Is anyone else annoyed by scouting micro?

[Martyn van Buren]

I've been thinking about scouting, which has long been annoying to me --- I dislike how micro-intensive it is, and how much difference it's possible to make to your scouting range by carefully moving them around planets in wide circles and things like that.  In some circumstances, I find myself just refusing to scout past a certain number of jumps, because it feels like cheating.  I'm not sure if this is widely seen as a problem, but, if so, I have a modest proposal.

Basically, I think the broad strokes of scouting are good --- that you can get a certain distance into enemy territory, and that there are ways of extending this if you're willing to pay a small strategic cost, either by using transports or by clearing out tachyon guardians.  However, I dislike the fact that you can arbitrarily extend your scouting range by carefully planning routes across planets.

Thus, I would suggest having scout range be determined simply by how many times they get decloaked --- make them totally immune to weapons (except ion cannon/counter-spy shots), and simply have them self-attrition half or a third of their health every time they're tagged by a tachyon shot.  Of course, each mark should allow them to survive one more tachyon shot, and the caps should be significantly reduced, since it will not longer be necessary to send a clump of scouts to get one through.  In fact, ship cap should probably go up with marks (except IV), so you can picket substantially more worlds as you upgrade them.

[Cyborg]

For the knowledge cost, it seems fair as it is. After all, spending knowledge on creating a strategic plan is part of the fun. Making scouts suck is not. What kind of unfair advantage and exploits are you seeing?

[zoutzakje]

Personally I like having to micro scouting. In fact it's one of the few things involving micro that I actually enjoy. I always play with show unexplored wormholes off and extra fog of war, so microing scouts is a necessity for me. To me it's always exciting to see how far I can get with scouts before I have to unlock higher mark (sometimes even scout starships if there's a cluster of mk IV worlds I want to get past).
Scouting doesn't cost me any extra time either, even though I have to micro it. I scout whenever there is something big building up, like rebuilding my fleet for example. Or in the last 2 minutes/% of an incoming CPA/Exo. If I have already properly prepared for those, then there isn't much I can do in those last 2 mins besides scouting.
No I'm afraid I don't see any flaws with scouting as it is. I think it's spot on.

And I thought we already had lazy people scouts? Or did jumpships get nerfed? I never used them so I wouldn't know.

[TechSY730]

I don't mean to be rude with this terse response, but, no, I'm not annoyed by it.

[Bognor]

Hmmm... What if the duration of time tachyons decloaked things was reduced?  So the scouts would get hit immediately after entering and immediately before leaving a planet (assuming Tachyon Sentinels present at those wormholes), but where they went in-between wouldn't matter, as they'd always all be cloaked.  I think that would maintain current balance and the neat cloak-boosting effect, while eliminating the tactical advantage of excessive micro Martyn describes.

In fact, ship cap should probably go up with marks (except IV), so you can picket substantially more worlds as you upgrade them.

This is already the case.

[Tridus]

I've seen some worlds that my scouts can't get past without babysitting, even if it's just one or two hops out. THAT gets annoying real fast.

Further out, not really. That said the last couple of games I've played I've just changed the settings to start with the map explored.

[chemical_art]

I am annoyed, but I enable full visibility so I manage to avoid it.

[Histidine]

The only thing that really annoys me about scouting is those situations where there's a third wormhole in between the entry and exit wormholes on my scouts' route, so they get shot an extra time unless I micro them around.

Tachyon raiding gets a bit tedious at times, but it lets the scouts go much further. Champions are particularly good at this.

[Kahuna]

There's nothing wrong with scouting.

[Oralordos]

So keith, X, is this one of those things where everything seemed find and suddenly everyone decides it's bad?

I think the way it is right now is fine. I'm not sure you are supposed to go really far out from your empire without fleet action clearing the way anyway.

[Draco18s]

My issue isn't scouting but rather how the AI uses tachyons (i.e. everywhere on every wormhole all the time).

[Martyn van Buren]

I think we can conclude that the answer to my question (and Orolodors's) is no, this particular gripe is just me.

[Toranth]

I think we can conclude that the answer to my question (and Orolodors's) is no, this particular gripe is just me.

Well, Chem agrees with you two as well, but yeah... this doesn't seem to be a problem for most people.

For me, I don't particularly like or dislike the way it works right now.  Scouting (aka, knowing where things are) is very important, but the details of how you get your scout ships into AI space is kinda unremarkable.  I usually select a group, the click on the galaxy map, and check back later if the "New System" noise plays.  I almost never micro my scouts (except in-system picket placement to thwart EMP Guardians), and I usually have very little trouble scouting the galaxy.
The topic of Tachyon defenses has come up a couple of times before, and somewhere there is a list of a bunch of alternate ideas to replace the "1+ Tachyon Guardians spawn on every wormhole" that we currently have.  Implementing some of those would make scouting more interesting, but probably add rather than remove micro.

If I were to voice any actual complaint about scouting, it is that currently you can only get 60 scout drones Mk I-III + 1 Mk IV.  That's only enough to picket half of the larger map sizes, which can make tracking down special things awkward (Advanced Hybrid Plots, I'm looking at you here).

[Qatu]

The best thing about scouting is it gives something to do while fleets are (re)building.

[tadrinth]

Or just get the Mark IV scout which is immune to tachyon. 

Scout Starships also seem to be VASTLY better at scouting, due to their Ion Cannon immunity.  I've gotten Mark II of them and had them be amazing for scouting.