How are you getting on with Scouting?

[wicksyFM]

2 minutes ago, Cougar2010 said:

Basically you are paying a set sum per player to a 3rd party whether the player is 5 miles away or 605 miles away.  The 3rd party works out their costs on an overall basis, includes a profit margin and then splits the costs equally so no one club or player is at an advantage/disadvantage.

who is this 3rd party. im paying my scout a weekly wage to scout him. i just ran a test. i assigned 1 scout to scout darren mullings to 100% knowledge. it took a few months and cost £896

[Cougar2010]

Ok found a little time so had a quick look, hopefully at least some will find the below useful.

 

To keep things similar to what Dan is seeing I loaded just English leagues down to League 2 on a small database which gives me approx 8k players (Med was 11k & large 14k) and I chose Ipswich.

 

Not sure if it matters for scouting but the first thing to look at is “Player Knowledge” & “Youngster Knowledge” when setting up your manager. This could be just for your own players or it could have wider implications. I left mine at default which was around 11 for both.

 

So first day at the club and a look at the board screen (see below). My scouting range is UK & Ireland while it also tells me that the scouting budget will be used to pay for scouting packages + any scouting trips outside of the scouting range (Poland seems to have been removed).

 

Next step the scouting section and I changed the “Scouting Responsibility” at the top left to myself. The scouting budget is on the top line, right of centre and you can click on it to get an adjustment panel (See below) where you can add or take away funds between the scouting & transfer budget. You can see from the pic that I have £229k in the scouting budget for this season.

 

I was wrong about where the scouting packages are above, they are actually located on the player search screen at the top left. Clicking on the package brings up an options pop up where you can change the package. You can see from the pic below that the default packages selected are a league package for senior players which costs me £30.5k a year & a Championship youth package which is £20.5k a year. These are both well within the £229k I have for the year so I can afford higher packages but I may want to keep some budget back for scouting other players during the year. I certainly can't afford a European package as that would be £180k (Senior) + £360k (Youth) = £540k which is more than double my budget for the year. If I was playing this save I would probably select the England package for both which would cost me £153k (£51k +£102k) for the year and leave me around £75k in the scouting budget for other things.

 

Next the player search screen and some details. I won't take pics as its time consuming so these are the figures:

Default packages: 4,117 players in the search.

Default packages ticking interested: 1,419.

Changing the packages to England: 6,391.

England + ticking interested: 2,092.

 

You can clearly see here that the higher the package you select the more players are known/available to you in the player search which you can then scout individually.

 

 

Back to the scouting budget you can also scout individual players that are outside your scouting range set by the board. In the pic/example below I've right clicked on Buffon and selected scout report. You can see from the pop up if I wanted to go ahead with that report it would cost me £1.8k from the scouting budget because he is based outside the scouting range.

 

 

In more general terms you also want to consider the overall scouting knowledge of your club (Pic below). As you can see Ipswich start off with full knowledge of England, Scotland, Wales & Ireland + some knowledge of Poland. It also tells you the source of the knowledge which tends to be either a staff member or feeder club. Having staff members (especially scouts) from other countries improves the overall knowledge of the club and increases the number of players known to you in the player search.

 

Just to show this below is a pick of Ipswich HOY, Bryan Klug who was the source of the Poland knowledge for the club. Also below is a random potential scout I picked out who as well as scouting would give the club knowledge of Iceland, Holland, Switzerland & Turkey.

[Cougar2010]

1 minute ago, wicksyFM said:

who is this 3rd party. im paying my scout a weekly wage to scout him. i just ran a test. i assigned 1 scout to scout darren mullings to 100% knowledge. it took a few months and cost £896

As I understand it nowadays clubs are buying packages off a 3rd party company that collates data.

FM seems to be slightly at cross purposes now as you are paying a scout wages as well as buying the information off a 3rd party.

The cost I would assume now would be the cost of buying the basic information on the player and then have your scout going to watch him play several times (hotels, travel/fuel etc).  While there is certainly a cost involved for lower level clubs its the amount that is up for discussion. 

[grasu]

Every year SI promises great improvements and every year they deliver only partially or not at all. This new scouting system is the perfect example of this. It looked FANTASTIC on paper. It looked like a true step forward for the game but in practice it's not working.

Let's take an example. I started a game with a mid-tier club and sent 1 scout to exclusively scout Portugal. A small country by almost any measure and the scout had decent attributes (14/14, 100% knowledge of Portugal). I gave him VERY loose criteria for scouting: decent first team player, under the age of 30 and under 2.5 million. Results? 4 reports in 3 months. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that, in real life, a scout would return after 3 months of scouting the Portuguese leagues with 4 ****ing players suited for a mid-tier Eastern European club.

