Scouting from small nations

When I manage in England or Holland or France or Germany, scouting works very much the way I want it to, and it works fine whether I'm in the E.P.L. or the Blues Square North.

However, I'm now playing my first long-term game as a small Welsh team, and I'm findng a number of aspects about scouting to be both frustrating and unrealistic.

I think I have solutions for these problems, as outlined below:

1. Scouting Duration

My scouts can only scout Nation->Wales. Fine. However, if I tell them to do this, they head out for three days and return with a very small number, e.g., 4 players. The same scout will always return with exactly four players, though not necessarily the same four, and he returns in that short amount of time every time.

If I want any kind of in-depth, turn me up a bunch of prospects scouting, I have to repeatedly restart his scouting trip.

The "quick fix" I can think of is simply extending that scouting trip: blow it out to take much the same time as it does for an EPL club who sends a scout to scout England. Let my scout return as many players as he can find over that extended period.

A better fix - one which the EPL club might or might not want available to it - might be for scouting a Nation to include the "Roving" tickbox just as scouting a Region does. In other words, an instruction to "Just stay out there and keep scouting, giving me periodic updates on what you've found." I very much like the way that that works for Regions, and don't see a reason for it not to be implemented at the National level as well.

However, there may be a downside (financial? part-time scout?) which is informing my club's limitations .. the problem is, they aren't communicating that to me. Even so, I'd prefer that they let me know what that problem is, rather than leaving me on this manually-restart UI path.

2. Can't scout some Welsh teams

This might be Wales-specific, but I can't scout players who are based at Swansea or Cardiff. This is particularly ludicrous because I'm Port Talbot Town - I could practically walk to Swansea! I can send my scouts all the way up to Rhyl and Caernarfon, but I can't send them next door to Swansea and Cardiff?

The "quick fix" for that would be for Cardiff and Swansea to be considered part of both Wales and England from scouting perspective.

However, that got me thinking about some other things:

3. Can't scout Wales international player

That's starting to get a bit odd. I mean, yes, this 19-year-old is playing for Everton Reserves, and I can understand that Everton is too far away for my scout to get to. However, he's on the Welsh Under-21 side, which is playing a home match here in Wales .. I can watch that match personally, but I can't send a scout to it?

Come to think of it, say I'm hosting York City for a friendly. They're coming to Port Talbot. I still can't scout any of their players??

Finally, there's an unattached kid who is playing the the Wales Trialists game. I can't scout him, either? He's Welsh! .. It turns out his last club was Swindon, so I suspect he's being classed as "based in England", therefore, he's out of my scouting range.

However, putting those three together, I came up with the following, which is perhaps my most radical suggestion:

Why not allow us to assign a scout to give us a report on any player, regardless of "scouting range"?

We'd need to add the following limitations to make it work right:

a. Players whose home club ground is outside of the club's scouting range would only be scouted when they played in a match located within the club's scouting range.

b. Players whose home club ground is outside of the club's scouting range could also be scouted if the club played in a match located at their home club ground. (If the whole team has to travel there, certainly a scout could tag along for the match.)

c. Requesting scouting of such a player would yield a dialog indicating something to the effect of "Due to the player being outside of our scouting range, it may be a while before we can deliver such a report".

d. If a year passes with no such match, the scout gives you a dialog asking if you still wish to track that player, Yes / No?

That handles "Scout for 1 / 2 / 3 matches" - but it still gives us a bit of trouble at "Get Report", as we don't want to be able to get a report on everybody and their brother, but there are some cases which currently aren't addressed. I'd suggest:

e. Scouts can "Get Report" on any player who:

i. Is based within my scouting range (as current)

ii. Has a primary nationality of the club's home nation and a national reputation above a certain threshold TBD. (In other words, the player is likely known by reputation and/or prior experience to somebody at the club, even if my scout cannot necessarily go view his training.)

iii. Has a primary nationality of the scout's home nation and a national reputation above a certain threshold TBD. (My Welsh club has hired an English scout. This lets me get a report on English players who are known by reputation and/or prior experience to the scout, even if he can't necessarily go view their training.)

iv. Has a global reputation above a certain threshold TBD. (Yes, my Welsh scout can probably tell me what Wayne Rooney's strengths are, and that there's no way he'd ever consider coming to Port Talbot, because he's on internationally televised matches often enough.)

v. Plays for a parent or feeder club of the team. (In other words, assuming that the parent/feeder relationship is good enough that your scout can ring up one of the coaches on the other team and ask for a bit of an evaluation.)

