Changes to Scouting - FM12

[hursty2]

Shouldn't a scout build on his previous reports, ie. when you send him out to England he will look at different clubs, thus returning more potential players?

[TGP]

My scouting issues are that the scout reports are still too narrowly tailored. I play as a MLS manager and so most players come back as 4 or 5 star players who would be leading whatever in mls. i find this ridiculously frustrating. i want to know if they might be top quality prem player in the future. i should have the option to use the absolute value of the potential and not just my league or my team.

In addition my scouts dont scout or recommend the best players in a given area they are scouting. i have scouts scouting uk and ireland and there are no reports on Rooney or Pavulychenko or Nasri or anelka. These players are so well known there should be reports on them if i am scouting england.

[The Welsh Lad]

My scouting issues are that the scout reports are still too narrowly tailored. I play as a MLS manager and so most players come back as 4 or 5 star players who would be leading whatever in mls. i find this ridiculously frustrating. i want to know if they might be top quality prem player in the future. i should have the option to use the absolute value of the potential and not just my league or my team.

In addition my scouts dont scout or recommend the best players in a given area they are scouting. i have scouts scouting uk and ireland and there are no reports on Rooney or Pavulychenko or Nasri or anelka. These players are so well known there should be reports on them if i am scouting england.

Your managing in the MLS but you want to know if a player is good in the EPL, thats just ridiculous in my opinion.

Your scouts don't scout unrealistic players that you have no chance of signing, if you want a scout report on these players, you have to scout them individually.

[Bababui]

LoL..You mean players like Beckham, Keane, Henry etc?

[The Welsh Lad]

LoL..You mean players like Beckham, Keane, Henry etc?

No I mean Rooney, Pavulychenko, Nasri and Anelka players that are not on the decline so to speak, so would not be deemed has realistic by your scout. Hence why the scout doesn't scout them. If when they are coming toward the end of their career like Beckham, Henry and Keane then they maybe deemed has realistic and your scout will scout them when sent out to a nation. But you can always ask you scout to scout them individually if he thinks they are unrealistic and you don't.

[reece1973]

So am i correct in saying that if your scout has a 100% knowledge of any country if you sent him to scout that country he will always come back after 1 day?

[Moonshine]

Only if you set him to scout that nation on its own. there is a work around to this unrealistic mess - if you set a scout to scout a region, and he scout the country within that region he has supposedly 100% knowledge of, he'll find more players. Thus, a buggy feature, and an unrealistic, stupid one at that. There has been no explanation of it within this thread, bar one that has been attacked, and I think we ought to have a better one personally.

[SCIAG]

Your managing in the MLS but you want to know if a player is good in the EPL, thats just ridiculous in my opinion.

What if he wants to know whether he'll be able to sell them to PL clubs?

[The Welsh Lad]

What if he wants to know whether he'll be able to sell them to PL clubs?

SO what you are saying scout reports should work as follows:

Player X can be a key player in your team but useless in the EPL.

Which isn't how scouting works.

To find out if EPL or other top leagues want his players, he has to either transfer list them or offer him to clubs. If teams in the EPL or other top leagues have knowledge of the MSL then they will know about the player and make a decision on whether to bid or not, if they don't have knowledge they wont know the player has been listed.

I don't think any club looks to see if they can possibly sell players in future to other leagues, when they are looking to buy them, through scouting.

I don't know if it happens in real-life but the assistant manager could give a view, I suppose on future transfer possibilities but then the assistant manager would have to have knowledge of the other leagues.

[Perry_Neal]

The players search screen is an unused tool in LLM because we are yet to be convinced that such a resource exists outside of FM, where else can you find a list of 50,000 players from around the globe & with that have details of their position, value etc without scouting.

If only such a database did exist. Wouldn't it be lovely if you could buy some piece of software that had a huge list of players, their positions, strengths and weaknesses, values etc. It could be called something like Manager of Football 2012 or something like that.

[TGP]

SO what you are saying scout reports should work as follows:

Player X can be a key player in your team but useless in the EPL.

Which isn't how scouting works.

To find out if EPL or other top leagues want his players, he has to either transfer list them or offer him to clubs. If teams in the EPL or other top leagues have knowledge of the MSL then they will know about the player and make a decision on whether to bid or not, if they don't have knowledge they wont know the player has been listed.