On the other hand, the scouting suggestions are also equally as ludicrous. There's 2 types of players that I'm getting as a suggestion: 35+ year olds or 19 year olds. I've tested this with clubs from various divisions and with different reputations and this still happens WAY too often. I keep telling my dumbass chief scout to disregard these players yet he keeps coming up with MORE 35 year olds to suggest. I am bombarded with dozens of messages about useless players yet my scouting department can't name more than 5 players playing in my domestic league? On what planet is this realistic?

[mrdanbartlett]

10 minutes ago, Cougar2010 said:

a

[Per Annum]

3 minutes ago, grasu said:

Let's take an example. I started a game with a mid-tier club and sent 1 scout to exclusively scout Portugal. A small country by almost any measure and the scout had decent attributes (14/14, 100% knowledge of Portugal). I gave him VERY loose criteria for scouting: decent first team player, under the age of 30 and under 2.5 million. Results? 4 reports in 3 months. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that, in real life, a scout would return after 3 months of scouting the Portuguese leagues with 4 ****ing players suited for a

 Depends, are the players willing to move to your eastern European country? There might not have been much overlap between those good enough and those willing to move, if that was either set or implied as a filter.

[mrdanbartlett]

What a legend!! That you for doing that, will give it a look later when on FM.  Amazing and most appreciated!! 

[corn_onthecurb]

25 minutes ago, Cougar2010 said:

Because a person can't be in two places at once and you can't scout players without watching matches.

Scouting a region/country is now basically "scout all competitions within that region/country"

I guess you're right.

It was handy to be able to specifically view the scout reports from each individual competition/region but now it;s just bundled into one

[grasu]

1 minute ago, Per Annum said:

 Depends, are the players willing to move to your eastern European country? There might not have been much overlap between those good enough and those willing to move, if that was either set or implied as a filter.

I never checked anything that would restrict my scout from reporting on all types of players. And, even if I would have, there are dozens of cheap players transferred by EE squads from Portugal in that league YEARLY. A scout should have ZERO trouble coming back with 20-30 reports in 3 months.

But it's not limited to just a foreign league. Even when scouting my own country scouts only come back with a handful of reports. That's absolutely bonkers. Anyone on these boards can name 10 worthwhile players in their domestic leagues. Am I expected to believe that a paid professional can't come up with 30 players to recommend in 3 months?

[Cougar2010]

3 minutes ago, grasu said:

Let's take an example. I started a game with a mid-tier club and sent 1 scout to exclusively scout Portugal. A small country by almost any measure and the scout had decent attributes (14/14, 100% knowledge of Portugal). I gave him VERY loose criteria for scouting: decent first team player, under the age of 30 and under 2.5 million. Results? 4 reports in 3 months. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY that, in real life, a scout would return after 3 months of scouting the Portuguese leagues with 4 ****ing players suited for a mid-tier Eastern European club.

While the scouting system may be buggy and need some tweaking this is an example of poor targeting by the user, sorry grasu but it is.

You are a mid tier Eastern European side but are scouting a country with a higher league reputation.  You say above you gave him a "very loose" criteria but in fact you didn't.

The first criteria is always players who are interested so what you actually asked him for was a 3* player, under 30, perceived to cost under £2.5m who is interested in moving to your club.

Especially if you don't have the league loaded there probably aren't that many falling into that category.  The ones that do are either lower than 3*, older than 30 or costing more than £2.5m which is obvious I guess.

You need to be changing your approach to either scouting nations who have a lower league rep than the nation you are in as they will be more interested in moving or altering the setting to target players who haven't yet reached their prime and haven't been spotted by bigger Portugese clubs.

[grasu]

4 minutes ago, Cougar2010 said:

While the scouting system may be buggy and need some tweaking this is an example of poor targeting by the user, sorry grasu but it is.

You are a mid tier Eastern European side but are scouting a country with a higher league reputation.  You say above you gave him a "very loose" criteria but in fact you didn't.

The first criteria is always players who are interested so what you actually asked him for was a 3* player, under 30, perceived to cost under £2.5m who is interested in moving to your club.

Especially if you don't have the league loaded there probably aren't that many falling into that category.  The ones that do are either lower than 3*, older than 30 or costing more than £2.5m which is obvious I guess.

You need to be changing your approach to either scouting nations who have a lower league rep than the nation you are in as they will be more interested in moving or altering the setting to target players who haven't yet reached their prime and haven't been spotted by bigger Portugese clubs.

I have a very large database loaded with over 95000 players. All available  Portuguese league levels loaded, with all players from top clubs, continental rep, national rep, etc. loaded from all 4 major footballing continents. Assuming this can be explained by the fact that the league rep is higher (for the record, it can't, there's dozens of transfers from the Portuguese leagues yearly IRL) how can you explain that my scouts can't even find players domestically? Also, for the record, I've bought the scouting package on a European level.

