Over Thanksgiving break, I played StarCraft with my cousins and remembered how fun it was. I was also painfully reminded how bad I was at it, and how I hadn't even beaten the Protoss campaign. So now, I'm back to it, and I'm inviting you guys to a battle. Well, actually, lots of them. After talking a lot about our different strategies, I figured it would be fun to create an informal "league" of sorts to play on. Basically, we're going to have to be able to coordinate this kind of stuff on the fly.

Here's what I need to know from you guys:
Battle.net ID (this is a given)
Timezones (i.e. Pacific Standard Time = - 8 hours)
Preference of playing time
Skill level (be honest) 1 = Noob, 2 = Decent, 3 = Brave-enough-to-play-on-battle.net, 4 = Semi-pro, 5 = Professional
If you can host a game

Also, we're going to have to talk about how we're going to play (i.e. what maps to use) etc:
Big Game Hunters
Lost Temple
Fastest Possible Maps
Zero Clutter Maps
Standard Maps
Custom (just for fun, such as Cannon Defense or Cats vs Mice)

Rushes: Do we want to allow rushes? It seemed to be kind of an issue on the other topic. It should either be all or nothing, or maybe decided on a game-by-game basis.
Speed of map: What speed should we play these games on?
Type of game: Duels, top vs bottom, free for all, comp stomp?

Ok, so here goes:(information in .txt file)
Click to view attachment


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If you guys think of anything else, I'll add it in. So what do you say? You game?

TheBluePlanet

US East

Timezone: EST

Skill Level 2 or 3

Plays only Blizzard Approved maps (Or UMS)

pretty sure I can host a game

Speed: Fastest

Rush: Yes

1v1, FFA, or even teams.

Play time: Whenever

AIM: PM me

--BP

-TwilightPhoenix (also doubles for Diablo 2 when I play that)
-USEast
-Central Timezone
-2.5 skill level. I'm only brave enough to play on bnet half the time.
-Open to pretty much any map, so long as we don't play the same ones over and over
-I know I can host at home, not so sure here...
-Speed: Fastest
-I can deal with both rush and no rush, though I prefer a short "no rush" (like 3-5 minutes) period in FFA style games, so none of us get stuck sitting out of a game for 30 minutes if something goes wrong at the start
-Any game mode is fine
-Play time varies, though once college ends, I'll be frequently available
-If you want my aim name, look at my account name. Be warned, I'm very rarely on.

Um, I would do this, but when I tried to start Battlenet once, it had to download a patch. It then proceded to crash the whole of Starcraft. I had to uninstall everything and reinstall. Help?
Stats:
iMac G5, 23 inch, 1.83 gigahertz, 512 megabytes of ram, 150 gig harddrive
Internet:
Cable, about 300 kbytes/second
Starcraft:
1.0.4, OSX edition

The patchers are very flaky. I have the same StarCraft CD version as you, and I don't figure it's your computer, so try again. I've had it crash on me once and plain not work 5 times. So I try to download upgrades directly off the website - 100% rate of success.

Oh, and to BP and Josh - Thank you both for the info, I'll be pm-ing you sometime soon.

Battle.net ID: uib.modesty
Battle.net Gateway: europe, but I play on all with the same nick
Timezone: GMT +1
Preference of playing time: When I'm online 10am - 12pm with small breaks in beetween.
Skill level: 3
MSN Messenger / AIM ID or IRC : I hang out in #starcraft sometimes
If you can host a game: I think so
Maps: Any map used in the pro community.
Rushes: of course, a valid strategy, not that I rush often
Speed: Fastest
Type: Mostly duels

ID - Ratbert
Gateway - us east
Time zone - EST
playing time - Friday night - Saturday night
skill level - i currently dont have a skill level but i would put my self at about 2
hosting - I cant host games
speed - Fastest

maps - any map were people start with the same amount of resources.

I'll repost once I buy a new cd... skill level would probably be 3 right now, since I haven't played in a year. Planning to go shopping on the first. :-)

I've had wayyy too much free time since I quit WoW.

Ok, it looks like so far, BluePlanet and Modesty are the most confident in their internet.


Well, we're going to need some method of coordination, and it seems that right now, it's going to be IRC on #starcraft. Any objections?


When you're online... but when is that? I need some specifics here, and since you're the only one in Europe, you're going to be the hardest one to schedule. Sorry for being so picky, but I'm gonna need some specifics.

Battle.net ID: dada.haha
Battle.net Gateway: USEast
Timezone: EST
Preference of playing time: after 5:00 (weekdays), preferably on weekends (sat-sun)
Skill level: 2
austin-danger-powers[at]hotmail.com
I can host
What maps to use: whatever...
Rushes: Sure
Speed: Fastest
Type of game: team...