Get Report would be grayed out for players who did not meet those requirements, which would be a strong UI cue that your "Scout for 1 match" instruction would yield the "Hey, he's out of our scouting range" dialog.

4. Set multiple scouts to scout the same individual

Because I'm such a small club, my scouts are fairly inaccurate, so I like to get reports from more than one scout, or from a scout and my A.M., before deciding on a transfer target.

Its always struck me as rather odd that I can only ask one scout to watch the player at a time - in other words, to get a 3-match opinion from two different scouts takes six matches. Is there any reason why they can't both observe the same 3 matches, and give me opinions at that time?

That's not tremendously important at the moment, but it would become quite important with some of the changes above. That Lithuanian Under-19 player is only going to be in Wales for the one match against Wales Under-19s - I might attend the match with my A.M. and top scout, all for the purposes of scouting him.

* * * * * * * * *

I think the individual changes suggested wouldn't be tremendously overwhelming, especially to large clubs.

However, the impact on smaller clubs would be fairly substantial. My Port Talbot club would now be able to:

Scout Wales in more depth

Get Report on some unattached Welsh-nationality players

Scout players at Cardiff and Swansea

Get Report on potential loan targets from my English parent club

Get Report on some English-based players thanks to my English-nationality scout

Scout English-based players for any match that they play against Cardiff or Swansea

Scout players on the Welsh national team, U-21s, and U-19s.

Scout international players when they come to Wales to play against the national teams.

None of these might actually be helping me, much, as most of the players whom I could now get information on aren't likely to want to come to a tiny WPL club, but it would certainly help the feeling of immersion and realism .. and if it unlocked scouting of just one or two more players who panned out for me, that would make a big difference.

These are good points, Amaroq, and I can't really add anything but I will say that I've been reading through and have pretty much agreed with every point.

Scouts could, in theory, be a lot more dynamic and interactive. I don't like that scouts just sit there until you tell them to do something, they wander off for a while and then come back, tell you what they've found and sit there again. While that isn't necessarily that relevant to what you have said, certainly scouting needs to be more realistic and things like those you've outlined are oversights. I've also found it annoying that I have to wait for one scout's report before requesting another's, and as you said, I have just dealt with it, but again, as you said, it would need reworking with these changes. Scouting needs more activity/work, so that you have the ability to send your scout to watch local matches, visit local teams by Long/Lat rather than simply by nation and even watch your own matches! After all, that is what they do in real life.

Excellent post Amaroq, would definately tighten up the realsim of scouting and be of alot of use for lower league teams.

One thing that may also need to be considered is the availabilty of your scouts. So if a number of players come 'into range' at the same time, it may not be possible for your scout(s) to see them all. Would possibly require some sort of priority system?

Something that i'm a bit unsure about is the assumption that a player can be properly scouted through knowing of him (i.e. player above certain reputation threshold) or through a cheeky phone call to a parent/feeder club. Maybe these forms of scouting can give a very general and basic report, but i wouldn't expect them to be able to provide more detail which should be gained through attending matches and training.

Perhaps one obvious point - the ability to scout anyone who is playing in a televised match - maybe more useful for championship level.

I'm managing in Singapore and am having exactly the same problem as described above. Short scouting trips resulting in 4-8 reports. A mix of the current system and that of FM06's stream of scout reports would be ideal. I'd also like to be told why I can't scout someone rather than simply having no option to.

One thing that may also need to be considered is the availabilty of your scouts. So if a number of players come 'into range' at the same time, it may not be possible for your scout(s) to see them all. Would possibly require some sort of priority system?

Agreed. I'd imagined it working like the current "Scout For One Match" functionality, where it feels like my scout watches a match, and gives me match reports on everybody who was involved and tagged for a match report, plus "recommends" another player that he spotted whilst at the same match.

Obviously, we'd expect that a given scout could only be at one match on a given day.

Perhaps scouts would automatically prioritize who to scout based on previous estimations of ability combined with the number of upcoming matches that player has scheduled 'in range'? That should help avoid the situation where your scout attends Match A to track a player he has already recommended as "only as a last resort", therefore missing his only chance to attend a match with that foreign-based player who is coming into range due to a friendly or European match.