EDIT: what you're saying is that I'm looking for 3* players, but the scout is still returning partial reports that range from 2-4 stars so it works pretty much the same way as it did in the past. I ask for first team regulars and my scouts give me players ranging from 1 start / 3 potential to 4.5/4.5 star players.

[Cougar2010]

12 minutes ago, grasu said:

I have a very large database loaded with over 95000 players. All available  Portuguese league levels loaded, with all players from top clubs, continental rep, national rep, etc. loaded from all 4 major footballing continents. Assuming this can be explained by the fact that the league rep is higher (for the record, it can't, there's dozens of transfers from the Portuguese leagues yearly IRL) how can you explain that my scouts can't even find players domestically? Also, for the record, I've bought the scouting package on a European level.

EDIT: what you're saying is that I'm looking for 3* players, but the scout is still returning partial reports that range from 2-4 stars so it works pretty much the same way as it did in the past. I ask for first team regulars and my scouts give me players ranging from 1 start / 3 potential to 4.5/4.5 star players.

What happens IRL isn't really relevant in FM as we know in game reputation plays a large role in interest.

I've only tried the scouting assignments in a really low level save and I also didn't get a massive amount of reports back but then given the country I was in I've seen similar in previous FMs where I've had less than say 10/20 found on an assignment.

It could be the settings on the assignment that you need to tweak, it could be a bug somewhere with either the scouting or the assignment settings or it could be the way its designed to work.  The only way to know for sure would be to upload it to the bugs forum for SI to look at.  I've had a flick through the bugs forum and there are a couple of threads on a similar subject but not a lot.

 

EDIT

One thing I did notice was that you don't get reports when a nation/league doesn't have matches (ie the off season) so it looks like there is more emphasise on the scouts actually going to the matches to watch the players which may also be a factor in getting less reports as he can only attend one match at a time.  When you click on an assignment it actually tells you the current/last? match he attended, maybe this is the buggy area and he needs to choose the matches better.

[grasu]

11 minutes ago, Cougar2010 said:

What happens IRL isn't really relevant in FM as we know in game reputation plays a large role in interest.

I've only tried the scouting assignments in a really low level save and I also didn't get a massive amount of reports back but then given the country I was in I've seen similar in previous FMs where I've had less than say 10/20 found on an assignment.

It could be the settings on the assignment that you need to tweak, it could be a bug somewhere with either the scouting or the assignment settings or it could be the way its designed to work.  The only way to know for sure would be to upload it to the bugs forum for SI to look at.  I've had a flick through the bugs forum and there are a couple of threads on a similar subject but not a lot.

 

EDIT

One thing I did notice was that you don't get reports when a nation/league doesn't have matches (ie the off season) so it looks like there is more emphasise on the scouts actually going to the matches to watch the players which may also be a factor in getting less reports as he can only attend one match at a time.  When you click on an assignment it actually tells you the current/last? match he attended, maybe this is the buggy area and he needs to choose the matches better.

To be honest I too haven't been able to test very much in depth. i did notice that things are easier for bigger clubs (as they should be, which is also why I never play them) but still... there are too few actual reports from leagues that used to have hundreds of player reports in previous years. Indeed, that was stupid and it allowed you to cherry pick a squad, but surely there's a happy medium between a handful of reports and hundreds?

[RBKalle]

3 hours ago, Argente said:

Go into Scouting Focus at the top. Select General then on the right is a series of drop downs. 

Age . Experienced, peak, young

Player Style. Intelligent. Physical, Leader, Creative, Technical

Goalkeeper style. Aggressive, distributor, shot stopper

Availablitiy. All, now, typically.

 

 

I've been there, ant those are absolutely the most pointless criteria I've ever seen!

I keep on getting reports of past-their-prime, expensive and/or unwilling to move players... FFS, we can't afford a regular starter from Sevilla and surely he won't leave them for us, unless we offer him a CL spot or a truckload of money.

[ThatGuyYouKnow01]

Maybe I'm just unlucky, but what I find annoying is how a ton of players look to have 4-5* PA at 40-60% knowledge yet when you buy them they turn out to have 3-3.5* PA at best. In my Swansea game, I bought 2 players from Belgian leagues, one was a 20 year-old with what seemed to be 3* current ability and 4-5* potential. After buying him for what I thought was a bargain (4 million $ because I'm Canadian) it turned out he was a 2.5* CA with only 3.5* PA. Very annoying and even though it probably is my fault for not scouting him until 100% we should get a very clear idea of what the player is going to turn out to be at 40-60%. The other player I bought for 8 million or so turned out decent, 3* CA and 4* PA, but still annoying to have hyped myself up thinking I found cheap gems which turn out to be average at best players.

