We're all just square pegs in round holes.

It's amazing how you can think you know exactly what a person is like, can interact with them on a regular basis for years on end, only for one single event to cascade into the beautiful realisation that there's so much more to them than you originally thought.

Maybe sometimes it's just because you aren't ready for it. Maybe some things are meant to be hidden until their due time. Still, I've known Wen for something like three and a half years, or at least known of her existence, but the past month has made me realise that I really didn't know her very well at all. And there's times where I regret not noticing or realising or doing something sooner, at least just talking to her. But she's right when she says that I wasn't ready for all this before. Certainly before this year, at the very least.

She's absolutely amazing. I honestly don't know why me, of all people. But I'm very glad, and very thankful, and extremely happy that it is actually me. I'm constantly fascinated by what she does and her interests and her life. And at the same time, I'm learning things about myself that I never even knew before.

One month tomorrow. I guess it's still early days yet but...I'm really happy with how my life is right now.

Even if I haven't finished all my assessments yet.

Even if I didn't make it in to the ADF.

Actually, not getting in to the ADF means I'll be taking an Honours year next year in Politics. I'm actually pretty excited at the thought of writing 15,000-18,000 words on a topic of my choice. Still need to find a Politics staff member willing to supervise me and I need to flesh out my thesis topic with them.

PAX Australia date for next year has been announced. Keen to attend.

I am blessed with the very best of friends.

I play way too much Dota 2 for my own good.

I don't see my Melbourne Uni friends as often as I should.

Exams are coming, and that means I need to start thinking of songs to parody.

Who even reads this thing any more?

Company of Heroes Online - Terror Commander

I'm going to detail below how I play Terror in Company of Heroes Online.

Currently level 20, Terror commander

Hero units
Headquarters: Field Pioneers
Wehrmacht Quarters: Fatherland HMG team, Durable HMG team
Krieg Barracks: Accomplished mortar team
Sturm Armory: (unused for now)
Panzer Command: (unused for now)

Army items
Base building upgrade (machineguns)
Pioneer defence
Panther defence
Panther sight
Panther accuracy
Ostwind sight
Sniper sight
(One slot free)

Base operations
Initial build priorities
- Straight away, build field pioneers (140 manpower) and a normal pioneer (120 manpower) squad from HQ
- Use the starting pioneer squad to start capturing fuel points and/or garrison crucial buildings near contested middle areas.
- Use field pioneers to capture points (level 1 gives +20% capture speed)
- Use final pioneer squad to build Wehrmacht quarters (220 manpower, 15 fuel)

Wehrmacht quarters
- Build Durable HMG team (260 manpower), use to support pioneer squads near middle
- Build Fatherland HMG team (280 manpower), use to support pioneer squads near middle

As soon as possible, Escalate to Skirmish Phase (200 manpower, 35 fuel)

Upon escalation, build a Krieg Barracks (220 manpower, 35 fuel)
- Build Accomplished mortar team (240 manpower), use to support pioneers and MGs.

Escalate to Assault Phase (200 manpower, 50 fuel)
- Build a Kampfkraft Center (100 manpower)
- Research Level 1 Tank veterancy (100 manpower, 30 fuel)

Escalate to Battle Phase (200 manpower, 65 fuel)
- Build a Panzer Command (260 manpower, 50 fuel)
- Research Level 2 Tank veterancy (200 manpower, 50 fuel)
- Build one Panther (600 manpower, 110 fuel)
- Research Level 3 Tank veterancy (300 manpower, 70 fuel)
- Build two (if you have a King Tiger, 1000 manpower), or three (if you don't have a King Tiger) more Panthers, plus two Ostwinds.
- Charge them hard and fast down one flank into one of the enemy Headquarters. You should be able to destroy 2 headquarters with this initial rush.
- This should be the turning point. Victory is assured. Follow up with further armored assaults on the remaining headquarters.
- Capture remaining Victory Points.
- Win.

Total cost of base operations (up to Level 3 Tank veterancy): 3,640 manpower, 460 fuel.

