Lower league scouts

[ElliottMS]

One thing I find really doesn't work in the lower leagues are the scouts.

A first team scout will find good players, sure, but they are well out of your reach budget wise. No, they're not finding Messi, but they are finding players well out of your 'league' 

Can there be an improvement that a first team scout will look for options more realistic to your budget, or you can direct them to do so? It would be great for example if I've exhausted my transfer budget they would check out unattached players and those with expiring contracts, or if I could ask them to do so

Sure, you can do this manually, but it doesn't feel very realistic and actually feels a bit like cheating, but given the ineffectiveness of a first team scout, feels like it has to be done.

I know there are some bargain hunter scouts but they are fairly rare.

[Amigooo]

Scouting is pretty messy in FMM, my advice is to do it manually even if it feels like cheating

[ElliottMS]

1 hour ago, Amigooo said:

Scouting is pretty messy in FMM, my advice is to do it manually even if it feels like cheating

Oh I do. I will generally search the list of players with attribute filters, although when doing lower league I will manually ask the scout to report on unattached players and or loan listed players.

I'd like to do a game where I rely on scouts for all my signings but in reality its not really possible as it stands.

[passenger58]

There's nowhere near enough customisation to scouting at the moment. You can't ask them to search by nation, for example. Or position. 

Also the scouting results list is just a big data dump with no filtering available. Not the most intuitive screen in the world.

Maybe an area that needs revisiting for future releases?

Edited December 7, 2020 by passenger58

[Marc Vaughan]

Thanks for the feedback - I'll look at tuning the returned players and are open to suggestions with how we could improve this beyond that ..

[ElliottMS]

3 hours ago, Marc Vaughan said:

Thanks for the feedback - I'll look at tuning the returned players and are open to suggestions with how we could improve this beyond that ..

I am not a coder so I might be miles away, but it seems the easiest thing to implement would be for the scout to assess affordability based on transfer budget. They do after all give an opinion on likely cost and wages (if they're good enough) so they are looking at this. E.g. if I have a £50k budget, the players they find are not much more than that value, or can be signed on a free.

Alternatively it would be actually setting parameters, which would maybe allow you to plan for the future better.

Another thing could be asking them to search for a particular role, position or even attribute settings.

[passenger58]

12 hours ago, ElliottMS said:

I am not a coder so I might be miles away, but it seems the easiest thing to implement would be for the scout to assess affordability based on transfer budget. They do after all give an opinion on likely cost and wages (if they're good enough) so they are looking at this. E.g. if I have a £50k budget, the players they find are not much more than that value, or can be signed on a free.

Alternatively it would be actually setting parameters, which would maybe allow you to plan for the future better.

Another thing could be asking them to search for a particular role, position or even attribute settings.

For a start, I'd replicate the search filters available for player search and apply that to both:

a) assigning a scout (so that he will only bring back players of a specified position, age, nationality, value, contract/transfer status, attribute set, etc) 

b) navigating the scout results page 

The functionality is all there. It's just a case of tweaking for those scenarios above. 

Edited December 8, 2020 by passenger58

[Dozman]

I think the scouting structure and options in mobile are better than what we currently have in touch. I would be happy if that was implemented into touch.

I think a manager should be able to specify criteria and regions to scout

[Marc Vaughan]

16 hours ago, ElliottMS said:

I am not a coder so I might be miles away, but it seems the easiest thing to implement would be for the scout to assess affordability based on transfer budget. They do after all give an opinion on likely cost and wages (if they're good enough) so they are looking at this. E.g. if I have a £50k budget, the players they find are not much more than that value, or can be signed on a free.

This is already taken into account to some extent, as is their likely wage. 

This isn't a precise situation however as we don't want to not recommend players who might be feasible if the situation changes for some reason (ie. end of season funds comng in, promotion, adjusting transfer budgets etc.).

As with everything in the game getting the balance right in this regard is a challenge - fortunately I like a challenge

[ElliottMS]

3 hours ago, Marc Vaughan said:

This is already taken into account to some extent, as is their likely wage. 

This isn't a precise situation however as we don't want to not recommend players who might be feasible if the situation changes for some reason (ie. end of season funds comng in, promotion, adjusting transfer budgets etc.).

As with everything in the game getting the balance right in this regard is a challenge - fortunately I like a challenge

Ah. Well in my humble opinion the options presented are too at the high end of the scale. Especially as with a transfer budget I'm going to want that to stretch to several players at least, especially in a lower league save.

Some more instruction to the scouts could solve this I think.

Probably one for fmm22 but i appreciate you listening and taking it on board!

[casperzwaart100]

5 hours ago, Marc Vaughan said:

This is already taken into account to some extent, as is their likely wage. 

This isn't a precise situation however as we don't want to not recommend players who might be feasible if the situation changes for some reason (ie. end of season funds comng in, promotion, adjusting transfer budgets etc.).

As with everything in the game getting the balance right in this regard is a challenge - fortunately I like a challenge

I know my budget is over 150 million but I still have no intention of buying anyone over ~35 million, I don't need to know Camavinga is really good and 100 Million. Especially when doing youth scouting

[Marc Vaughan]

2 hours ago, casperzwaart100 said:

I know my budget is over 150 million but I still have no intention of buying anyone over ~35 million, I don't need to know Camavinga is really good and 100 Million. Especially when doing youth scouting

Ok so putting a range in for the value of player you want returned might be helpful for a future version?

[casperzwaart100]

6 hours ago, Marc Vaughan said:

Ok so putting a range in for the value of player you want returned might be helpful for a future version?

Yes, definetly

[passenger58]

6 hours ago, Marc Vaughan said:

Ok so putting a range in for the value of player you want returned might be helpful for a future version?

Hi Mark, 

Sorry to repeat myself but I think the changes below would be a good start:

 

For a start, I'd replicate the search filters available for player search and apply that to both:

a) assigning a scout (so that he will only bring back players of a specified position, age, nationality, value, contract/transfer status, attribute set, etc) 

b) navigating the scout results page 

The functionality is all there. It's just a case of tweaking for those scenarios above. 

[StephenCronin]

Probably a separate issue, but having a language filter (both on the scout and search screens), would be great. Ie you'd be able to specify the language you want (have it default to the language of the league) and the minimum level. That would let you search/scout for players who for example have a English level of Good or above and help you build a more cohesive squad.

[Marc Vaughan]

6 hours ago, passenger58 said:

For a start, I'd replicate the search filters available for player search and apply that to both:

a) assigning a scout (so that he will only bring back players of a specified position, age, nationality, value, contract/transfer status, attribute set, etc) 

b) navigating the scout results page 

The functionality is all there. It's just a case of tweaking for those scenarios above. 

The reason I was trying to ratchet it down was that 'its all there' isn't true at all - the way filters work is that they're applied to a totally different dataset than the one scouting is applied to ... hence it won't be simple.

I was thinking that perhaps if it was value I might be able to implement it fairly quickly and thus get it into the game earlier than if I attempted a more complex change, thanks for clarifying will make sure its properly approached in full when its done (although this may well delay its implementation obviously).

[Caning the Days]

I think it would be both helpful and more realistic to have distances that scouts can travel rather than countries. I often find myself in the situation where you cannot send a scout 10 miles over the border to look at a player, whereas you can send them 200 miles to the other side of the country to do the same.

I think this would build on the feature from FM20 which made it easier to sign players from your locality, and I believe that city and town co-ordinates are in the database already so should be feasible.