[Discussion] Scouting Range Modifications.

[BoyInGreen]

Hi,

I just thought that I would share some ideas that a club's scouting range can be more realistically represented in game, in particular for semi-professional and amateur clubs.

First of all, I believe that the present situation is that in general, semi-pro and amateur sides seem to be limited to scouting within their own country. In countries which are vast and have no agreements regarding freedom of movement, this works fine, however it is less realistic when the club is located on a border. To give an example, if you are managing Blyth Spartans, you should be allowed to scout in the Scottish Borders area, which is not possible at the moment for a part-time club. On the other hand, you could technically scout as far south as Penzance, even though it would be much more economical to scout in Scotland. To be fair, you would probably have to pay an awful lot to convince a player from Penzance to come to the other side of the country, and the games mechanics do recognise this, however there is no reason I can think of that would stop Blyth scouting in Hawick (or conversely, Gretna scouting in Carlisle). One might say international clearance, but this is relatively easy to get and it is common for players on the (open) border between two countries to move between the two.

A related problem is that while the current set-up otherwise reflects semi-pro football quite well, the absence of wages in the amateur game results in the scouting range being broken. From my own experience in game, an amateur club's scouting range extends up to a 200 km radius (as the crow flies) inside the same country as the club. I think that its unlikely in the amateur game that a player would be prepared to move such a distance without some sort of payment (unless they migrated for reasons other than football). Furthermore, this radius appears to be the same for all amateur clubs regardless of reputation, whereas in the solution that I propose, this will be taken into account in deciding what radius a club can scout within.

As for the solution, I think that a club's base scouting range should extend to every country that the club's home country has an agreement with, and that the radius (in kilometres) within which a club can scout should be the club's reputation divided by 10. Thus a club with a reputation of 1000 can scout within 100 km of its location, one with 250 can scout within 25 km and one with 3000 can scout within 300 km. This takes into account that as clubs grow in reputation, players will be willing to travel further to sign for it. This radius will then be united with the current scouting range (except for amateur clubs, who should only be able to scout  in the parts of their country/EU etc. within their radius), so that a League 2 club can for example scout within the UK and Ireland AND within 3-400km of its home town. Depending on their location, the club can therefore potentially scout in Northern France, Belgium or Holland.

I hope that this post gives an idea of what I have in mind, and if anyone has other or better ideas, then share them in this thread by all means.

[Neil Brock]

Reviewed so locked.