Something that i'm a bit unsure about is the assumption that a player can be properly scouted through knowing of him (i.e. player above certain reputation threshold) or through a cheeky phone call to a parent/feeder club. Maybe these forms of scouting can give a very general and basic report, but i wouldn't expect them to be able to provide more detail which should be gained through attending matches and training.

I wasn't entirely sure about that, either. However, I took two assumptions: that "Get Report" isn't too powerful, and that part of a scout's value lies in his professional contacts and relationships.

"Get Report" currently seems to give me less detail than scouting a player over several matches, so expanding the ability to get a report wouldn't overbalance the scouting module. (I might argue, even without this expansion, for a reduction in accuracy and detail from "Get Report", but I'm a huge fan of Dave C's "slow reveal" posts, where it takes repeated scoutings of a player to reveal all of the attributes hidden by Fog of War)

In real life, a scout's usefulness isn't merely his own ability and eyes, its who he knows - e.g., former teammates, former coaches, managers he has scouted for previously, his friend from childhood, etc. These professional contacts are represented in-game as his "Knowledge" of a given country. The process of him finding a player is very rarely "Well, there was a match scheduled at School Lane, so I went, and this one kid looked pretty good." Its much more likely that somebody called him and told him, "Hey, there's this kid from Cemaes Bay who looks like he's got some potential. You might want to check him out."

Certainly, from reading about scouting in American sports, the scouts from different clubs do tend to know each other, and do pass tips along to each other. I doubt that United's scouts are giving any pointers to Chelsea's, but when they've scouted a kid and decided that he's likely to be a decent League One player at best .. there's little harm in "tipping" him to a friend at a League Two club that's pushing for promotion.

The same goes with coaches - you've worked with a youth player for two years, you like him, he's just not progressing enough that he's going to make it in an EPL club .. you might be fond enough of the kid to want to find him a club where his talents are worthwhile.

As for calling your parent club? Seems like there ought to be a relationship there which is enough to get some idea of who might be a good loan target - Get Report seemed like the right venue for it. Don't imagine it as a cheeky cold-call, imagine it as a continuation of an existing relationship. "Hey John, how's Matty been doing in training lately? Think he'd be interested in coming down to Port Talbot for a loan spell? Do you think he's got a future with your club, or might we be looking to find him a more permanent home?"

That phone call might get you a glimpse of his "Current" and "Potential" stars, his loan interest, and his permanent move interest .. depending how talkative "John" was in his answers, it might give us a strength, a weakness, and a best position .. in other words, about what "Get Report" gives us currently.

Amaroq makes some very good points, and scouting your local area, especially when it borders another country, is something that has been raised in the LLM forum numerous times, but nothing has been done about it. Another example similar to what Amaroq gave... Workington can scout all of England. That's fine, but why can they scout in Devon, yet not in Southern Scotland which is much closer?

There are countless more examples through the FM world.

Very good point there, Nobby. canvey!!'s post about scouting by Longitude/Latitude sounds like it would serve to address both that issue and my Port Talbot / Cardiff-Swansea example.

Wouldn't mind if you'd direct some of the LLM regulars to this thread to share their ideas.

Although this isn't specific to small nations I'd also like to see an option to 'never scout this player again' added.

"Get Report" currently seems to give me less detail than scouting a player over several matches, so expanding the ability to get a report wouldn't overbalance the scouting module. (I might argue, even without this expansion, for a reduction in accuracy and detail from "Get Report", but I'm a huge fan of Dave C's "slow reveal" posts, where it takes repeated scoutings of a player to reveal all of the attributes hidden by Fog of War)

This does make alot of sense. I must admit, it's been so long since i've used bad scouts that i forgot that there was a progressive system of scout reports (my high JCA/JPA scouts reveal all details after "Get Report").

In real life, a scout's usefulness isn't merely his own ability and eyes, its who he knows - e.g., former teammates, former coaches, managers he has scouted for previously, his friend from childhood, etc. These professional contacts are represented in-game as his "Knowledge" of a given country. The process of him finding a player is very rarely "Well, there was a match scheduled at School Lane, so I went, and this one kid looked pretty good." Its much more likely that somebody called him and told him, "Hey, there's this kid from Cemaes Bay who looks like he's got some potential. You might want to check him out."