Field operations
- Early game, rushing a pioneer squad into a building near your allocated Victory point is a must. Automatically gives heavy cover, which means your pioneers can defeat any engineer units that approach.
- Use the field pioneer squad (+20% capture rate) to capture fuel and munitions points leading to the victory point, with strategic points as necessary to link it up (supply lines).
- Where possible, use your first machinegun squad to enter the same building as the first pioneer squad. It can cover your pioneers while they capture the point.
- Use second machinegun squad to support/cover flank approaches to the victory point.
- Once Victory Point is secured, use pioneers to build bunkers (150 manpower) at key locations. Upgrade with heavy machinegun (50 munitions) as soon as possible.
- Use mortar for long-range support of bunkers and machinegun squads, especially for counterbattery fire against enemy mortar teams.
- While initially two machinegun squads and a mortar team is a very effective defence, especially with bunkers built and upgraded, they will be unable to stop Greyhound armored cars, halftracks, and tanks. If necessary, stiffen your defence with PaK 38 anti-tank guns (310 manpower) from the Kreig Barracks.
- Ultimately, your aim is not to hold the victory point itself, but the resource points that lead to it. With a steady supply of resources, you will be able to securely escalate and attain Panthers earlier.
- Anything that you build extra to the stated build guide above will lengthen the amount of time it takes to reach Panthers.
- Remember, though, that flexibility is the key. It's no use finally building a lone Tier 3 Panther if the enemy has taken all the resource points that you were supposed to defend. You'll have lost the game at that point. If you need AT guns, build them. If you need extra bunkers, build them.
- While bunkers cannot move, they are the preferred anti-infantry defence as compared to heavy machinegun squads. Bunkers don't take up population, which means you can build more tanks.
- When using tanks, remember to micromanage them. Always keep their frontal armour pointed to the enemy. If you see blobs of Rangers or Airborne paratroopers with recoiless rifles sliding about your flank, use Forced Retreat (100 munitions) on them.
- When attacking American base buildings, your target priority should be as follows: Tank Depot, Motor Pool, then Barracks. Enemy tanks will hurt you the most, so prevent them from being built. After that, it's AT guns which will hurt you the second most, so prevent them from being built too. Nothing in the Weapon Support Center can hurt tanks, so ignore that. Take out the Barracks to prevent riflemen from using stickybombs on you.

Victory can be attained in the following ways:
- Holding on to more victory points than the opposition, until their tickets reach 0.
- Destroying all enemy base buildings, field headquarters and bunkers.
- Entire enemy team surrenders/disconnects

My style of play is designed such that all three methods of victory are viable. If your base-rush is successful, you can win by destroying all enemy buildings. If your base-rush is only partially successful, or it takes longer than expected, you still have ample time to capture all the victory points while the enemy is distracted.
Any one of these can, if overwhelmingly successful, induce the opposition to surrender.

To summarise
- Play defensive early and mid-game, using a few specialised infantry units to hold back the enemy while you escalate. Make ample use of commander abilities such as Firestorm and Forced Retreat, as they use munitions only.
- Build up a powerful armoured fist with which you can crush the enemy headquarters.
- Destroy base buildings.
- Capture victory points while enemy is off-balance.

I think you're...

I think you're really really awesome. Yes, you!



Learned a new word recently. "Epikicity". Pronounciation is still in the works, but look at it. Bask in it's epikicity. That's right. "Epikicity" is itself epikicitic. Did I just make a new word? :O

Finished reading the main Honor Harrington story arc, waiting on book 12 (should come out some time in June/July, apparently). Also waiting on book 4 in the A Desert Called Peace series, no time for completion yet. Military science fiction, yay!

Have been encouraged to branch out from that, though. So...A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson, is at the very top of my 'to read' list. :) Thanks Janmay! Have also been meaning to have a look at Philip K. Dick, apparently he has awesome science fiction/fantasy/alternate history kind of stuff, definitely perks my interest.