I don't think any club looks to see if they can possibly sell players in future to other leagues, when they are looking to buy them, through scouting.

I don't know if it happens in real-life but the assistant manager could give a view, I suppose on future transfer possibilities but then the assistant manager would have to have knowledge of the other leagues.

i want a report that tells me the absolute potential of a player and is not restricted by league or my other players at the position. so when i scout players i know the potential projected by my scout is 190pa or world class. as a hypothetical say there are two players one with 190pa and the other with 160pa. both are going to be very good players and both would probably be leading players in mls. both are almost certainly better than the guy i have at the position right now. currently they would generate the same report from a scout because i am in the mls. however if i was in the prem i would get a report telling me one is going to be better than the other either one is a good prem and the other is a leading or something like that. why on earth would a club want a scouting report that did not tell them one player was going to be better than the other? its nice to know that both will be leading mls guys but the fact one might be among the best in the world is highly relevant.

and yes the mls is a feeder league so the selling of players in the future is important. it is a way to raise the profile and talent level of the league. many teams in world football make a living unearthing good players and selling them on.

currently guys like nasri get the same recommendation as 26 year old argentine guys no one has ever heard of. given the choice between the two i would take nasri.the league and team specific stuff should be retained because it does help on the micro level but the macro level of just how good a player could be in world football is valuable too.

Anelka and Pavy were available for transfer when they were 32 and i could buy them and put them on a dp contract. players of that stature and age are prime candidates for mls targeting. Anelka reportedly tried to move to mls this summer but could not get out of his contract or else it might have been him instead of keane playing for the galaxy.

[The Welsh Lad]

i want a report that tells me the absolute potential of a player and is not restricted by league or my other players at the position. so when i scout players i know the potential projected by my scout is 190pa or world class. as a hypothetical say there are two players one with 190pa and the other with 160pa. both are going to be very good players and both would probably be leading players in mls. both are almost certainly better than the guy i have at the position right now. currently they would generate the same report from a scout because i am in the mls. however if i was in the prem i would get a report telling me one is going to be better than the other either one is a good prem and the other is a leading or something like that. why on earth would a club want a scouting report that did not tell them one player was going to be better than the other? its nice to know that both will be leading mls guys but the fact one might be among the best in the world is highly relevant.

and yes the mls is a feeder league so the selling of players in the future is important. it is a way to raise the profile and talent level of the league. many teams in world football make a living unearthing good players and selling them on.

currently guys like nasri get the same recommendation as 26 year old argentine guys no one has ever heard of. given the choice between the two i would take nasri.the league and team specific stuff should be retained because it does help on the micro level but the macro level of just how good a player could be in world football is valuable too.

Anelka and Pavy were available for transfer when they were 32 and i could buy them and put them on a dp contract. players of that stature and age are prime candidates for mls targeting. Anelka reportedly tried to move to mls this summer but could not get out of his contract or else it might have been him instead of keane playing for the galaxy.

I see what you mean, with it explained in more depth.

I agree, there should be a better way of judging player PA. Maybe the Star Rating should be changed so each star is a specific band like the Minus figures for youth players i.e. 5 stars would be -10, 4.5 = -9, 4 = -8 etc. but they wouldn't over lap so -10 = 180 - 200, -9 = 160-179, -8 =140-159. So the player with a PA of 190 would show on the scout report has 5 stars and the player with 160PA would show up has 4.5 stars.

This would mean that the scout reports are not linked to your league and team.

[Guest]

If only such a database did exist. Wouldn't it be lovely if you could buy some piece of software that had a huge list of players, their positions, strengths and weaknesses, values etc. It could be called something like Manager of Football 2012 or something like that.

If only people took the time to investigate & fully understand LLM before attempting to be a comedian, can you tell me where in the game & can buy this game?

As for this all knowing database can I mention Freddy Adu (not FM's fault I guees), Cherno Samba, Justin Georcalain (sp), any number of Swede's ca.2004, To Madiera, Mascio & I seem to recall that Wayne Rooney was absolute horse manure when he first appeared in the game as I'm sure were many other players that later went on to have decent careers.

[KUBI]

If only such a database did exist. Wouldn't it be lovely if you could buy some piece of software that had a huge list of players, their positions, strengths and weaknesses, values etc. It could be called something like Manager of Football 2012 or something like that.

