97 members have voted

  1. 1. What race do you play as (the most)?

    • Protoss
      36
    • Terran
      38
    • Zerg
      14
    • Random
      9


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What's the difficulty difference like between the practice league and the normal starter league? as i've played a few games in the practice league and i'm 5 games 5 wins 1v1, 4 games 2 wins 2v2, will this good streak continue if i click the dreaded 'skip' button on the practice league? :)

(oh and if you fancy a game details in sig!)

[edit]

wow i can't read this morning

it's hard to say how difficult as people tend to try to cheese their way through placement lol

if you don't scout the proxy or rush then it can be very hard. if you see it coming it'll be cake

My first upgrade is usually for attack.

Also Anaron we did 1v1 :) we know how that turned out. lol

I may or may not be the double rainbow guy all based on how you see things.

Terran with mass rines medics and thors, might seem hard.

( Forcefield your ramp)

Templars, With storm for the rines, and Feedback the medics, If you have Temps, usually you can get DTS so if its a late game, they wont scan if its an epic battle.

2 immortals will take the tanks while other units tear them up. It seems like alot to do, but terrans always go all in so if you tear through that and have enough forces left, just counter hit them right away.

My first upgrade is usually for attack.

Also Anaron we did 1v1 :) we know how that turned out. lol

I may or may not be the double rainbow guy all based on how you see things.

Terran with mass rines medics and thors, might seem hard.

( Forcefield your ramp)

Templars, With storm for the rines, and Feedback the medics, If you have Temps, usually you can get DTS so if its a late game, they wont scan if its an epic battle.

2 immortals will take the tanks while other units tear them up. It seems like alot to do, but terrans always go all in so if you tear through that and have enough forces left, just counter hit them right away.

Yes, I failed horribly by moving my high templars out of position. I had 3 of them with full energy (plus psi-storm) and a sentry with full energy for force fields. If I left the HTs alone, they would've tore your army apart and I would've quickly countered. I want a rematch though. :p

I love HTs(P Storm all the way!), I have owned people with those and carriers lol.. I also got back into my archon strat that I used to use in SC I which is great against a lot especially tech'ed up fully.

When I upgrade I typically do two armor upgrades first then weapons and that gives me the huge advantage for the most part in battles.

Ive been skipping terran lately just too burned out using them. Been doing some sexy strats with Zerg, and Toss.

40 Speedling rush.

Normal build except fast gas, nad mass larva stockpile, if done right you can annhilate almost 3 players probes.

I also go banelings with it, so if its a ran i mass 40 banes and boom blow up the way blow up their units and then rush their probes.

Ive been skipping terran lately just too burned out using them. Been doing some sexy strats with Zerg, and Toss.

40 Speedling rush.

Normal build except fast gas, nad mass larva stockpile, if done right you can annhilate almost 3 players probes.

I also go banelings with it, so if its a ran i mass 40 banes and boom blow up the way blow up their units and then rush their probes.

I am trying your strat, but its not working for me; how do you do this?

Gotta love last minute problems. Funny thing is, my DVD Drive has been shot for the last 3 years lol. **** me if tomorrow I pop my dvd in and it doesnt work.

Its shot, because I chose Lite On for my DVD Drive. Big mistake. first 6 months i used it and made copies of linux distros, windows etc etc etc, motor went out. Now it whines anytime, and especially with a disc in. Hits full speeds and whines bad. Ive already had to pull it out once because it broke one of my discs.

Oh well, we will see tomorrow.

Btw, **** YOU ALL WHO HAVE THE POSTER AND THE GAME! ALL OF YOU!

I get no poster or ****!

