Leave Scouting to your Chief Scout?

[Pedro]

I didn't buy FM18 so the new scouting system I new to me.  I actually quite like the style of reports and what not, actually feels a little more lifelike - but anyhow to my point.  I'm managing Man Utd, have an extraordinary number of scouts (35) and to familiarise myself with the system I've let my chief scout lead on reporting and assignments for the season.  Only issue is - it doesn't look like he's sent anyone anywhere.  Yes I have full packages for each, but staff are just down as doing 'general' scouting. 

 

Is this the norm now or am I missing something?  I have a feeling i'll be taking this back over and setting assignments myself.  Anyone got an opinion?

[warlock]

I usually leave it to my chief scout or DoF. In the assignments screen where it says they're doing general scouting, you can click the down arrow next to 'ongoing' and see which teams your scouts have watched. At Sheff Utd a couple of months into my first season, my four scouts have watched a couple of hundred teams, and submitted reports on about 100 players that fit my search criteria.

Your scouts and chief data analyst should be flagging players that they think are worth detailed scouting. You can also use the short-term scouting focus to set your own priorities for up to a month while still leaving overall control to your chief scout.

The main thing is whether you're getting good reports. And, BTW, your board will want you to fire about half of that extraordinary number.

[blimey]

Chief Scout's AI is pretty bad. One time I let go of a scout whose job is scouting next opponent. After he was gone the Chief Scout did not re-assign the job to any other scout on my team. I ended up not having scout reports of next opponent until I discovered the issue and manually assigned the job.

[BigV]

On 20/11/2018 at 19:56, Pedro said:

I didn't buy FM18 so the new scouting system I new to me.  I actually quite like the style of reports and what not, actually feels a little more lifelike - but anyhow to my point.  I'm managing Man Utd, have an extraordinary number of scouts (35) and to familiarise myself with the system I've let my chief scout lead on reporting and assignments for the season.  Only issue is - it doesn't look like he's sent anyone anywhere.  Yes I have full packages for each, but staff are just down as doing 'general' scouting. 

 

Is this the norm now or am I missing something?  I have a feeling i'll be taking this back over and setting assignments myself.  Anyone got an opinion?

I myself was in the same spot in the beta and did some testing and posting in forums. The major thing to expect is that SCOUTING HAS CHANGED MASSIVELY from 17, those days where scouts come back within 2 or 3 days with like 10-15 players per day search are gone. They search by games now where each scout watches a game of 2 teams and creates a report that you can change from matches/weeks/ until full knowledge. In fm 17 I set everything up myself with scouts working the top and best countries for players- usually top counties and south america/holland/belgium for wonderkids.

Chief scout- I did a test with chief scout which I think is Jim lawlor if im not mistaken and he does a decent job. But I was specific to each region/country i wanted to scout so I listed them all and added the details and clicked "all" to find the players and it came back promising at times as it was quite frequent but you cannot specify which scout goes where, so if their adaptability is poor some scouts will be sent away into other regions and take LONG LONG time for them to master or even familiarise with that country. This led me to switch back to my routes of doing it manually (which I fear is worse but under my rules so I can only blame myself instead of going mental against the AI).

Manual scouting-  I set up each scout that are the best in terms of ability/potential to each of those specified countries so about 12 scouts approx i sent out maybe less but give or take 3. Some I sent to leagues so its basically like having 2 scouts in a country where one is specific to finding players in the league and then the country which sometimes can counteract so for some reason I always "discard" them but never show back which is something I wanted to do. I'm never specific to who or what I want even in FM17 so I always scout the players but I control them to be "at least 3/good" on current ability and same for potential with the age between 18-31. I've noticed it takes a long long long long long time (2 seasons in and only scouted 100 players or so for each scout- fm17 usually did that in 3/4 months) but this way I know my scouts are doing the dirty work and providing players that I can search in the player search area.

My opinion on what you should do- Personally I think you should be specific to what you want and by specific i mean VERY SPECIFIC , like if you wanted a wonderkid then search hot prospect in areas you wish to find them in or if you want first team then use first team option with specifying what ability/potential, region, age, attributes etc. I'd say stick to chief scout reporting due to the fact that scouting is quicker than manual ones and the short term option is really useful in transfer windows especially when you want good players because when i managed united in first season I got sibide, manolas, tierney and bentacur and they are players I knew myself that were good and not from scouts. Plus manual scouting takes an hour or 2 with 32 scouts available which really kills time when you're sorting staff, responsibilities and training out. Hope this helps pal, let me know with what you go with and see if you improved where I couldn't 

[Miravlix]

It's completely pointless to use manual scouting, you are not going to do a better job than the AI.

 

I've used manual scouting since the beta of FM18, so I tried using AI scouting in FM19 and I just can't find any value in wasting all that time on manual controlling it, there is no difference in players found, even if you do a very focused manual youth scouting, you get just as bad result as if you tell the AI to generally focus youth.

 

Both methods is basically useless, so no point in working hard on setting up manual scouting if you can't do it better than the game.

 

Whatever it's focused or AI youth scouting the game still suddenly tells me about this 20+ year old wonder player, that my scouts somehow couldn't see as a youth.