I don't think that this kind of meta level does fit into LLM.

[Guest]

**off-topic**

You're only bitter because you were kicked out.

**back on-topic**

[TGP]

I see what you mean, with it explained in more depth.

I agree, there should be a better way of judging player PA. Maybe the Star Rating should be changed so each star is a specific band like the Minus figures for youth players i.e. 5 stars would be -10, 4.5 = -9, 4 = -8 etc. but they wouldn't over lap so -10 = 180 - 200, -9 = 160-179, -8 =140-159. So the player with a PA of 190 would show on the scout report has 5 stars and the player with 160PA would show up has 4.5 stars.

This would mean that the scout reports are not linked to your league and team.

yes that would be perfectly fine.

[KUBI]

As for this all knowing database can I mention Freddy Adu (not FM's fault I guees), Cherno Samba, Justin Georcalain (sp), any number of Swede's ca.2004, To Madiera, Mascio & I seem to recall that Wayne Rooney was absolute horse manure when he first appeared in the game as I'm sure were many other players that later went on to have decent careers.

I think everyone who did manage a lower league club knows that wrong scouting reports is something very realistic.

It's just information you can use, if you want. But you can't deny it.

[Guest]

Do you not remember that all llama's are paid up members of the Flat Earth society?

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Are you intelligent enough to suppress the urge to post your own negative bias towards LLM? So far most of your posts on the subject of scouting in FM12 have added the sum total of zero to the discussion* & it appears that you have just jumped upon my involvement as another opportunity to vent against a group of people who did not take to your attitude back then & for want of a better phrase told you to leave.

*A quick glance at the bugs forum would indicate that it's not only llama's who are concerned with the new system.

[KUBI]

I see what you mean, with it explained in more depth.

I agree, there should be a better way of judging player PA. Maybe the Star Rating should be changed so each star is a specific band like the Minus figures for youth players i.e. 5 stars would be -10, 4.5 = -9, 4 = -8 etc. but they wouldn't over lap so -10 = 180 - 200, -9 = 160-179, -8 =140-159. So the player with a PA of 190 would show on the scout report has 5 stars and the player with 160PA would show up has 4.5 stars.

This would mean that the scout reports are not linked to your league and team.

But with this system the star rating would only work for the top leagues, as in all lower leagues the scout reports would just list non-star players. It has to be related to your club and league, otherwise you could not compare scouted players with your own players.

The problem with the current knowledge system is, that full knowledge does mean your scout does not travel through a nation anymore until his knowledge would decline to a certain point. While in reality he would scout deeper and probably found more youth players worth to mention in another scouting journey.

[KUBI]

Do you not remember that all llama's are paid up members of the Flat Earth society?

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Are you intelligent enough to suppress the urge to post your own negative bias towards LLM? So far most of your posts on the subject of scouting in FM12 have added the sum total of zero to the discussion* & it appears that you have just jumped upon my involvement as another opportunity to vent against a group of people who did not take to your attitude back then & for want of a better phrase told you to leave.

*A quick glance at the bugs forum would indicate that it's not only llama's who are concerned with the new system.

I did just tried to explain to you that the player search screen is part of scouting in FM2012. If you not want to use it, it's up to you.

Player search is the main scouting database of your club. It contains the scouting knowledge of all your staff members. Individual scout reports are part of this knowledge.

[Moonshine]

How??? I can see the logic behind it, but where does it say this? Its ridiculous to assume that I'm going to go "I need a new player - I'll scout him. BUT, I'm going to ignore that button labled 'Scouting' and jump to 'Player Search', because, y'know, that player search thing is actually the accumulated knowledge of my scouts. Not his scout reports, or my shortlist. Oh no."

In all honestly, the explanation offer by SI has been refuted by the workaround. Were it truly the case that 100% knowledge of a country = no new scout reports, due to the nature of there already being a scouting pool (a very good and realistic feature, I might add), then the work around would not work. It would go: "scout goes to country, already knows country, moves to another", not porvides loads more reports. I think that its fairly obvious that this is a bug, and that it, like the GK thing, need patching ASAP in order for long term games to be enjoyable for all players.