I don't really know the exact affect that individual knowledge has in the game. I know its used to determine available players on the player-search, and will have some affect on the nationality (but not quality) of youth players but i don't know about depth of scouting. If not, then it should be. I think the 'knowledge' area would need to be updated however, making it more difficult to gain full knowledge of a country. E.g. how can Mr Schmit have the same knowledge in a couple of years as Mr Smith who has spent his whole life building relevant contacts around the area he has always lived.

As for calling your parent club? Seems like there ought to be a relationship there which is enough to get some idea of who might be a good loan target - Get Report seemed like the right venue for it. Don't imagine it as a cheeky cold-call, imagine it as a continuation of an existing relationship. "Hey John, how's Matty been doing in training lately? Think he'd be interested in coming down to Port Talbot for a loan spell? Do you think he's got a future with your club, or might we be looking to find him a more permanent home?"

Good point. I would like to see this incorparated for the main reason that i don't think there is anywhere near enough interaction between parent and feeder clubs. I think there should be more intimate knowledge of partner teams, and incorporating this into the scouting would be a good move.

Thoughtful suggestions, Amaroq.

Although this isn't specific to small nations I'd also like to see an option to 'never scout this player again' added.

This would be a nice addition as well. It would be nice to make your scout more efficient by definitively telling him not to waste time scouting players one of your scout's has already revealed to be garbage.

This does make alot of sense. I must admit, it's been so long since i've used bad scouts that i forgot that there was a progressive system of scout reports (my high JCA/JPA scouts reveal all details after "Get Report").

Yeah, that's a bug in my opinion.

I really liked Dave's "slow reveal" post. The gist, though he gave it tons more detail than this, was that it took multiple matches to reveal everything about a player. Your first scouting would give you the physical attributes (jumping, pace, etc), then as you spent more time you'd unveil technical attributes, then eventually the mental attributes, and finally things like the personality, PPM's, etc. It would represent the way real clubs spend months and even years scouting players before bringing them in.

I think the 'knowledge' area would need to be updated however, making it more difficult to gain full knowledge of a country. E.g. how can Mr Schmit have the same knowledge in a couple of years as Mr Smith who has spent his whole life building relevant contacts around the area he has always lived.

Agreed; it seems like a scout can gain "full" knowledge within a month or so, even my crummy scouts. Full knowledge - IMHO - ought to represent years and years worth of contacts in a country, and ought to be very tough to achieve.

I'd also like to see knowledge retain much much longer than it does .. I mean, at the moment, if my English scout sits idle for a month, he's lost 2/3 of his "full" knowledge of Wales, which is

a.) the country he's residing in, and

b.) the only country he's scouted in the past two months, because its the only country we're allowed to scout.

Seems kinda .. off .. to me.

Good point. I would like to see this incorparated for the main reason that i don't think there is anywhere near enough interaction between parent and feeder clubs. I think there should be more intimate knowledge of partner teams, and incorporating this into the scouting would be a good move.

To be fair, the parent club does currently gain scouting "knowledge" from its feeder clubs. But, I'd love to see the relationship built up a bit.

All good points, I'd like to think some of it can be looked at for FM 2010.

Another good point from Nobby_McDonald. The longitude and latitude values are already in the db for each city, so it should be possible to work out that a Northern team is closer to Scotland than southern England. There must be loads of similar examples in England and the other leagues in the game.

All good points, I'd like to think some of it can be looked at for FM 2010.

Another good point from Nobby_McDonald. The longitude and latitude values are already in the db for each city, so it should be possible to work out that a Northern team is closer to Scotland than southern England. There must be loads of similar examples in England and the other leagues in the game.

Seems to me that a scouting "radius" would make much more sense than a scouting country. If lats and longs are in the db for each team calculating exactly which teams fall within a given radius is a relatively simple matter (I know as I've written the code to do it myself).

Aye, good topic...nice to see the Nobster using my own particular gripe as an example in his post

The "scouting radius" has been an LLM plea for years.

Some very good ideas Amoraq, a more specific regional scouting model is a horse that has been flogged to within an inch of its life & as has been mentioned is something us folk in LLM have been requesting for a numbrer of years.