[BigV]

On 21/11/2018 at 22:10, Miravlix said:

It's completely pointless to use manual scouting, you are not going to do a better job than the AI.

 

I've used manual scouting since the beta of FM18, so I tried using AI scouting in FM19 and I just can't find any value in wasting all that time on manual controlling it, there is no difference in players found, even if you do a very focused manual youth scouting, you get just as bad result as if you tell the AI to generally focus youth.

 

Both methods is basically useless, so no point in working hard on setting up manual scouting if you can't do it better than the game.

 

Whatever it's focused or AI youth scouting the game still suddenly tells me about this 20+ year old wonder player, that my scouts somehow couldn't see as a youth.

Surely thats a massive problem then considering in 17 everything was accurate to real life situations, its also stupid that the chief doesn't assign their preferred places of region/country/leagues to scout but the whole scouting range, its an absolute monstrosity that a team needs adaptability of 15+ to even consider scouting a place and thats just the start, face it this game is broke now, fm20 needs a big big change 

[Things Could Get Messi]

I missed 18 as well so I'm also trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. Back in the day I would simply employ 1 scout from each major country I wanted covering and another couple from the nation I was managing in. Knowing each scout could do a full search of their own nation in just 8 days made it very simple and I would always send each one back to their homeland about a fortnight before the start of a transfer window to ensure I had plenty of recent reports. 

I'm currently managing in the Championship on FM19 allowing the club to scout in Europe. Figuring out the packages bit was simple enough. Getting your scouts to actually do their job without having to ask someone else to assign the tasks though feels almost impossible. It don't seem to matter what I ask them to do, where to scout or what I'm looking for, they sit around and seemingly enjoy the chance to rob a living for weeks/months until I ask the Chief Scout to assign them jobs instead. Until I moved on to FM19, there wasn't a single part of the game where I wasn't 100% sure of exactly what I was doing and I was in control of pretty much every aspect of my club so this is taking some getting used to! 

Anyway, with scouts now also taking their pet tortoises for long walks during their scouting trips, it appears to be a very long process if you are asking for recommendations or a good quality player report from a nation where you have little knowledge. However, employing scouts with certain knowledge already can be a massive help by increasing the amount of players you have good information on basically straight away at a small cost of time and money. The scout can even be a bit worse attributes wise than you would like normally if they will give you an instant bigger choice of players. At my club currently in the Championship, I am allowed to scout anywhere in Europe but the highest package I have currently open is UK and Ireland for £120k. I am only allowed 4 scouts currently and our money is very tight. Thankfully, I luckily found a scout called Sjaak Van Der Helder (attributes and knowledge in screenshot below) for a wage of £550 p/w and have good knowledge of players from the majority of  the European countries I currently need when having a search without having to upgrade my package. 

[BigV]

13 hours ago, Things Could Get Messi said:

I missed 18 as well so I'm also trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. Back in the day I would simply employ 1 scout from each major country I wanted covering and another couple from the nation I was managing in. Knowing each scout could do a full search of their own nation in just 8 days made it very simple and I would always send each one back to their homeland about a fortnight before the start of a transfer window to ensure I had plenty of recent reports. 

I'm currently managing in the Championship on FM19 allowing the club to scout in Europe. Figuring out the packages bit was simple enough. Getting your scouts to actually do their job without having to ask someone else to assign the tasks though feels almost impossible. It don't seem to matter what I ask them to do, where to scout or what I'm looking for, they sit around and seemingly enjoy the chance to rob a living for weeks/months until I ask the Chief Scout to assign them jobs instead. Until I moved on to FM19, there wasn't a single part of the game where I wasn't 100% sure of exactly what I was doing and I was in control of pretty much every aspect of my club so this is taking some getting used to! 

Anyway, with scouts now also taking their pet tortoises for long walks during their scouting trips, it appears to be a very long process if you are asking for recommendations or a good quality player report from a nation where you have little knowledge. However, employing scouts with certain knowledge already can be a massive help by increasing the amount of players you have good information on basically straight away at a small cost of time and money. The scout can even be a bit worse attributes wise than you would like normally if they will give you an instant bigger choice of players. At my club currently in the Championship, I am allowed to scout anywhere in Europe but the highest package I have currently open is UK and Ireland for £120k. I am only allowed 4 scouts currently and our money is very tight. Thankfully, I luckily found a scout called Sjaak Van Der Helder (attributes and knowledge in screenshot below) for a wage of £550 p/w and have good knowledge of players from the majority of  the European countries I currently need when having a search without having to upgrade my package. 

I agree with pretty much all your cases, I prefer to do them myself as I mentioned earlier because in 17 I had a lot more freedom and found alot of players worth my time while the chief was poor, now it seems they've switched roles technically speaking. But it's still really slow and brings back the same players even if you discard them, acknowledge doesn't do what it says nor does discard when chief scout takes the range. Wait so are the packages useful or not? cause it sounds like the packages are useless if you can send anyone anywhere if you have a lower package deal. Plus how did your chief scout do all its biddings? did you pick certain features like the region/countries? or did you leave it free for the scouting range? did you add any specific things like ability, age, price etc.? 

[isignedupfornorealreason]

I set them up myself as the chief scout seems to put most of them in the UK...