[KUBI]

It's both. If you want just to rely on your scout reports, you can do that. If you want to browse through the scouting database and probably find a player your scout did not have in the main focus, you can do that too.

I did never deny that there is a problem with how the knowledge system does work, but to patch it, you need to know what's the overall idea behind it. I think knowledge should be lowered in general and you would need a lot of scouts to become even 90% knowledge of a nation or region. Knowledge should also decline when your scout does not scout activly and just rely on his knowledge, so that he has to go and scout again after a while and find new players. So, 1 day scouting is not a general bug, but if the scout comes back all the time with what he did already scout months ago, it has to be changed, as this is not vey realistic.

[reece1973]

How can a scout have full knowledge of a country. Its impossible.

In real life say for Man Utd. Fergie doesnt go up to his scout and say 'Ok tell me about every player good enough for my team in France'.

Yes the scout may have a handful of suggestions but players are always coming into the game and appearing from nowhere.

I want to send a scout to Brazil and spend a few months over there scouring the massive country it is, but i cant because apparently he knows everything. Utter rubbish.

Now i have to send him instead to South America and go via god knows how many other countries first before he ends up in Brazil.

[TGP]

But with this system the star rating would only work for the top leagues, as in all lower leagues the scout reports would just list non-star players. It has to be related to your club and league, otherwise you could not compare scouted players with your own players.

well it can be both. the scout report can give you all kinds of comps on your team but also tell you about how good he is likely to be in general. so you have an extra column on a screen that says for your league 5 stars. next to it a column that says overall 3.5 stars.

[Swindon69]

Have I understood this correctly everytime I start the game if I pick the same side, irrespective of the tactics I'm planning on using if the scout has 100% knowledge he'll come back after a day and his preloaded knowledge will return exactly the same players?

[TGP]

also if my scouts could stop recommending dc prospects with no jumping and no strength that would be good too.

[Moonshine]

Have I understood this correctly everytime I start the game if I pick the same side, irrespective of the tactics I'm planning on using if the scout has 100% knowledge he'll come back after a day and his preloaded knowledge will return exactly the same players?

Yes - and therein lies the problem.

[Swindon69]

That's totally stupid - the scout becomes worthless.

[KUBI]

Why should he come back with different reports, when you start the game always with the same set-up? The problem is that he does not come-back with more knowledge, when you send him out again. That there is already a report at the start of the game, sounds okay for me and as the setup and the scout is always the same, the initial report will always be the same.

[Swindon69]

The problem is that he wont bring in any new data because the scouting mission will only last a day which seems pointless.

[Nordan]

That's totally stupid - the scout becomes worthless.

Maybe it would be an idea that scouts started the game/or when introduced into the game later started with 1% knowledge,and that meant he had a pool of 500 to 1000 players.

The percentage would rise as he continues scouting the country.

One other thing that annoys me is why can't scouts just keep on scouting until I tell them to stop or go somewhere else?

This new system sounds really bad,I don't mind initial reports but when I send him out I expect him to do his job!

[The Enforcer]

I ran an experiment on scouting, using the demo v230163. I chose England Quickstart Sutton Utd as they were the only 6th tier team with 2 scouts already at the club. I have kept player and scout names anonymous so as to not upset die-hard LLMs.

Scout 1 - Obscure Rep - England Knowledge 100% - JA 4 JPA 8 - preferred formation 4-4-2 - was scouting UK ongoing - 26 players recommended

Scout 2 - Unknown Rep - England Knowledge 100% - JA 2 JPA 3 - preferred formation 4-4-2 - was scouting UK ongoing - 23 players recommended

Coaching staff had suggested to scouts we needed an attacking midfielder. None of the players on those lists was a natural MR. I decided MR was the position I was in need of most, so I cancelled UK search and asked them to search England with filter set to MR.

They both came back after 1 day with only the one same player (Player A) whose preferred position was DR, but equally adept at MR, ability+potential star ratings for DR 3 & 3.5 respectively. Player A was not on their initial UK lists.

As I had no transfer budget and Player A was at a club, I asked them to search for a MR in England again with the extra instruction 'Value is at most £0'. This time, they both finished after 1 day and came back with only Player B - 4 stars for ability and 5 for potential in both cases. Unlike all the other players, this guy was removed from both lists when I ticked the 'unrealistic transfer' option, probably due to interest from fourth tier clubs.

