Scouting Regions Bug?

Hi, not sure if this is a bug or whether this is normal...

On 14.1.3, I have 11 scouts. I've been assigning them to regions, with roaming ticked, but it seems that they will only scout two nations in that region, and will just go back and forth between those two, never more. For example, I have 2 scouts scouting the UK and Ireland region, but both are only scouting Engalnd and Scotland, over and over. Never Wales, Ireland or Northern Ireland. In East Asia, it's South Korea and Japan. South America it's Brazil and Argentina, and Oceania is Australia and New Zealand etc.

I have tried seeing if this would be fixed by having my Chief Scout assign scouting missions, but the same problem occurs.

The obvious work around is assigning nations individually instead of regions, but that would be so much more time consuming. I wouldn't mind doing that if that's what I really have to do, but I just wanted to see if this was a bug or not?

Yep I have the exact same thing happening in my save (14.1.4) cant seem to find out from anyone if this is a known bug or its the intended way it works what makes it worse is adding another scout to say cover a big region like eastern Europe so I have two roaming scouts there they will both bounce back and forth between the same 2 countries it seems the scouts don't take into account club known scouting knowledge either and will happily sit in a country that you are already 100% knowledge of

Hi I'm having the exact same problem but can't seem to find anything out about it online... Is this still an issue for you or have you found a resolution?

Thank you

But if I want my scout to just scout one or two countries in a region I can assign them to those countries individually. If I tell him to go to a region I expect him to actually look into all the countries in that region no matter how small they are.

Pretty much agree with AIK here.

If i set my scouts to scout the region i want them to actually scout the entire region. Regardless of how many or few players there. That's their assignment. That's their job.

If not i'll just assign them to specific nations.

Agreed.

Also, when we get a scouting report there's the option to select "Skip Country" or something similar. We can just do that if we get to a small country we don't want him to scout.

How about something in between then?

Like, a scout spends x amount of time, where he takes into consideration the size of the country and the amount of players loaded.

And then the scout moves on to the next country, and so on and so on.

Round and round he goes where he stops only i will know

How about something in between then?

Like, a scout spends x amount of time, where he takes into consideration the size of the country and the amount of players loaded.

And then the scout moves on to the next country, and so on and so on.

I thought this was how it was working in FM. If it isn't, it should be.

So how do we get a scout to scout the entire region? Will unticking roaming and sending them to a region work? Or do I have to assign them to individual nations? It's very frustrating that they only go between two countries and that as a result my scouting knowledge seems stuck at 40% ish.

Anyone have an update on this? im experiencing the exact same issue

Going to upload a game later tonight because this really annoys me too! I have all top division clubs loaded in South America, so a good 150 regens per country every year, yet my scouts only do Brazil and Argentina over and over again.

Im happy with the way it is to be honest.

I basically want my scouts to only go to Brazil/Argentina for S. America. Italy, Portugal etc for Europe, and thats it.

I hate it when they waste their time in Panama or Cyprus or whatever.

What about us who want to scout the whole region!? If someone wants one two countries just select them! I tried to choose all the countries separately but it gets irritating the fact i have to resend them every few days!!!

Having played a few seasons since commenting on this thread, I've noticed the two countries can change over time. 'South America' now scouts only Brazil and Chile (not Brazil and Argentina), and also my South Europe scouts now go to Croatia (I think in place of Greece). I assume something to with which countries are producing more/better players over the years.

I think the roaming check box makes this the case.... confirmation on that?

p.s. nothing wrong with a bit of Cyprus, w.c. DC came from there on 2012....

Checked Roaming Box and the jump between two countries mostly.

Unchecked and in some countries the scouts does nothing, in others they do one country and then you have to reassign them. Seems totally weird behavior.

So if you don't tick "roaming", what happens? (because I haven't).

I've had a scout in central asia on roaming and he goes to uzbekistan and kazakhstan only. If I untick roaming he goes NOWHERE!! assignment has been set for 10 days now and his location under assignments is blank.

He's not the only one, I have non-roaming scouts with no location in: East Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, Oceania and Southeast Asia. These scouts had previously been set to the same regions on roaming but were only going to the same 2 countries (same problem as mentioned in earlier posts) so i reassigned them to non-roaming and now they do nothing.

This is clearly a bug as they should be doing the "rounds" on non-roaming assignments.

As I mentioned earlier in the thread this is intentional behaviour, scouts not moving to all nations within a region is due to a limited number of players in that region, what;'s happening is that scouts are performing a quick assessment before the decide on the next country to visit & if they determine that there are very few players in a nation they will not go there as that would be a waste of time.

This change was introduced due to feedback that scouts were spending too much going to nations that didn't have any active players or didn't have any players anywhere near the ability required for the user's club, we feel that the current system is better as it prevents that waste of scouting resources while still allowing the user to assign a scout to a specific nation if they want to.

OK fair enough, I did read the thread and wasn't arguing that.

What I was trying to say was I dont understand why a scout on roaming will go to those 2 countries yet when not on roaming he wont go anywhere. Surely he would still go to the same 2 countries he did on roaming?

I'm 6 seasons in with Manchester United, I have 17 scouts, 6 set to regions and 11 set to individual countries (I'm working my way though Europe, Africa, Asia etc...), yet my knowledge is still on 48%.

Thanks for the explanation, Alex. It does make sense.

I am embarrassed to ask, but if you ask your scout to scout a region, what is the difference between "normal" and roaming?