[join.me]

1 minute ago, ThatGuyYouKnow01 said:

Maybe I'm just unlucky, but what I find annoying is how a ton of players look to have 4-5* PA at 40-60% knowledge yet when you buy them they turn out to have 3-3.5* PA at best. In my Swansea game, I bought 2 players from Belgian leagues, one was a 20 year-old with what seemed to be 3* current ability and 4-5* potential. After buying him for what I thought was a bargain (4 million $ because I'm Canadian) it turned out he was a 2.5* CA with only 3.5* PA. Very annoying and even though it probably is my fault for not scouting him until 100% we should get a very clear idea of what the player is going to turn out to be at 40-60%. The other player I bought for 8 million or so turned out decent, 3* CA and 4* PA, but still annoying to have hyped myself up thinking I found cheap gems which turn out to be average at best players.

Hi!

Maybe it`s maximum 3.5* because of your training environment within the club? In case he join Real Madrid - he can reach 5* potential, but your training ground are worse and allow him to reach 3.5 max.

[OlivierL]

The advice from someone here to change the scouting responsibility in the scouting screen to 'myself - manager' is a game saver

Now i found the best way to set assignments to each scouts in stead of selecting the scouting focus..

 

scouting focus changes to 'assignments' ! great

[OlivierL]

Can anyone explain the difference between analyst report and scout report ? first is after a match / game ?

[mrdanbartlett]

Ok so took some time on this last night with my Ipswich save, I was in Jan and had a right bit of fortune..........I'd signed Jan Kirchoff on a free in the summer, on 14k a week but ended up playing Skuse instead and not using Jan K.

Offered him out after he moaned about not playing, and was shocked when I had 3 offers, I took the highest as it was £8m!  (but plus a partial wage contribution).   The board let me have 3m for transfer, but as I cannot find anyone I increased the scouting budget and negotiaed with the board to allow me to scout Europe.

I've now re-done all assignments - they will be scouting the various regions of Europe, mostly for players under £2.5m in transfer and with min 10 for determination.  I'll see what they come back with!

I noted before this that when I manually browse the national u21/u19 sides I can only see a few players for each side, mostly those at English clubs so I guess that was because of my scouting packages, now I've expanded those I will check again and see if more appear. 

 

[teknotel]

Working great for me as Barnet. Some issues are annoying like the number of useless players offering themselves to me, (club contacted by player), but other then that I really like everything else about it. It seems more focused to me, I manage all the assignments by myself and my main strat  here is to set assignments for players who can fill the roles in my tactics then set min scouted potential as 3 stars.

I get lots of good quality players who all pretty much fit my system. I felt like last year it was more luck based, but this year it feels like a realistic scouting system.

I really like the data analysts to, think its a cool addition. My only gripe is with the number of useless players offering themselves to me, I would like to be able to stop receiving these reports but there does not seem to be a way.

Also I made a post on it here: 

 

But I think the data analyst recommendations need fine tuning. Basically as Barnet my data analyst is mainly providing me reports on young Brazilian league players... Whilst extremely cool, it costs me too much scout them and I will never be able to sign them as the work permits won't go through. This may be a lack of info on my part but I am not sure how I can manage what the data analyst provides reports on, like I would like it to maybe focus on regions I have set, or at least rule out non EU regions whilst I am still in the lower leagues.

That said still loving it and the new release as a whole.

 

[Robioto]

I've just been reading through this thread, thanks everyone for the insight and I understand it like this:

• My selected packages impact the number of players that appear in my player search
• My player knowledge and youngster knowledge manager stats impact the number of players that appear in my player search (side question, do these manager stats increase/decrease over time?)
• Having scouts with knowledge from nations outside of my scouting packages will also impact the number of players from those nations in my player search (E.g. I have England only scouting package, but a Polish scout with Poliish knowldge so they appear on my player search)
• If I want to scout an individual player within my scout package limits then there is no futher cost to my budget
• If I want to scout an individual player outside my scout package limits then then I have to pay out of my remaining scouting budget

Have I understood this correctly?

 

[Cougar2010]

51 minutes ago, Robioto said:

I've just been reading through this thread, thanks everyone for the insight and I understand it like this:

• My selected packages impact the number of players that appear in my player search
• My player knowledge and youngster knowledge manager stats impact the number of players that appear in my player search (side question, do these manager stats increase/decrease over time?)
• Having scouts with knowledge from nations outside of my scouting packages will also impact the number of players from those nations in my player search (E.g. I have England only scouting package, but a Polish scout with Poliish knowldge so they appear on my player search)
• If I want to scout an individual player within my scout package limits then there is no futher cost to my budget
• If I want to scout an individual player outside my scout package limits then then I have to pay out of my remaining scouting budget

Have I understood this correctly?