So for the third England search I added a third requirement, age to be between 25 and 29. Neither scout found anyone and finished after 1 day.

I restarted the quick start and this time sacked Scout 2 and signed Scout 3:

Scout 3 - Local Rep - England Knowledge 100% - JA 10 JPA 9 - Preferred Formation 4-5-1 - was scouting UK ongoing - 20 players recommended

This time upon arrival, the coaching staff had advised Scout 3 that MR was weak and so he had included Player C on his list 3.5 stars ability/5 stars potential.

I then ran the same searches as before, Scout 1 gave me exactly the same returns and Scout 3 also returned Player A (2.5 stars for both) then Player B (4.5/5 stars) and then nobody. I ran an additional search, with filters tailored to suit Player C, who should already have been known to at least Scout 3, but neither scout could find him or anyone else after 1 day.

Something is definitely not working correctly. I have some 'recommendations' of my own, but as I have to work now, these will have to wait until a bit later.

Cheers,

TE

[The Enforcer]

Recommended aspects of Scouting in FM2012 that SI need to address/update/patch as follows:

1. Knowledge Confusion

As I understand it, the Knowledge of a nation should be more a reflection on the ability of the scout to get around, know where to look for players, establish contacts with other staff through networking, learn the native language etc… all of which would result in speedier results. If this it what it is doing, then I’m satisfied with this element, in itself. However, there seems to be mixed messages that 100% knowledge = maximum speed and all players already known so the scout goes straight to who they think is the best 1-5 (1 in my case cited above, it was 3 at OUFC and I seen have others mention 5).

2. Limited Range for Nation Searches

If a scout reports back with as little as 1 player, this is not realistic for their home nation, even where their team is in the sixth tier of the league pyramid.

3. Inability to make 100% Knowledge Nation Search ‘Ongoing’

I can’t understand why this option isn’t there, given that it is there for Region searches, surely the scout will be happy to keep looking within one nation rather than alternating between several until the manager tells them otherwise?

4. Incompatibility between Region and Nation Search Results

See example above of Player C – clearly identified by a scout from the outset in region search, but same scout couldn’t find him when nation search tailored to Player C characteristics (and no better players offered as an alternative from those search parameters either).

5. No Variety in 100% Nation Search Returns from Better Scout

In the second part of my experiment, I replaced an unproven JA2/JPA3 scout with a local JA10/JPA9 scout, yet this heralded identical recommendations from the nation search (albeit slight differences in the star ratings and the local scout revealed a couple more lines about the players). In contrast, his initial region search seemed to produce a more focused list of players. A couple of the recommendations were the same as the initial suggestions of the OUFC scout from my previous quick start save game.

6. Scout Assignment Filters too Limited – not just Nation Searches

There are some very useful filters there now, but the inability to restrict your scout to looking for free transfers or transfer listed or loan players is a big omission. These filters can only be applied retrospectively and it baffles me why you can tell the scout to disregard players on a certain wage (not sure if this includes demands) and below a certain ability level, but you can’t say only look at those on the transfer list, for example, because otherwise they waste time concentrating on “important/key players” who I can’t afford to buy/sign.

I also have some more general views concerning how scouts should be shown to obtain their reports, but I’m out of time again, so I shall return to this later.

[hursty2]

As I said before a scout should never have 100% knowledge of a countries players, there should always be new players to find. A scout with 100% knowledge should find players easier and more of them, knowingly going to clubs where there is potential to find better players. Scouts with little knowledge wouldn't know where to look for players thus returning less or rather worse results.

[Neil Brock]

Just to comment again, this is an issue we're investigating. More examples provided like The Enforcer of course would be appreciated, ideally though in the Bugs Forum. Thanks.

[Moonshine]

Excelletn posts Enforcer. This is clearly a problem and with no interest in it, seems to be going by unnoticed. Can we have some kind of response on it .

EDIT: typical - a response as I type . Thanks for that Neil.

I will be conducting a few tests of my own over the next few days, and will post them in the bugs thread.

[Colorado]

Anyone else getting a problem with scouts only going off on assignments for a few days at a time?

[campos08]

yes mate, they finished it after 1 day

[Colorado]

Yeah same here, is this a known bug? It used to happen in FM2011 sometimes too.

