Scouting Troubles

[crusadertsar]

This year I decided to make my save more realistic by actually setting up a proper scouting network. In previous FMs I tended to either let AI handle it or just played with attributes masking turned off. Now in FM24 I am trying to do a Basque-only policy with Real Sociedad. But something seems off. After one season I am barely getting any reports and there are still Basque players at Athletic Bilbao that I don't see attributes for. I tried to keep things very general, asking my scouts to only look for Basque nationality players in Spain and France nations. And I set the minimum potential stars pretty low. 2 gold stars. And their ability setting even lower for like 1.5 i believe This is for my 23-50 age group scouting. For the youngsters I set it to current ability - 2.5 silver stars and up to 2.5 gold potential. And I am searching for any role, not even specific to roles in my tactic. Thought it would make it easier to get reports. So where are all the players? We already had a youth intake last March so I thought there would be a few potentially good Basque youngsters. But almost none are showing up.

How do other people scout? Do you just scout the youth teams for specific teams? This is starting to be frustrating and proving to me why had I no patience for scouting attributes in the past. 

Edited December 7, 2023 by crusadertsar

[warlock]

Have you read the Athletic Bilbao thread:

Those guys are the masters of scouting for Basques. You'll probably get better answers there, too.

[Dr Naysay]

I do a lot of those regional type saves where I only buy players from a certain region and I find the best way is to manually take the time to input each city and town where players are born in to a search filter till you have the whole region set up and then Scout the players that show up in that filter. It's very time consuming, but once it's done(normally withing 30 to 40 mins) it makes life easier. With regards to Basque it should be totally easy because you can put the the Basque nationality in and immediately see every player in the region and Scout them individually.

[crusadertsar]

Thanks @warlock and @Dr Naysay I will try both of your suggestions.

[Dr Naysay]

7 minutes ago, crusadertsar said:

Thanks @warlock and @Dr Naysay I will try both of your suggestions.

If you ever decide to do a regional save outwith Basque the best place to get all the towns and cities in a region is via the Editor. If you click on a region in the editor it lists them all there and then you are left to create a filter yourself from that list. I love your love for Sociedad, a very technically proficient team.

[Cloud9]

5 hours ago, crusadertsar said:

How do other people scout? Do you just scout the youth teams for specific teams? This is starting to be frustrating and proving to me why had I no patience for scouting attributes in the past. 

I outlined my approach to setting up scouting networks about halfway down the page in this thread, if it helps. The most efficient scouting imo is to just go to national u23 teams and to scout anyone who's really young in them (ie. if they're 15 in the u23 group they're a phenomon). This sucks a lot of the enjoyment out of the game though, or at least it did for me, since you can just go shopping for superstars. 

In terms of setting up a realistic scouting network, do you have your Scouting Range Package turned on? I find I don't get the scouts to bring back reports if it's not actively enabled. Making sure you Untick the box in each scouting shortlist to "Keep scout reports up to date" is also essential, or your scouts will always be too busy to do any real work for you. 

Edited December 7, 2023 by Cloud9

[crusadertsar]

5 minutes ago, Cloud9 said:

I outlined my approach to setting up scouting networks about halfway down the page in this thread, if it helps. The most efficient scouting imo is to just go to national u23 teams and to scout anyone who's really young in them (ie. if they're 15 in the u23 group they're a phenomon). This sucks a lot of the enjoyment out of the game though, or at least it did for me, since you can just go shopping for superstars. 

In terms of setting up a realistic scouting network, do you have your Scouting Range Package turned on? I find I don't get the scouts to bring back reports if it's not actively enabled. Making sure you Untick the box in each scouting shortlist to "Keep scout reports up to date" is also essential, or your scouts will always be too busy to do any real work for you. 

Thanks! I'll take a look. I'm pretty sure i got "World" package. Didn't know you needed to turn it on. Thought it was on automatically. 

I have considered looking at youth teams manually. But it defeats the whole purpose of setting up scouting to. Why can't scouts just bring reports instead of me looking through all the national youth teams. It would just be Spanish and French team though so a bit less busywork but still. All my scouting is set to "ongoing" because I don't want to keep restarting it. I just want to be more or less automated, running in background while I get periodic reports and decide whether I add them to shortlist or not.

[OddJobRob]

I think the scouting ratings might be a little broken, might explain why you haven't found anyone.

 

[crusadertsar]

41 minutes ago, OddJobRob said:

I think the scouting ratings might be a little broken, might explain why you haven't found anyone.

 

Wow! No kidding. Maybe I'll try putting the star ratings as low possible and see what kind of players i get.

[keeper#1]

On 07/12/2023 at 13:47, crusadertsar said:

Wow! No kidding. Maybe I'll try putting the star ratings as low possible and see what kind of players i get.

I'm trying this now.  I've been having the same problem in My Builder save.  My scouts go out and come back with one or two players per report.

[crusadertsar]

28 minutes ago, keeper#1 said:

I'm trying this now.  I've been having the same problem in My Builder save.  My scouts go out and come back with one or two players per report.

I'm still having trouble getting reports. But i wonder if it's because of my small region focus 🤔 Will need to try to see if it's still difficult in another save with broader scouting focus.

[keeper#1]

9 minutes ago, crusadertsar said:

I'm still having trouble getting reports. But i wonder if it's because of my small region focus 🤔 Will need to try to see if it's still difficult in another save with broader scouting focus.

I'm scouting entire leagues and nations but only getting one or two players per report.

[crusadertsar]

1 minute ago, keeper#1 said:

I'm scouting entire leagues and nations but only getting one or two players per report.

That's really weird. Report bug?

[keeper#1]

I'm thinking I might have to at this point.

[Dr Naysay]

@crusadertsar Did you manage to resolve this as I am in my first save and my scouts are turning up virtually nothing?

[lilljons]

I've had the same problems (swedish 3rd tier). They are scouting but they end up under scouted players and not in the focuses. I previously had the last or second to last range. However I've sold some players and increased my scouting budget to be able to get the national reach and now I get quite some recomendations in the focuses again.

[crusadertsar]

3 hours ago, Dr Naysay said:

@crusadertsar Did you manage to resolve this as I am in my first save and my scouts are turning up virtually nothing?

A few more reports are trickling in but still not as many as I expected. So ended up doing it manually. Every few months I go through all the national teams (for Spain and France) and scout any Basque youngsters I see. It feels like cheating, although not quite like it I was playing with attribute masking turned off. But I don't know what else to do. I miss the old scouting system we had a few FM versions back. It might have not been as realistic but at least it was easy to set up and worked. And we didn't need to scout player multiple times over weeks just to see all of his attributes. Anyway, that's my 2 cents. 

[whatsupdoc]

Scouting ( or at least reporting/recommending) is clearly bugged at the mo. Scout manually if possible by looking at u19 national teams etc etc. 

Edited December 19, 2023 by whatsupdoc