Gooner, guess I misinterpreted the context of your post. :o

To answer the question posed by you & HUNT3R when you set a scout to a region assignment without roaming checked it is left to you to tell the scout when to move on, this is done via the scouting update news item where you will notice a 'Skip Nation' button.

Yep I understand that too Alex, what I dont understand is when I send a non-roaming scout to East Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, Oceania and Southeast Asia they don't go to a single country. After 10 days of being on the assignments their location was blank on the scouting-assignments page (where assignments for all scouts is shown).

That's odd, are you able to upload a copy of your save for me to take a look at?

Details on uploading can be found here - http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/368795

Yeah sure, will get that sorted. I've re-assigned 2 scouts back to Oceania & East Africa purely for demonstration, however I can't seem to upload a screenshot on here - in the up-loader I select file and click upload, the progress bar completes but then I get a red exclamation mark next to file. Any ideas??

You can't upload images directly. You need to upload the image on a hosting site (photobucket etc) and paste the URL link here.

That's odd, are you able to upload a copy of your save for me to take a look at?

File uploaded to fm/game-save called Gooner2408_Non-Roam Scout Region Bug_Save.rar

I've read all posts in this thread, so I get the concept and the details behind each side of the debate - and I understand that it is intentionally this way so as to maximise the likelihood of a decent report.

However, wouldn't it make sense if the scout, before heading into a country, sends you a message saying 'I'm about to scout in [insert country], would you like me to continue?' and then have the option to skip that nation should you so decide, or maybe to suggest he only spends a short amount of time there before moving on to the next nation.

I love the idea of finding a Wonderkid playing in the lower leagues of some random country..

after reading through this there still isn't really a solution. If i send him to Oceania, i expect him to scout New Zealand, Tahiti, Fiji, etc. Whether he finds any players or not that isn't the point, how will i ever know if he never goes there?

Thanks, I'll take a look to see what is going wrong.

Edit: Appears to be linked to player numbers & ability, I've raised it with the coding team for further investigation.

Cheers Alex, could you explain further what you mean by "player numbers & ability" please? I presume you mean number of players in database compared to overall average ability??

The ability comparison is based against your squad, in some of the regions you mentioned there were fewer than 200 players & even if the best of them reached their full potential they would never have made it at your club so the assignment is failing to get beyond the initial nation checks which results in the scout never picking a nation to start in.

We're looking into why the behaviour is altered in this way when the roaming option is left unchecked.

Thanks for the explanation. I suppose if my squads that good, which I'm not convinced it is, then why bother going anywhere in the first place.

So that covers things on the players side of things, but I would still like scouts to visit countries to improve my scouting knowledge even if there is a 1 in a million chance of ever finding a player worthy of sitting on my reserves subs bench. And of course I can do this by picking individual nations to scout, but then whats the point of the scouting regions option??

Still sort of missing the point, the scouts job is to scout South America, that means brazil,argentina,peru,colombia,ecuador venezuela bolivia,uruguay etc.. not just 2 or 3 of them. Whether he thinks it's a waste of time or not isn't the point, he's getting paid to go where i ask him. If he says, 'me scouting in Bolivia is a waste of time' maybe i should then be able to cancel Bolivia and let him scout in the other countries

How do you stack assignments?

Stacking is all well an good when its just 3 to 4 countries but when its the whole of asia its a different ball game. Especially as the nations aren't separated into the sub continent categories like those under regions

How would you know when he's scouted the whole country as much as he could?

What would probably be easier, when stacking scouting assignments, is an option to add all countries from a specified region. As mentioned it takes absolutely ages to add each one individually for some.

Fair point about the sub-categories in the continent menu or to be precise the lack thereof, I'll mention it as a possible interface improvement.

Yea it does seem a strange exclusion. My overall point on this whole "saga" is whats the benefit of improving your global scouting knowledge if the scouts are so against doing so unless you force them? If it is pointless scouting those nations then why have the option in the first place?? What impact does scouting knowledge have on the club? Is it possible future youth intake can be multi-national or is that fixed criteria within the game??

I would suggest renaming the 'region' scouting option to 'best of region', then add a new 'region' option that actually does what it says on the tin.

If I send my scout to scout a region then I expect him to cover the entire region. It really is as simple as that.

Scouting is buggy more than likely,

I've decided to manually assign my scouts, one per region, only five on 19 are doing something, the others do nothing and when I ask one of the lazy ones a report here's what he says:

the following has been translated:

"Mr. Blabla, Chief Scout, has provided you with an updated report from Mr. Scoutname.

Mr. Scoutname is currently in (%nation#1-) for his search in Central America but hasn't found any interesting player yet.

Mr. Scoutname has started his current search 2 weeks ago, in August 2019. He thinks he could make a better usage of his time searching elsewhere."

It may be only a display bug, but if the "nation" variable is empty it will perfectly explain the inability of ours scouts to fulfill their duties.

Now it would be interesting to see if it is a translation problem and only the non-English versions of FM14 or only some of them have the problem or if all versions have the same problem when selecting one of your scouts and ask for an updated report (find this a the top left of the scout profile page next to term date of his contract).

I would suggest renaming the 'region' scouting option to 'best of region', then add a new 'region' option that actually does what it says on the tin.

If I send my scout to scout a region then I expect him to cover the entire region. It really is as simple as that.

Exactly this, didn't this come up in the brainstorming at all? Why 'compromise' when you can give the best of both worlds? One option to do region bouncing and one that does what it says on the tin. If players get uppity about *that* then tough luck to them, you've done the best you can.

micromananaging i guess is the way to go if yo want to see that beautiful screen with 100% knowledge... sorry