 

Pretty much.

I'm not sure on the second point with player & youngster knowledge, I think the pop up help just says "improves your knowledge of senior/youth players" but it doesn't say whether thats for your own club or other clubs.

In terms of payments you have it right in terms of the scouting budget but whether the player is inside or outside your range there is still a cost to your bank account.

 

EDIT

In terms of scouting costs to the bank account this is something being discussed in a few threads in the bugs forum but its nothing new.  I remember a couple of versions ago I was managing a Portugese team when my scouting costs suddenly spiked.  After noting when the costs increased I found that a general assignment to Spain/Portugal/France was costing approx £100k but to scout Belgium was costing me close to £400k for no obvious reason.

[mrdanbartlett]

• If I want to scout an individual player within my scout package limits then there is no futher cost to my budget

 

I did not know that, I was scared to just go on a big scouting session because I was worried about the cost.

 

 

[Robioto]

1 minute ago, Cougar2010 said:

Pretty much.

I'm not sure on the second point with player & youngster knowledge, I think the pop up help just says "improves your knowledge of senior/youth players" but it doesn't say whether thats for your own club or other clubs.

In terms of payments you have it right in terms of the scouting budget but whether the player is inside or outside your range there is still a cost to your bank account.

Thanks @Cougar2010.

So if you have to still pay for indivdual scout reports within your packages then in the lower leagues you have to be extremely careful on how many players you scout, as it seems it costs £500+ to scout one player which means with a lower league scouting budge of £10k you would only be able to scout 20 players a year and have no money left over for packages?

Do we know if the general assignments for scouts cost money? Or the short term assignments? If it does then I'm not sure how I can afford to use scouting at all in a lower league save as the budgets are so tiny and so few players are actually scouted through these options anyway.

I might be completley misunderstanding something, but it seem overly complex and poorly explained in game.

[mrdanbartlett]

 

Hmmm, still not clear if the cost for one player within the nation you are scouting comes in addition to the overal scouting nation cost.

 

I.e if I scout Holland and it costs me £31k a month, then I tell the scout to further scout 10 players from Holland who look promising - that add's are £5k to the cost. 

[Robioto]

7 minutes ago, mrdanbartlett said:

• If I want to scout an individual player within my scout package limits then there is no futher cost to my budget

 

I did not know that, I was scared to just go on a big scouting session because I was worried about the cost.

 

 

Unfortunately I don't think this is the case after seeing Cougar's post - I think I misunderstood it.

[Cougar2010]

6 minutes ago, mrdanbartlett said:

 

Hmmm, still not clear if the cost for one player within the nation you are scouting comes in addition to the overal scouting nation cost.

 

I.e if I scout Holland and it costs me £31k a month, then I tell the scout to further scout 10 players from Holland who look promising - that add's are £5k to the cost. 

Not sure what the two amounts represent in the pic and the costs may differ from country to country (Both where you are from and where you are scouting).

But basically I think you have the right idea, if you set an assignment to scout say Holland based on the figs in the pic it would cost £31k.  If you then set the scout an assignment to individually scout 10 players then yes it seems like they will cost you approx £500 each.

Whether thats the intent from SI or whether they need to reconsider the amounts (especially for individual players) who knows. 

[Cougar2010]

9 minutes ago, Robioto said:

Unfortunately I don't think this is the case after seeing Cougar's post - I think I misunderstood it.

There is a difference between budget & bank account.

Scouting a player within your scouting range shouldn't cost you any money out of your budget but it will cost you money out of your bank account.

 

[mhaffy]

Give my Chief Scout responsibility for scouting and want to set minimum CA and PA levels. Whilst this can be set for short term assignments it seems that there is no way to apply such screening for General. I am hoping that this is an oversight and will be corrected in full game release. Seems bizarre that you cannot apply such thresholds for General scouting.

[CapAtom]

On 11/7/2017 at 13:41, Cougar2010 said:

I've seen this in other industries and it is realistic, at least in terms of how its implemented, not sure on the cost.

Basically you are paying a set sum per player to a 3rd party whether the player is 5 miles away or 605 miles away.  The 3rd party works out their costs on an overall basis, includes a profit margin and then splits the costs equally so no one club or player is at an advantage/disadvantage.

Not so realistic for football, a sport many, many people want to be involved in. A friends nephew scouts for a league one club part time and he is paid minimum wage and travel expenses.

[Cougar2010]

1 minute ago, CapAtom said:

Not so realistic for football, a sport many, many people want to be involved in. A friends nephew scouts for a league one club part time and he is paid minimum wage and travel expenses.