I'm usually online from 10am to 10pm. Sometimes away for training and eating.

basically, we'd be looking at games on saturday or sunday, with east coast being a 6 hour difference to us and west being a 10 (right?) hour difference... with you americans playing in the early afternoon and us euros in the late evening.

Welcome aboard, dada.haha. And welcome to the Ambrosia Web Boards. You might want to change your email so it looks like this: austin-danger-powers[at]hotmail.com so you don't get the life spammed out of you.


West Coast is -8, Central Time is -6, East Coast is -5, and Modesty said he was +1... so that is only a 9 hour difference. Since some of us have school, that would limit us to weekends, so we're looking at these time restrictions:
West Coast can play (aka start our game) from 9 AM (I don't think anybody's mind is operable before that) to 12 noon
Central time can play from 11 AM (2 hours from us west people) to 2 PM (suggestion: eat before you decide to start playing)
East Coast can play from 12 noon to 3 PM
Europe-wherever-Modesty-is can play from 6 PM to 9 PM

This is the starting times for a game, assuming the game won't take over an hour (aka Modesty said he could play until 10 PM so I put "9" there so people shouldn't start a game after that time; sidenote: adding this to first post)

So now the question is: when do we want to play our first game? It looks like we have 6 participants here, which is good enough for a healthy tournament. Unfortunately, I won't be available to play this weekend, so you'll be on your own as far as organizing. Also, we might be getting to a bit of a slow start because everybody's busy during the holiday season, but I'm sure we'll get rolling when the new year starts.
I vote for next weekend, early Saturday for us.

I think we should play on US East, since only Modesty and I play on other gateways. Sound good, Modesty?

Oh, and there's no objections to using IRC for communicating just before the games?

I've never used IRC before. What's wrong with using these boards or battle.net channels to organize?

While I could play during the day on weekends, I'm more of an evening player personally. Far less interferences, so it means wouldn't have to get up from my computer mid-game.

What he said

We can for sure hang out in a B.net channel, or make decisions here.
It's just easier to do it on the fly on irc.

Since I was home all day anyway, I decided to circumvent actually buying new CD's and instead visited the pirate bay to acquire the necessary disc images. I still had my starcraft cd case for the cd-key. Everything's working now.

I'd be playing as eU)NiCK on US-East
Timezone is GMT +1
Skill level is 3.
Times I can play: depending on my workload... but on saturdays I should be able to get on in time for you guys.
I'm only using Skype much at the moment, so no other IM userid.
Maps: preferably "balanced" 4 player maps for 1v1. apart from that, I enjoy BGH from time to time either as FFA or larger team games.
Rushes: I usually don't play with any rules... but if you need a no-rush rule, be aware that I can probably exploit it faster than you can.
Speed of map: Fastest only... anything lower than that is just boring.
Type of game: 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, FFA... sometimes even 4v4. Comp stomp? are you joking?
Can probably host depending on how screwy our connections are to each other... I've played on US-East before, and it really depends on the people.

Just to make sure:
Are we playing the original Starcraft or Brood War?

I personally prefer Brood War, simply because I like the desert and snow terrain sets... and Dark Templar... and Corsairs... and Dark Archons... and Medics... and Valkyries... and Lurkers...

We could use battle.net forums, but I find X-Chat Aqua is working great for me.


What he said.


Well evening for you means late night for our European people, so I don't think there's a way around it. Heck, it's 9 AM for me, so what are you complaining about? You can sleep in for two more hours.


Personally, I prefer StarCraft because it fits my style better, but I'll go with either. What say you guys?

Brood War all the way, for JTH's reasons.

And we need to decide on a gateway/channel combination we can all live with...

--BP

Edit: Removed redundant quote.

Ok, well I said a few posts up that since the majority of you use USEast, that's the gateway we'll use. I was also thinking that we should make our own channel on there. Maybe just "ambrosia" would work. Any thoughts?

I almost always have Real Life™ during the day, particularly the afternoon. I don't think people would like me having to get up in the middle of the game to do something mundane, like answer a phone that is never for me anymore since I go to college or fold clothing.

Besides, we don't all have to be on at the same time. If the RRL is any indication with it's huge amount of organization, it'll be tough to get us all on at the same time. I mean, if Modesty has to get off, everyone else doesn't have to get off. And if one of us can't be there, doesn't mean that everybody can't be there either.