[Ruttsie]

Has anyone else found that some scouting assignments are ridiculously short? I have just started managing in Poland and my scout can do a full nation-scouting assignment on Poland 3 times a week. Similar assignments on FM11 would take roughly 2 months. I noticed similar things in France when playing as PSG in the demo but hoped this was due to the limited database.

So does anyone know how to prevent this, at present my scout hardly finds anyone because he doesn't scout long enough to even attend a few matches...

[Ruttsie]

I can see what is being said about the scouting assignment is so short because the scout already has 100% knowledge of their home nation. Perhaps it is how the game presents this but this still seems a little wrong. For example even if I had the most knowledgeable person in the world about English football, I would still expect they would attend matches and continually reassess their opinions not just wait 2-3 days and recommend me the same players they recommended the week before.

To put it another way I would imagine Man Utd have pretty extensive knowledge of players in england in real life, but they also still have several scouts attending matches up and down the country all year round. Yet the way the game presents it the only way for Man Utd to scout in England would be to reassign the scout every few days or hire a foreign scout with no knowledge of England to scout England.

I know it's been said that this ie being looked into so hopefully this will be improved in the next patch.

P.S. Thanks to whichever Mod merged my post into the existing thread.

[The Enforcer]

The main reason I posted in here, is because some of the most recent scouting threads in the bugs forum redirect here e.g: http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/279028-DEMO-Scouting-single-nations

Thanks for the positive feedback. I can combine all the posts gathered so far into a new bug thread - note I am using the demo quick-start, so you will have to let me know if there are key differences that I need to be examining in the full version, which I have not purchased yet (partly because of the negative feedback on scouting). I am also happy to make save games available, although it's pretty easy to replicate at SI HQ as a quick-start is a default database at the beginning and the events I describe all occur within the first week before a match is played (I decline press conference and inter-squad friendly). One point I didn't make clear is that the two initial scouts have excellent club players knowledge on their information screen: Scout 1 was 100% and Scout 2 was 75%, but Scout 3 is starting from 0%.

The area I wanted to explore was the concept of what I have coined "match-based" scouting, which is available in-game and has been for a little while. I saw an observation recently, that reminded me of the last time I scouted competitions in FM2011 and all 3 scouts kept watching the same matches and reporting on the same players and I could not stop it - my next mission is to investigate competition scouting, but I digress. To be clear, match-based scouting is where a scout reports back on players from a game he has watched - either because he is tracking a particular player or is following matches from a particular competition. My personal view is that this is the direction in which scouting should be heading.

Firstly, this begs the question: "How do scouts make an effective assessment of players other than they are watching them in an 11-a-side match format?" This leads to further questions: Presumably scouts must struggle to judge players accurately from training sessions - would they even be allowed to observe what was going on? Where would they observe players who are available on a free transfer? Do such players generally latch onto a club from a lower tier than they were playing at previously and train with them in a more informal version of a trial? At LLM level I don't imagine many of these released players - particularly younger players - would have agents, so do they approach clubs further down the ladder to try and get back in the game? I am afraid this is guesswork on my part, but it would useful to know from the more initiated how this works IRL and how FM2012 is looking to simulate this.

My vision for "match-based" scouting is that scouts would each have a visible diary, which would be adjusted by them in response to assignments that their manager issues to them (but read-only format for the manager). The diary would fill up according to where they need to be in order to track a particular type of player in a nation/region you have specified and/or following any specified competitions (I include friendlies here) and/or pursuing specific players or teams. The 'best' scouts would be able to squeeze more into their diary and to submit reports sooner [determination], manage their time best to minimise travel when combining assignments [organisation], would use their knowledge to select the most likely competition types/geographical areas to maximise the chances of finding suitable players [intelligence] and their judgement attributes would determine how accurate the reports are [as I believe to be the case now].

The other tweak I think would make the scouting more realistic is to replace precise attribute filtering (which is useful, but I imagine not LLM-friendly) with the ability to specify particular player roles that you'd want scouts to look for e.g. 'target-man', so they'd go and watch matches involving senior/reserve/youth teams with a target-man or track down released target-men (see my point above about where/how they would observe them). This is also useful to demonstrate another element of the match-based concept, because their ought to be a scouting free-reign option within assignments. To elaborate: Scout 1 watches Team A because he's looking at their target-man, but notices that stopper from Team B marks him out of the game. Free-reign off - report on target-man as manager requests; Free-reign on - report on stopper as well. Again, more likely to happen with 'better' scouts [adaptability].