How is that relevant to what you quoted?

 

[wicksyFM]

You have to pay to scout everything. Player, region, league etc. If a player is within your scouting range and your package covers him you still have to pay. To me this is a stupid idea. If my board says I can scout within England and I have a package that covers the Vanarama National, North and South I should not have to pay to scout players in those leagues as I’m paying £850 pcm for a package that covers those leagues. I ran a test last night and it cost £869 pound out of my bank balance to scout that player to full knowledge. Add to that your package and scouts wages. 

 

[CapAtom]

Just now, Cougar2010 said:

How is that relevant to what you quoted?

 

Apologies, but scouting seems such a strange confusing mess we (well, me) may be at cross purposes. You were talking about costs and I would say the costs quoted in this thread are way out of whack with reality. Perhaps you can confirm this: if I don't have a package (LLM, can't afford) is it £586 per scouted player?

[wicksyFM]

1 minute ago, CapAtom said:

Apologies, but scouting seems such a strange confusing mess we (well, me) may be at cross purposes. You were talking about costs and I would say the costs quoted in this thread are way out of whack with reality. Perhaps you can confirm this: if I don't have a package (LLM, can't afford) is it £586 per scouted player?

It can be any amount. I’ve seen it coming in between £500 and £900. The player that cost me £896 was a player in the Vanarama South. 

[Cougar2010]

1 minute ago, CapAtom said:

Apologies, but scouting seems such a strange confusing mess we (well, me) may be at cross purposes. You were talking about costs and I would say the costs quoted in this thread are way out of whack with reality. Perhaps you can confirm this: if I don't have a package (LLM, can't afford) is it £586 per scouted player?

A little at cross purposes but then FM seems to be a little as well.

In past FMs we hired scouts, paid them wages & expenses for each assignment.  None of which we had a budget for but the costs did come out of the bank accounts.

Seemingly in the last few years real life has moved on and clubs now often use dedicated 3rd parties (Companies) which hold scouting information on lots of players.  SI have introduced this aspect in to FM18 but there does seem to be some cross over as we also still employ independent scouts and pay them wages.

So if we ask an indivdual scout to scout a player he should do that as part of his employment with expenses added, with that in mind the fixed fee seems wrong (Should vary according to distance/country etc).  However if we are asking him to source that knowledge from a 3rd party company that provides the package then at least part of the cost being fixed is fair as I imagine they charge a fixed sum per player.  Its also possible that SI have tried to simplify the financial side somewhat because its much more complicated IRL.

The big elephant in the room though is are the £500ish & £850ish costs per player a fair reflection of RL costs?  Honestly I don't know but it has been raised in the bugs forum.

[Robioto]

34 minutes ago, Cougar2010 said:

Not sure what the two amounts represent in the pic and the costs may differ from country to country (Both where you are from and where you are scouting).

But basically I think you have the right idea, if you set an assignment to scout say Holland based on the figs in the pic it would cost £31k.  If you then set the scout an assignment to individually scout 10 players then yes it seems like they will cost you approx £500 each.

Whether thats the intent from SI or whether they need to reconsider the amounts (especially for individual players) who knows. 

Watched this earlier. The non-bracketed values in that were 3 months, so the cost of a short term focus assignments, the bracketed vaules are the monthly cost.

What doesn't seem right with that is that scouting a league for a month costs marginally more than scouting an individual player (£804 vrs £586)

So it seems that the only things that come out of your scouting budget are your packages and scouting players outside of your scouting range. So any short term or general scouting assingments come from your bank balance and the game fails to tell you how much these cost?

The rest comes from the bank balance? Which begs the question, what is the point of scouting budget if they are only used for certain things within scouting and other activities don't impact it at all and bypass it all together?

[JPKD]

Anyone had much success with scouting individual matches? There is a quick button to set a fixture to be scouted. will have a play tonight on my Southampton save. From memory I did it for a game, just to test, and a few recommendations came in.

[CapAtom]

18 minutes ago, Cougar2010 said:

A little at cross purposes but then FM seems to be a little as well.

In past FMs we hired scouts, paid them wages & expenses for each assignment.  None of which we had a budget for but the costs did come out of the bank accounts.

Seemingly in the last few years real life has moved on and clubs now often use dedicated 3rd parties (Companies) which hold scouting information on lots of players.  SI have introduced this aspect in to FM18 but there does seem to be some cross over as we also still employ independent scouts and pay them wages.

So if we ask an indivdual scout to scout a player he should do that as part of his employment with expenses added, with that in mind the fixed fee seems wrong (Should vary according to distance/country etc).  However if we are asking him to source that knowledge from a 3rd party company that provides the package then at least part of the cost being fixed is fair as I imagine they charge a fixed sum per player.  Its also possible that SI have tried to simplify the financial side somewhat because its much more complicated IRL.