Channel "ambrosia" on USEast sounds fine to me, unless we are wanting to revive the perpetually dead #starcraft irc channel.

--BP

I prefer broodwar because of medics but regular is fine.

Edit: crap double post

goatbastard

uswest/useast/europe (don't play much on that, being in the pacific time zone).

don't matter.

Battle.net ID: MadFax7
Gateway: USEast
Timezone: EST (GMT -5)
Play Days: Weekends, most weekdays.
Skill level: 2.5ish
AIM: MadFax7
IRC: MadFax7
Host: Yes, yes and yes.
Maps: Standard Maps such as (but not limited to) The Hunters, Lost Temple, Expedition, Orbital Death, Station Unrest, Island Hop, Primeval Isles, Blood Bath, Dark Continent, Labyrinth or any good melee maps people have made or downloaded. I'd be willing to try some UMSes and play a few games of money/fastest/micro maps, but I'm primarily interested in standard Melee maps.
Rushes: Yes. Keeps you on your toes.
Speed of map: Fastest, or not at all.
Type of game: Duels, Top vs Bottom, Free for All/Melee, UMS, Slaughter, Sudden Death, Capture the Flag.

I find Brood War a lot more interesting then regular starcraft.


I'll be hanging around there too.

I know what you mean, but what time can we do it? If Modesty and Talon don't mind doing it later in the night, then we can do it later in the afternoon for you, but here's what the time conversion (your time = european time)
4 PM = 1 AM, 3 PM = Midnight, 2 PM = 11 PM, 1 PM = 10 PM, Noon = 9 PM, 11 AM = 8 PM
So if you wanted to play a game with people in Europe, you'd have to do it some time in the late morning or early afternoon. On the other hand, if you didn't mind playing late, and the Europeans didn't mind playing in the morning, you could play at midnight and they would play at 8 AM. I don't know your schedule, so I can't figure out what's the best for you.


Yeah, I was just about to say something like that. I basically agree on all counts.
I'd like to add that we don't all have to play together. This isn't going to be the RRL or anything. Maybe we can have a tournament every once in a while or something, but I'm not going to organize it that tightly. I was just thinking that us Ambrosia people should play a bit, considering that we've been talking about it quite a bit in the "The Universe Explodes" topic.

There's two people on the West Coast and two in Europe, with the majority of us being on the East Coast. I was thinking that we would play more on a "hey, I'm available this weekend, you guys want to play?" basis, rather than "we're going to play on x, y, and z days for a points to your overall ranking." Because it just wouldn't be as much fun that way. But if you guys want to do that sort of a thing, we can play duels for "points" and have some sort of sophisticated system like that. What do you say?


Welcome, MadFax. I've never played Capture the Flag before, how does it work?

StarCraft - Game Types
Capture the Flag - Standard start. Each player controls a flag that appears after a few minutes. The flag location (beacon) can be moved once at the beginning of the game. Flags can only be carried by workers (SCVs, Drones, Probes). Bringing an enemy flag to another player's flag beacon instantly kills the flag owner.

so where were you guys yesterday? was on east until 3 in the morning CET...

Forgot to take note of your username.

Can I be part of this?

Definitely. Read the first post and post accordingly.

9 A.M. to 12:30 P.M. - Driving to my brother's playoff game.
12:30 to 4 - Watching said game
4 to 8 - Driving home from said game
8 on - Busy with other projects.

no worries, I played with the group from the Order of the Stick (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0509.html) webcomic forums... they're also on at about that time. managed to build up a 17/5 record in the three days I've been playing.

I will be hanging around in #starcraft and channel ambrosia this weekend.

Maybe I can get a few games in while doing my laundry tomorrow. The place I do it has a network almost as fast as the one I have at home.

This I may have to get in on. I don't really have an account I use, but I am EST!

I may be available this weekend, depends. PM me if you can do it, maybe we can organize something...

Just an additional note, I added all you guys as friends on my USEast account. (Holierthan_thou)

Just posting a heads up here: anybody up for this weekend? (hopefully I'll PM you guys about this sometime soon)

Time might be tight, but I can always try...

This weekend a possibility for anybody? I'll be on b.net under "ambrosia" as much as possible.

Ugh. Probably not, too much stuff going on. I need a solid weekend to do nothing but play Starcraft.

_bomb

Tonight or tomorrow? I likely can make it.

Probably not tonight, I've been playing Tremulous too much already... but mayhap tomorrow... and definitely not Sunday for me, I have RRL...

Alright. For once, just about anytime would work for me. I literally have nothing to do in Real Life™ tomorrow.

Wow, something might actually work out for once... this is breakthrough!