In short, the biggest advantage for me of this system would be being able to know at any one time where the scout is (training sessions/matches), which must be more realistic and would certainly avoid the current set of problems associated with the 'scarlet pimpernel' movements of scouts.

I hope this makes sense, I haven't had a scouting rant (it's not really a rant in the true sense, compared with the early FM version scouting criticisms I used to have, which reflects how far this element has come) for some time, so I'm a little out of practice!

Cheers,

TE

[KUBI]

Some very good points, but most of them are suggestion for the next release as it would be a general overhaul of scouting and needs a lot of coding and testing.

For the current version and how scouting is implemented I would suggest that knowledge should be lowered in general and decreasing week after week. That way new scouting tours would bring in new results and if you don't send out your scouts your club would loose knowledge in the long term.

[The Enforcer]

I agree much of the last bit belongs with FM2013 if I am lucky, if only I'd had more time a year ago. It's quite difficult to work out what is a bug and what isn't, but I'll stick all my 'evidence' and points 1-6 in as a bug report and find an appropriate future improvements thread or similar for the last bit. To be fair to SI, I really need to have a look at competition scouting in more detail as it may actually have improved.

[hilliec2]

I'm repeating much of what has been said here, but wanted to add my thoughts to keep the thread going so that SI can consider our feedback for future tweaks.

Am managing Tottenham. Employed a Spanish and an Italian scout to scour their respective countries (at more than 10k p/w wages). Sent them off on assignment and one day later they came back with four or five reports each. In previous versions, they would have spent a month on the assignment and returned with circa 100 reports. All ranging from 4.5 star recommendations (rare) down to 2.5 stars.

I have read some of the rationale above as to why this is the case, i.e they already know their territory and these are the only players they are actually recommending and I just don't agree with it. I'm paying them over 10k p/w to get on a plane, go over to the territory, watch games, speak to contacts etc etc and return a month later with a long list of players ranging in ability from 4.5 stars down to 2.

To come back a day later with only four reports is just ridiculous and as far as I'm concerned, has tarnished the game somewhat.

[Ruttsie]

I'm repeating much of what has been said here, but wanted to add my thoughts to keep the thread going so that SI can consider our feedback for future tweaks.

Am managing Tottenham. Employed a Spanish and an Italian scout to scour their respective countries (at more than 10k p/w wages). Sent them off on assignment and one day later they came back with four or five reports each. In previous versions, they would have spent a month on the assignment and returned with circa 100 reports. All ranging from 4.5 star recommendations (rare) down to 2.5 stars.

I have read some of the rationale above as to why this is the case, i.e they already know their territory and these are the only players they are actually recommending and I just don't agree with it. I'm paying them over 10k p/w to get on a plane, go over to the territory, watch games, speak to contacts etc etc and return a month later with a long list of players ranging in ability from 4.5 stars down to 2.

To come back a day later with only four reports is just ridiculous and as far as I'm concerned, has tarnished the game somewhat.

I completely agree, the lack of volume of scout reports is my main problem with how the scouting works in FM12. I like to rely on my scouts and very rarely sign players not already identified by my scouts, however it is incredibly difficult to get your scouts to give a rating to players based in your league. As a result when I come to look for a new signing there are hardly any players to choose from.

Not exactly the best option but at present I have resorted to selecting the whole squad of all teams in the Ekstraklasa and requesting scout reports, at least this way I can see who my scouts think are good players in this league.

[Coentrao]

I only got the game today but this seems to have broken scouting on individual nations, i have a scout that originally had 30 or 40 reports and i send him again to that nation and he comes up with only 1 report on the next day.

[jimbobBRFC]

Surely my Spanish scout doesnt know every player in Spain? Should at least take a week or two so he can go see if there are any new/young players that are worth a pop.

[Super Bladesman]

Read through the thread to see the comments from SI already on this subject.

[jimbobBRFC]

Read through the thread to see the comments from SI already on this subject.

I have read through it just simply giving my opinion