The big elephant in the room though is are the £500ish & £850ish costs per player a fair reflection of RL costs?  Honestly I don't know but it has been raised in the bugs forum.

 

Thanks Cougar2010, very helpful. This what I was getting at before: if I pay my scouts a wage and they are the only people I have scouting for me the extra cost for each instance of scouting a player seems, as you note, inordinately large. In reality if my scout John Smith scouted a player from a team ten minutes down the road and then an extra expense of £500+ came in you would think someone was fiddling something somewhere or grossly incompetent. After reading this thread I had a quick look at my first test game in the conference north (to get used to the new features before starting a new game when the game is released proper) and I had spent 10 grand in a month on scouting without realising every player I scouted was costing me a bomb. If I did that any further the club would be bankrupt in no time.

I would say in the real world there is a wide difference in how different clubs go about things. The club I support in recent years seemed to sign a lot of player linked with one agent, then moved on, after a managerial change, to signing players using our new head of recruitment's own proprietary scouting system, and now seem to have gone back to a more traditional approach which is having a scout who works for the club who has a network of guys who scout for minimum payment on an as needed basis (and likely for multiple teams at the same time). I applaud the attempt in the game to show some of this new reality but the execution is somewhat lacking.

[Cougar2010]

14 minutes ago, Robioto said:

So it seems that the only things that come out of your scouting budget are your packages and scouting players outside of your scouting range. So any short term or general scouting assingments come from your bank balance and the game fails to tell you how much these cost?

The rest comes from the bank balance? Which begs the question, what is the point of scouting budget if they are only used for certain things within scouting and other activities don't impact it at all and bypass it all together?

You aren't understanding what a budget is.

The scouting budget is just like the wage & transfer budgets.

All money in FM comes from the bank account.  A budget is what the board will allow you to spend out of the bank account.

[Robioto]

7 minutes ago, Cougar2010 said:

You aren't understanding what a budget is.

The scouting budget is just like the wage & transfer budgets.

All money in FM comes from the bank account.  A budget is what the board will allow you to spend out of the bank account.

So everything related to scounting comes out of the scounting budget regardless of the scouting activity?

As I understand that everything comes out of the bank account but it seems not all scouting related activites impact the scouting budget? Correct me if I'm wrong? Meaning the scouting budge it just for specific scouting activities

I probably need to look at the game again as I've been at work all day while reading and posting here, so it will be good to have a closer look with the new found information from this discussion and will hopefully give me a better understanding.

[Cougar2010]

24 minutes ago, Robioto said:

So everything related to scounting comes out of the scounting budget regardless of the scouting activity?

No.

 

24 minutes ago, Robioto said:

As I understand that everything comes out of the bank account but it seems not all scouting related activites impact the scouting budget? Correct me if I'm wrong? Meaning the scouting budge it just for specific scouting activities

Yes.

All money/costs come out of the bank account but the scouting budget is only used/reduced for packages and scouting players outside of the scouting range.

 

[Robioto]

Just now, Cougar2010 said:

No.

 

Yes.

All money/costs come out of the bank account but the scouting budget is only used/reduced for packages and scouting players outside of the scouting range.

 

Great, thanks @Cougar2010.

I got there in the end.

[ArielOrtega10]

This is a post from SI on another feed and I think it will be really useful to some of you out there. If you don't want to have to deal with all the terrible players coming into your scouting centre you can ask your Chief Scout/DoF to deal with scouting meetings in the 'Responsibilities' section on your staff screen. If you do this, your Chief Scout/DoF will cut through all the rubbish and identify the top targets for you and choose to scout further the players that they perceive as having more ability. NOW.....this doesn't stop the problem of hidden scouting fees I know, but it saves you time and means you don't have to deal with all the terrible players in your inbox. Equally, and I didnt even realise until I got to December in the game but there is a drop down feature on the scouting inbox where you can select 'requested' 'agent' 'assignment' etc etc. This will filter out the players you have chosen to scout and players that are approaching your club through an agent or by themselves as well as a few other options. The scouting system is certainly very confusing and I'm sure in later versions a few issues will be addressed, but I like what SI are trying to do, they have overhauled a major part of the game, taken a brave step and I don't think anyone can claim this game is the same as every other FM. It's a new challenge, and it may not be the most intuitive, but im sure if we put in enough hours things will fall into place, similarly I'm already looking forward to FM19, FM20 etc, as I like the direciton SI have decided to go in, they aren't playing it safe and they have made the game way more difficult! I've played versions of FM/CM for getting on 20 years and I can't say it has always been easy but I could always manage to beat the game eventually and work out a way of winning most games but now I'm finding it difficult again and I think that is something to be happy about!! PEACE (see below for post from other feed)

 

 

 

 

 

The reason you are not seeing the reports coming into your Requested filter, is because in Staff Responsibilities you have given the responsibility 'Handles Scouting Meetings' to your chief scout. This will see the staff member deal with the Scouting Meeting whenever it is set to be generated. Staff member will raise the highest rated player to the user and also choose to take any further action on other players who have been generated into the Scouting Inbox during that time. If the user does not have the responsibility the user can still go into the Scouting Inbox at any time and deal with any reports generated. 