Oh well, i get collectors, hopefully that in itself is awesome :)

Lite-ON is *far* from the worst company for DVD drives (even DVD burners); most of the early DVD drives and burners *not* manufactured by Sony/Philips were re-branded Lite-ON drives (including early DVD burners and drives from ASUS and MSI, and those in most PCs from Dell and even HP). I have a Lite-ON LDW-411S; it is, in fact, my last PATA drive (as both hard drives, and my other DVD burner, are SATA). Still soldiering on despite dating back to when Windows Vista was in early beta. It is *regularly* r\used and abused (usually burning Linux distros and recovery media, along with the odd audio CD). It's still in use due to the ability (that the newer Samsung SH-223B lacks) to burn reliably at low speeds to CD-RW media.

How on earth is THAT hot? :wacko:

Remember; Infestation is like a Zerg Suit (in Kerrigan's case, it fits her like one of those racing Speedos). Once you get past the Zerg Suit, Kerrigan *is* hot.

Why are you glad that you never played the beta, the campaign was was part of it :unsure:

Separate beta (the majority of the testing was MP; very few of us got to test the SP at all, and no, I wasn't one of them).

I found the SP campaign actually fun (I'm not good enough to play on Brutal, as I am way too lacking in experience) and there are a truckload of *in* jokes from Anthology. (I *still* want to feed Arcturus Mengsk to a Nydus Worm, though.)

Separate beta (the majority of the testing was MP; very few of us got to test the SP at all, and no, I wasn't one of them).

I found the SP campaign actually fun (I'm not good enough to play on Brutal, as I am way too lacking in experience) and there are a truckload of *in* jokes from Anthology. (I *still* want to feed Arcturus Mengsk to a Nydus Worm, though.)

yes I know, it was a typo.

If you guys ever want to learn strats and stuff, feel free to add me.

[email protected]

Its my real ID, just make sure you put neowin and who you are on neowin in the message portion.

Ill be on all weekend. Now only if Sikh got on when he says he will :D

Soloing my Speed ling strat is hard.

To solo it it takes a little longer.

Need to get first expo right at the start, hopefully your enemy doesnt pay much attention or rushes.

Get a spawning pool at 14 drones on minerals, get a gas started with 2 drones, build 3 more drones start pumping a few overlords. Once spawning pool is done build lings and 1 queen at each hatch. You should have built up enough gas to get your speedling upgrade. start it then do larva spawn your hatches, until you have produced 40 sets of lings. You should have 40 by the time the upgrades done then go in for the kill. If you see terran, just do baneling speedling. Blow their wall rush a few lings in with banes blow up their stuff then send in mass force.

Patch 1.1 current info...

To begin, we've heard a lot of feedback from our global community about standardized hotkey options. We're happy to announce that in patch 1.1 we are going to make the Standard (US) and Standard for Lefties (US) hotkey options available in all regions.

Balance Changes

We have several balance changes in store. One general change we're making is that friendly units will no longer provide vision after being killed. Enemy units previously revealed will no longer be targetable. Now let's break down the additional balance changes we're implementing.

Maps

We're going to be adding destructible rocks to the Desert Oasis map to make natural expansions easier to protect. In addition, the center map watchtower area is being narrowed.

Protoss

We have two key changes in mind for the zealot: the build time is being increased from 33 to 38 seconds, and the warpgate cooldown is being increased from 23 to 28 seconds. Zealot rushes are currently too powerful at various skill levels, particularly those that rely on rapidly assaulting an enemy base from nearby "proxy" gateways. We feel the window players have to scout for and fend off this rush is too small. We also want to address the problem of protoss being able to dump minerals a bit too quickly with the combination of warpgates and Chrono Boost.

Terran

There are several changes in the works for terrans. Reapers against zerg are stronger than expected. Due to the zealot build time increase, reapers would be a bit problematic in combination with proxy barracks, bunkers, and/or marauders against protoss. Therefore, we have decided to increase the build time of reapers as well from 40 to 45 seconds. Fast reaper + bunker, or fast marine + bunker rushes are problematic against zerg. Although this rush would never outright destroy the zerg player, we feel zerg suffers too much of a disadvantage from either having to cancel the fast expansion, or getting trapped inside the main base for too long, so we are also increasing the bunker build time from 30 to 35 seconds.

