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+--- Thread: TUTORIAL: Scouting, a simple way to maximize profits and save yourself from a lot of troubles. (/showthread.php?tid=66645)
TUTORIAL: Scouting, a simple way to maximize profits and save yourself from a lot of troubles. - Pinko - 09-23-2011
Greetings, Discoverer, and welcome to my first guide!
This small guide will explore the basics of Scouting and how it is beneficial to everyone.
What is scouting?
Scouting is the act of using a vessel to move ahead of you or your group to make certain the way is clear for it. This strategy is most often used by either militaries before a fight to estimate enemy forces or by traders to see if the way ahead is fine. The selected scout will move forward, using the same trajectory the rest of the group should use in theory. Staying far ahead enough from the group so they are not visible on scanners, they will report on the activity of the sector (if there are people around, if they are hostile, neutral or friendly, etc.) and will let the group take a course of action (if the scout is part of a military unit) or will have to decide if the way is clear or not for the group to proceed (if the scout is part of a trading party). For miners, scouts will simply stay in a sector renowed for pirates to fly through and will warn the mining group about the traffic coming back and forth. Some groups will recruit a second scout, which will stay behind and make sure no one follows them by mining the tradelane just as they are about to enter a tradelane, as an example, or to prevent being flanked by an enemy force as the main force moves forward.
How is it beneficial?
Let's face it, it is always frustrating to meet a pirate and be forced to pay him, or have your group of capital ship support be annihilated because you had no idea of how large the bomber support of the target was. A scout prevents these mistakes for a price ranging from free to 1 or 2 million credits (miners should expect to pay around 4 or so million credits, though, or have for them to be included into the share of the profits), by simply making sure that you can face the situation ahead of you. For traders, a good scout will also lure the pirates away to let you and your group safely so you can still pass through quickly and efficiently. Because of this, a single scout can protect an entire convoy (though large convoys are always at risk of being targetted by organised pirate groups) and maximize your profits by making sure you don't have to lose that 10-12 million credits cargo from that pirate. In a certain way, using a scout is much like an insurance: you pay for it and sometimes you'll never have an occasion to profit from it, but you certainly wish you'd have taken one when things go south. Plus, it is also a great way to integrate players into the community by teaching them some basics of roleplay, or potentially recruit them into your group if the cooperation with that mercenary you just met as you undocked from your starting point went well, as well as making trading and whatnot less boring by making new friends!
It is also beneficial to pirates, as they will have to change strategy if your scout is efficient enough. Perhaps one day, if scouting becomes common enough, ambushes will be practiced instead of lane piracy. If this guide helps promoting scouting to the server, then I'd be glad to write a second tutorial on how to properly ambush a group of traders!;)
TUTORIAL: Scouting, a simple way to maximize profits and save yourself from a lot of troubles. - Zynth - 09-25-2011
Nice tutorial.
However, this was brought up before (although less detailed than your guide) in the
Ultimate Trading Guide in the Wiki
Look under escorts.
TUTORIAL: Scouting, a simple way to maximize profits and save yourself from a lot of troubles. - Pinko - 09-26-2011
The wiki isn't really this visible to begin with, plus I am not talking about trading or escorting, but scouting. It's a discipline like any other.
TUTORIAL: Scouting, a simple way to maximize profits and save yourself from a lot of troubles. - Tachyon - 09-26-2011
I like the idea of having this and having traders reminded they can actually do something for their safety.
And I am already working on evil plans to make scouting useless.*ahem*
But still, I really like this one.
EDIT: It's definetely better than the wiki version.