This can be seen in the below screenshot from your save game. Observe the text that states the scout has gone through the suggestions. When looking on the Assignments -> Players page you can see who the Chief Scout has chosen to scout further. 

If you want to deal with the scouting meetings and view all of the reports that come into the meetings, then I would suggest assigning the 'Handles Scouting Meetings' responsibility to yourself. If you do that then you should see all requested reports come into your scouting inbox under the 'Requested' filter. 

I understand there will be some adjusting to do with the new scouting system as it appears you have a certain style of scouting that will work differently in FM18. If you have any further questions then give me a shout and I will be happy to help. I have asked my colleagues to try and take a look at your other threads, but please keep in mind the guys here are exceptionally busy at the moment and will be getting back to you as quickly as possible. 

[OlivierL]

@

joepippmg

What happens if i assign 'update you on the players your scouts have found ' to my Chief scout ?  i can change this to my Director of Football.. would this change anything ?

The set assignment and handles scouting meetings is assigned to myself.

 

[wicksyFM]

im running a few tests on the costs of scouting. 

1. in september and so far my scouting costs have come in at £3544. i have one scout and he is scouting my division. The vanarama south/north. this is with the vanarama n/s package

2. scouted 1 player untill full knowledge the cost came in at £894. same divison as me vanarama north/south. no package.

3. september again and my 1 scout has been assigned to the league above.  the vanarama national. cost so far £4000. . with vanarama national and regional package

4. september again and my 1 scout has been out scouting a whole nation with no package selected.cost of £3200

I completely understand how scouting works. i just dont get why we pay for a package and then have to pay to scout within that package. 

 

by the way, attribute masking is enabled

[wicksyFM]

i have tested the scouting of 1 player again, but this time with attribute masking disabled. as some of you may know if you disable attribute masking, every player has a knowledge level of 80%. all you need to do is request a scout report and you will then have full knowledge when it is completed. this comes in at £67.

 

[byvirus]

i really hate scouting on fm18...

[ArielOrtega10]

1 hour ago, Olivierlandman said:

@

joepippmg

What happens if i assign 'update you on the players your scouts have found ' to my Chief scout ?  i can change this to my Director of Football.. would this change anything ?

The set assignment and handles scouting meetings is assigned to myself.

 

I am not entirely sure, I dont think this changes anything. I imagine this determines who delivers you an update on the assignments that you set for your scout but I haven't played around with this feature. I am managing a Serie C side and I can't even afford a Head Scout so I can't tell you tbh 

In any case, I was outlaying a way to reduce the tiresome process of going through every player in your scouting inbox. hope it was of some help. 

[amberhelix]

Have I got this right? So as a big rich club (Liverpool in my case), in recent versions of FM I would have ~25 scouts employed. All with top stats and 100% knowledge of their respective countries. I would have them constantly scouting their own nation and competitions within that nation all year round. All this in the hope that they would reveal the best talents. But now... I can pick the 'world' package for both senior and youth and everyone is revealed to me instantly. I still need to get additional scouting on players I'm interested in, I get that, but do I need to have worldwide scouts anymore? If the package I pay for reveals the best Spanish youth players - do I still benefit from having a Spanish scout or can Joe Bloggs do it? Why would I need more than a handful of scouts now?

[wicksyFM]

14 minutes ago, amberhelix said:

Have I got this right? So as a big rich club (Liverpool in my case), in recent versions of FM I would have ~25 scouts employed. All with top stats and 100% knowledge of their respective countries. I would have them constantly scouting their own nation and competitions within that nation all year round. All this in the hope that they would reveal the best talents. But now... I can pick the 'world' package for both senior and youth and everyone is revealed to me instantly. I still need to get additional scouting on players I'm interested in, I get that, but do I need to have worldwide scouts anymore? If the package I pay for reveals the best Spanish youth players - do I still benefit from having a Spanish scout or can Joe Bloggs do it? Why would I need more than a handful of scouts now?

i have all the best packages and only 25% knowledge of portugal. hired a portugese scout the knowledge stayed at 25% and revaled no extra players.

scouting is starting to wind me up now