Siege tanks in large numbers are performing too well in all matchups. In the mid- to late-game, siege tanks are too dominant against all ground units. We want a small set of light and unarmored ground units to perform better against siege tanks. With this in mind, we're changing the Siege Mode damage of the siege tank from 50 to 35, +15 vs. armored; to correspond with this, damage upgrades will be changed from +5 to +3, +2 vs. armored. This change reduces the base damage of the siege tank against light and unarmored units, as well as the splash damage.

Battlecruisers currently lack good counters from the ground and still perform very well against a wide array of unit types. We're aware that it is not easy to get battlecruisers out for the cost, but at the same time, it is possible in both 1v1s and team games to create stalemate situations to bring them out. Overall, we feel that battlecruisers are too strong for their cost, and the terran-forced stalemate situations are causing less interesting gameplay. We will be lowering their damage against ground units from 10 to 8.

Zerg

Ultralisk damage is being decreased from 15, +25 vs. armored to 15, +20 vs. armored. This reduction is comparable to the changes being made to the battlecruiser and siege tank. Like the battlecruiser, ultralisks are simply too powerful for the cost, even though they are difficult to muster. Also, in combination with other units, ultralisks are difficult to counter from the ground. The ultralisk building attack (Ram) is being removed because the damage rate is too similar to its normal attack, which will be used against buildings instead. When ultralisks target tightly packed smaller buildings such as supply depots, the Ram attack is actually outputting considerably less overall damage than its normal attack, as Ram only hits a single target.

And Beyond...

We are reading your posts on the forums and creating lists of features and bugs to address in future patches. We have mid- to long-term plans to further evolve the Custom Game experience, and soon, enhance our social features with the addition of chat channels. We will be sharing more specific information in the coming weeks. As with all of our previous games, we will support StarCraft II for many years to come. Your feedback and participation is critical in making this not only the best game it can be, but also the most engaged gaming community in the world. We look forward to the implementation of patch 1.1, as well as sharing our plans for our future gameplay and Battle.net features.

I feel the tanks damage shouldnt of been dropped so low, because if you get one tank out before mass rine wave hits you, the marines arent going to scatter instead they will live through the tanks blast and come tear it to pieces.

Mass hydra also are still a problem. Tanks Price should be raised or supply cost and keep the same damage.

Zealots time is being increased because people are to lazy to scout...GG to those people that fail at the game then.

Yea, its stupid. Blizzard are trying to make scouting a not-so-big factor. Damn the casual gamers! :(

I feel the tanks damage shouldnt of been dropped so low, because if you get one tank out before mass rine wave hits you, the marines arent going to scatter instead they will live through the tanks blast and come tear it to pieces.

Mass hydra also are still a problem. Tanks Price should be raised or supply cost and keep the same damage.

Or both things, decrease the damage, but slightly, like 5 or something, not 15, and increase the costs slightly (15~20 minerals/gas).

Yea, its stupid. Blizzard are trying to make scouting a not-so-big factor. Damn the casual gamers! :(

