point is　you only have so much you can do at a given time, and part of the strategy comes from deciding what you absolutely need now, and what you would just like to have. So yeah, be careful about getting stuck in the 'counter' mentality. That being said, knowledge about which units are, I guess, strong against others can guide your decisions and/or unit compositions in this way. It's just important to realize that for every unit you want to make, there is usually a heavy gas and time investment required that can leave you vulnerable. Colossus might rock in PvP, but getting the Robo Bay, Robo Support Bay, range upgrade, and a single Colossus costs 700 gas. That's a lot of gas! And a lot of time to wait on the bay, support bay, then the Colossus. Sure, you are probably going to get observers anyway, so the first 100 gas can be written off, but the rest is a heavy cost. And it might turn out that you can cut the Colossus from your tech for the moment, getting instead a bigger army, and push to do damage now, instead of waiting for Colossus tech to finish. It might even give you the map control and army dominance to expand. Whether or not this strategy is viable is a question that would have to be answered through experience, but it's a good example of the sheer cost can it take to get something. (could you tell that I main Protoss??)

While yes, cost for cost Corruptors beat BCs, that doesn't always make them a good choice against them. Corruptors can't attack ground, so putting too much money into Corruptors can cripple your ground army. If you are going Brood Lords, it can be justified, but that is an if. So if you're building Corruptors to combat BCs, you have to be very careful to not over-invest. In general though, BCs have a relatively weak air attack (compared to ground) so Terrans can use Vikings, which serve the additional purposes of mobile scouting and giving sight range to siege tanks, and Protoss I think can go Void Ray, but I'd have to test that to make sure. If you already have templar tech, feedbacking the BCs can do some good damage to soften them up. But make sure you use the templar beyond just the feedback, as 150 gas for on the order of 200 damage can be quite the investment. Thankfully, storm works wonders against a bio ball. And if archons weren't slowed by marauders, they'd be good against the bio ball too.

Cracklings (adrenal gland upgraded zerglings) attack considerably slower than their BW counterparts, but normal lings have comparable attack rates. But one difference is that in SC2 there is more unit clumping, so lings can't get inside a group of, for example, infantry, to maximize damage output like they could before. This unit clumping also means that lings die to splash damage much worse than in BW. In BW, enough lings could run in, surround tanks, and take them out, but in SC2 the lings all evaporate to one round of tank shots. The next patch apparently is going to be changing siege mode damage from flat 50 damage, to 35 (+15 armored), so units like zealots and zerglings might fare better than they do now.

One thing people don't seem to realize now is that workers in SC2 are much better at fending off lings than they were in BW. A handful of probes supplementing even 1 zealot makes very early ling harass weak. The only thing it usually accomplishes is takes away a bit of mining time. Of course, if they target fire probes you have to be ready to micro the targeted probe away, because that could hurt. Of course, I think that was just like 10 pool or something I faced, and 6 pool is a little different. But still, probes are tough Oh yeah, and after pushing out with zealots and taking down their expansion, I then pulled back, expanded myself, and came back with an even more overwhelming force for the win. It's easy to throw away an advantage pushing too hard, so after I get a lead, I tend to pull back, macro up, and play safe until I can turn the small advantage into a big one.

The 1/1/1 build is still popular I think, but lately when I play against Terran I tend to almost always encounter an marine marauder timing push. And very often, I end up losing to it . I am trying to see if I can get away with zero or no sentries in my games, because they are so gas heavy that they really delay other tech. Of course if I got 2 or 3 sentries I could just forcefield my ramp to cut their MM force in two and defend like that, and I might have to end up doing that, but I still want to try doing it sentry-less. Also, I've seen a lot of Terran players when playing against Zerg to favor reaper openings now. They allow the Terran player to put pressure on, and they save up enough minerals to get a relatively quick expansion that the Zerg can't attack because of the reaper pressure. Believe it or not, a 5 rax reaper opening was used to great effect in the recent IEM finals, so the 1/1/1 build in TvP and TvZ is still used and totally a strong build, but lately from my experience the Terran players seem to be favoring more aggressive openings.

There are tons of sites out there that host replays. You should be able to just Google "SC2 replays" and pick one.

The number next to the badge thing is your achievement count. Each achievement you get is worth something like 10, 15, or 20 points each. The ladder points you have is, theoretically a rating of your skill that can be used for comparison across your whole league from what I understand.

1) vega#864 :: US server 2) Diamond 320 points, 91st in division 3) MSN information in profile

Of course. I wouldn't be surprised if you find a decent amount of interest in one such tournament.