On the music front, still going with the techno/hardstyle blend. MrChitotheHardStyler, on Youtube, has an AWESOME collection of his own stuff, and tracks from other artists. Check it out! http://www.youtube.com/user/MrChitotheHardStyler

My mouse broke recently. I think the frayed wires were shortcircuting my laptop whenever I plugged it in. So went and played Runescape for a while, using touchpad. Stole my sister's mouse today (yesterday). It's a piece of rubbish. Logitech, and PINK. The cord is way too short, and it'll often move the mouse to the complete opposite side of the screen that I'm trying to move it, for no apparent reason at all. Oh well. Mouse is better than no mouse at all. And it's a little less responsive, as I found out to my shock when playing Modern Warfare 2 today.

On that note, Modern Warfare 2. Had five harriers today, but not a single chopper gunner. I think I'm starting to lose my touch. I did manage to get to 10-0 at one point, until some lightweight+marathon knifer spawned behind me and knifed me. Sigh. Need that one nuke. Maybe I ought to stop sniping...pretty fun though. Highrise, Terminal, are now my two favourite maps. Quarry isn't bad either. Karachi and Favela are still the two maps I utterly despise.

Holidays so far

I didn't do any work today. I was supposed to. Going to Monash tomorrow to knuckle down and get some hard study done. Hopefully. Why does Anime Club Marathon have to be on tomorrow too? =="

Finished HAWX campaign on normal difficulty, now going through it again on Hard. Level 19 at the moment; need to level up faster so I can unlock better stuff. Anyone feel like giving me a legit CD key for it so I can play online? :D

Did a couple of Russian missions in Men of War. Was doing the Sevastapool siege one, and just as we get ordered to retreat to the second line of defence and the game starts autosaving, laptop freezes. FUCKING FUCKING FUCK. So now I have to restart the whole goddamn mission. Fucking hell.

Oh, and my laptop overheated overnight. When I woke up this morning, it wouldn't start up. I nearly shit myself. One of the panels on the underside of the laptop was all white and wierd. Nearly shit myself again. Took out the battery, replugged in the power cord, it was all good. Fuck me, never again. Well. Until tonight, that is. Need to download Season 2 of Merlin...and I should get around to downloading Big Bang Theory some time soon as well =/

I need CS. Steam-legit.

Followers

So, today, I doubled the number of blogs that I'm following! Yes, it increased from 3 to 6. Not much of an improvement in real terms, but I feel like I'm making a difference! ^_^ I mean, it's really quite inspiring to see that there are real live people who are following your blog! So I thought I might give some others that satisfaction too :)

In other news, I'm learning how to play LoL. Since it's free to play, and I actually know several other people actively playing, I'm really rather encouraged in my efforts to learn the game. xD How good I am is another matter entirely...

I have not done any homework yet. Well, okay, I did my MasterBio module 6 (24/25...0.4% of my semester grade lost in that single question wrong ><), but that's like, piddly.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 is shit. Like, dedicated server ping is horrible, worse than Modern Warfare 2 with it's LACK of dedicated servers. And the graphics are so resource intense that it compounds the lag, makes the gaming experience completely and utterly useless. Unplayable. Definitely not on my shopping list.

On that note, ATI sucks balls. As does ASUS. This laptop is a piece of shit. Stop freezing. Seriously. Three times in two hours is just piss poor.

What I want most...

What I want most out of the next big first-person shooter is a realistic reload system.

In Counterstrike and Call of Duty, whenever you reload, the remaining bullets in your current clip get automatically recycled back into your total ammo count, so that your magazines always come in full and ready. In Battlefield, whenever you reload, the remaining bullets in your current clip are automatically discarded.

But what should REALLY happen is a mix of the two. Whenever you reload with bullets remaining in your magazine, that magazine should be kept for later use, when you run out of full magazines. Then when you load that particular used magazine, it should have the number of bullets you left it with. Realistic, yes? And to make it even more realistic, occassionaly when you reload, you might accidentally mix up a fresh and a used magazine, so you might expect to pop out with 30 rounds, only to find your gun running dry after three.