I do like your multiple scouting point, when I start my career it is crucial to get the right players & to limit those Paolo Futre style mistakes, with transfer windows to take into account this can be quite difficult if I only have a couple of weeks to evaluate a player based on the opinion of 1 semi useful scout.

Seems to me that a scouting "radius" would make much more sense than a scouting country.

In most cases, i would agree with this. However a major problem is that it doesn't take into account geographical or political constraints. For example, if a London based club had a 200 mile scouting radius, they would be able to scout areas of Holland, Belgium and France, yet unable to scout Northern England and Scotland. When in reality, scouting other areas of the UK would make alot more financial and logistical sense than going to continental Europe.

Similarly, a South Korean club scout would have little chance of checking out a North Korean club only a few miles away. The current system is giving us the opposite problem, inability to scout other countries that are in easy geographical and political reach. So my point is that having only a scouting radius is too simplistic and will result in a similarly inaccurate system to the one currently in place.

I can't really think of a quick fix to this issue. Maybe something like the addition of a 'border countries' section to the nations part in the editor could be used. Each border country could be given an 'accessibility' value to determine the feasibility of scouting if they fall within the scouting radius.

Seems to me that a scouting "radius" would make much more sense than a scouting country. If lats and longs are in the db for each team calculating exactly which teams fall within a given radius is a relatively simple matter (I know as I've written the code to do it myself).

That would be good

Wouldn't mind if you'd direct some of the LLM regulars to this thread to share their ideas.

You've beat me to it.

Aye, good topic...nice to see the Nobster using my own particular gripe as an example in his post

It was the most useful example I could think of at the time.

In most cases, i would agree with this. However a major problem is that it doesn't take into account geographical or political constraints. For example, if a London based club had a 200 mile scouting radius, they would be able to scout areas of Holland, Belgium and France, yet unable to scout Northern England and Scotland. When in reality, scouting other areas of the UK would make alot more financial and logistical sense than going to continental Europe.

Similarly, a South Korean club scout would have little chance of checking out a North Korean club only a few miles away. The current system is giving us the opposite problem, inability to scout other countries that are in easy geographical and political reach. So my point is that having only a scouting radius is too simplistic and will result in a similarly inaccurate system to the one currently in place.

I can't really think of a quick fix to this issue. Maybe something like the addition of a 'border countries' section to the nations part in the editor could be used. Each border country could be given an 'accessibility' value to determine the feasibility of scouting if they fall within the scouting radius.

I don't know how that can be overcome either, as I have zero programming knowledge. It is an excellent point you make though. The whole where you can scout issue at small clubs needs reworking. A part time team from the North of England wouldn't be able to sign a player living in the South.

On a similar note, I'm currently managing Billericay Town. Despite being in Conference South, the club are professional, and the board allow me to scout the UK, Ireland, France and Spain. Spain? Why not Belgium and Netherlands?

Even in the larger countries for lowly LLM teams this is a great idea, scouting has always annoyed me

I think that there does need to be something more indepth about the system on where a team can scout, I always laughed at some of the scouting restrictions placed on the lower league teams. It needs to be fixed, and possibly have it set around a combination of radius, scouting accessibility and maybe even a financial aspect, so obviously a country in the east of England would be closer to france, but it would be more cost effective to scout across to Wales than onto the mainland.

It would really be a matter of managing how it all fell together, and I also found it funny that when the Andorran U19s were playing the Portuguese U19s I was unable to scout those players even though my scout could've walked to the game himself from my stadium.

So in general as a regular lower League player (Sometimes under LLM rules - Does anyone realise how **** pedantic the LLM crowd are when you post this, its just ********. Its not impossible to play one way in one game and differently in another not necessarily at the same time, stupid to think you can't), I have to say scouting for lower leagues needs to be fixed and this probably means an across the board rejig of the systems, right now I generally guess after that first report comes in because it seems to take forever to get enough players scouted to create a full team

It's not as much as it needs fixing, it needs tweaking or reworking, to account for more realistic scouting as you alude to.

By the way, you can't sometimes play under LLM rules... but that's not a debate/discussion for this thread.

Sure you can. If you have two games on the go, you can play under LLM rules in one and not in the other.

You're completely missing the point, and also the fact that I said it's not a debate or discussion for this thread.