Scouting

[Solarity]

Hi everyone, this is my first post so be kind, use lube! 

Ok, so scouting, I know how important this is as i am used to playing SupCom and forged Alliance, but, is there any negative effect of keeping a scout hidden on an enemy plant?  Is the AI "alerted" to your presence and will bad things start happening if say I have scouts on say 20 planets alround my home world?  I had a look ont he WIKI but I dont think I found my answer, I have just completed the tutorial and I am about to start my first campaign...

[chemical_art]

Welcome fellow SupCom player

There is no penalty for keeping scouts on a planet. The AI treats AI scouts as harmless units, and most things that trigger due to fleet actions do not occur for scouts. So aside from tying up a scout that could be used elsewhere, there is no harm in keeping a scout on a planet for intel.

[keith.lamothe]

Welcome to the forums

"Posting" scouts is a time-honored technique, actually, and does not provoke the AI or anything like that.  The only cost is that's one less scout you can field elsewhere.  That adds up, to the point that you may wind up unlocking MkII or even MkIII scouts just to be able to post enough scouts (if you play like me and want real-time scout data on every planet).

[BobTheJanitor]

I try to leave a scout on every planet, although with so many planets that's not always possible. Realistically once you've found all the worlds with important capturables and you're watching all your border worlds, you don't really need to leave scouts everywhere, although I always have the vague suspicion that the AI is building tons of threat on worlds I'm not watching and is going to unleash it when I least expect it.

[Hurmferd]

Only the paranoid survive.   

H.

[Solarity]

This is great news, I was worried something really bad would happen really quickly.  I'm sure something really bad will still happen, just not as quickly....

[BobTheJanitor]

This is great news, I was worried something really bad would happen really quickly.  I'm sure something really bad will still happen, just not as quickly....

You have grasped the core of the game right there. 

[Solarity]

Another silly question, how do you tell when you have found the enemy homeworld?

[Invelios]

It will have the same icon as your homeworld in the galaxy screen. (once you've scouted it so you can actually see it)

[Panopticon]

It'll also be one scary hive of machine death.

[BobTheJanitor]

Because one look at it makes you want to go hide under your chair.

But really, if you look at the galaxy map it gets its own big star icon like your homeworld does, except in the color for that AI. And if you look at the world, it will be full of lots of specialized types of guard posts that you haven't seen on any other worlds. It won't have a regular command station, either, it will have a big scary spiky looking AI home station. Also any AI worlds attached to it tend to have really beefy defenses and two warp gates sitting at the command station, so that's a good hint that the big bad homeworld is nearby. Those surrounding worlds are called 'core worlds' so that's what people are talking about if you hear that term.

Fake Edit: I got ninja'd but whatever I already typed it out, I'm posting it anyway.

[Solarity]

Thanks guys, really helpful stuff.  I was going to ask something else that wasnt quite as silly and I thought was important, but half a bottle of wine later and I cant remember now

EDIT : Actually I do remember now, I am aware that some ships and structures have radar jamming that reduces the effective range of your own ships weapons, how ever, sometimes when my ships are in range of targets (Z key) they wont engage them, any ideas?

[BobTheJanitor]

They may fire shots that the other ships are immune to. Select your ship and mouse over the target and see if it says 0 for the damage, that means the enemy ships are immune to shots from that ship type. If they are not immune and you're in range with no radar damping going on, I'm not sure what it is. Could be a bug. Probably means you should have more wine.

[Solarity]

Will have to try that next time I'm on, as now I'm watching CSI and after more wine (now a bottle) I might have a few lapses in judgement, esp. considering all the systems adjacent to mine have AI-Eyes in them and I'm sure attacking those in the wrong way would definately lead to an early appointment with the proctologist....

[Shrugging Khan]

Another little thingy or two:

1. High-Level scouts (Scout Drones mkIV and Scout Starships mkIV) are perma-cloaked and can explore everything. EVERYTHING. No resistance. Never research or build them, because the game gets quite boring once you do so.

2. Eyebots can scout, so take them as your starting bonus ship if you need more scouts but don't want to expend the research.