You don't even need to scout to know there's a proxy coming. You can almost always see the probe in your base first.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
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On opening Backup, you can select internal storage folders on your phone to backup to the ZimaBoard 2's storage, and although this is constantly scanned, the backup action itself must be manually triggered. There is an option to allow foreground backup (last image in the above gallery), but this basically means the queued backup gets triggered when you manually open the app. Benchmarking SATA PCIe 3.0 X4 A CrystalDiskMark test on a mapped network drive from within a Windows 11 25H2 PC (image above) connected over a 2.5 GbE was well within acceptable ranges. Writes were generally better on the SSD RAID mirror. SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 I also ran the NAS Performance tester, which tests the link speed performance. As you can see, it pretty much maxes out the 2.5GbE connection. Of course, you can also opt to bond the two 2.5 GbE connections for a bit more umph, but I didn't do that. Thermals Top PCIe card SATA HDDs Next, I measured some hotspots while playing content on Plex. It's fair to say this will perform better than a NAS that is enclosed in a metal or plastic case, as almost everything storage-wise is exposed! Anyway, the ZimaBoard 2 did not break a sweat with Plex streaming or disk benchmarks. ZimaOS Factory Reset ZimaOS does not include a factory reset option. Instead, you have to download the ZimaOS image and flash it to the eMMC manually. The flashing process is shown in the above gallery. The steps to do so are listed below: Download the ZimaOS image here; Open BalenaEtcher (Run as Administrator) and select the image; Select your inserted USB drive (min 8 GB) Flash to it; Connect your USB drive, monitor, keyboard, USB hub (optional), mouse (optional), and network cable (recommended) to the ZimaBoard 2; Connect power and press F11 continuously; Select your USB drive starting with UEFI in the boot device menu; Press Enter on the Install ZimaOS option; Select /dev/mmcblk0 (MMC) flash drive as target; Confirm with (three times) to wipe the target disk; Wait a couple of minutes while ZimaOS installs; Remove the USB drive and confirm with a reboot; Your ZimaBoard 2 has been factory reset. However, you don't have to stick with ZimaOS, in fact the company also offers official CasaOS images, that are based on Debian; or as they say themselves, put anything you want on this "hackable single board server" it's up to you. Conclusion I had a lot of fun putting this together. I've custom-built all my own PCs and servers since the 90s, and this is the first time I have had to put a NAS together. Even if the actual base ZimaBoard 2 was already a completed build, it still feels pretty custom. I just wish that IceWhale Technology included a getting-started guide in the box for the Start Kit, which would have really completed this kit. Instead, I had to search for the official video on the YouTube channel to make sure I wasn't doing anything wrong. So who is this for? Definitely the hobbyist who is comfortable building their own PC and servers. It also has a much smaller footprint than its nearest equivalent (in terms of specs), like the Beelink Me Pro, which is another NAS I will be testing soon. Although the Beelink does not come with the PCIe 3.0 X4 expansion, the ZimaBoard 2 Starter Kit suddenly looks to be a great bargain, even if it only offers the two 3.5-inch bays over the four in the other example. It makes a lot of sense to use Intel's N150 chip inside a NAS; it is more than capable of doing what the ZimaBoard 2 is intended for, media streaming and backup. It also looks like the IceWhale Technology staff are quite active in the official forums helping people with issues they come across with ZimaOS and the devices, peer support seems to be good as well, I was quickly able to find why I was not able to create a new Storage Pool in ZimaOS v1.6.1 even though that is quite a serious bug, hopefully it will be fixed in the next update. If you are comfortable with the command line and Docker, you'll be fine. You can do great things with this hardware. This was my first time with ZimaOS. It seems a bit barebones in comparison to the likes of Synology DSM, TOS, and UGOS, but it has a ton of apps to get you started with your home or small business NAS. Where to buy As of publishing, IceWhale Technology is running a discount of up to 5% for the Starter Kit. If you opt to get just the ZimaBoard 2 itself, it does come with a SATA Y-Cable, so you will be able to connect up to two 3.5-inch HDDs to it. ZimaBoard 2 1668 Starter Kit for $534.50 on Amazon US (was $548.60) ZimaBoard 2 832 Starter Kit for $372.88 on Amazon US (was $390.60) Zimaboard 2 1668 (16GB+64GB) for $419.90 on Amazon US Zimaboard 2 832 (8GB+32GB) for $359.90 on Amazon Disclosure: IceWhale Technology provided a free sample without any editorial input or review pre-approval. Good to know The Amazon link is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. Become a Prime member (for Students or SNAP) via Neowin Get Prime Access - Prime for half price (for qualifying Medicaid, EBT, SNAP) Subscribe to Prime Video, Audible Plus, Music Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited via Neowin As an Amazon Associate, when you purchase through links on our site, we earn from qualifying purchases.
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