Scouting as early warning (not just for exploration)

Be careful jumping back and forth between planets....if you queue up several orders, sometimes the scout will actually travel all the way to the planet itself instead of immediately turning around at the edge of the well and jumping away...

Also, you can often tell if a planet has been colonized by the color of the extractors in the infocard...when you hover over a planet, the text for the extractors will appear grey if an extractor is built and white if one is not...this works regardless of whether you currently have vision there...of course this may be a little late for some purposes but it does help you track a players expansion and give you a hint as to when they might move on to a planet of interest....

There is a better way that does not even requires extractors, one circle around the planet turns red, green, whatevercolour when a player colonizes a planet. It is in the outer gravity well, you can easily find out what I mean if you check it in a game, uncolonized is normal white, dark blue player - dark blue, red player-red etc.

Indeed that works (you need to be zoomed in), although I'd say that is a bug because it's giving away info you're not supposed to know.

Then how do you want to acquire information about the heavily fortified AI worlds? You know, on bigger maps, when AI has hangars and starbases by the time your scouts get there, and are killed easily by these. there is no way to get info from AI planets far from frontline unless you are Advent and want to invest in Revelation. it is almost a miracle to reveal the whole map with scouts, mid-late game it's practically impossible to re-visit those worlds that were not controlled by that time to find out who colonized them.

Scouting in this game is really bad once the game reaches mid to late game, fighters, starbases, fleets, PJI's, etc makes it nearly impossible to reveal more than the frontline.

Ironically envoys are great at deep scouting because, y'know, invincible.

I've also had success sending groups of scouts, instead of just one, on "suicide missions" where I just order them to run to the enemy homeworld. Especially effective as Advent since you can get the Lingering Presence on multiple worlds as your 10 or so seekers are killed off, delaying the need for additional scouting.

Well, by then you already know what planets are owned by whom and the scouting research (Lingering Presence, Probe, the temp invul. one for the Vasari) helps with extending surveillance time. (You can also use the envoy's temp. invul. for the same purpose.) The circle color just gives away ownership in the early game where you're not supposed to know that without scouting "boots on the ground".

If the devs really intended for any player to know when any other player [not just an ally] colonized a planet (regardless of scouting), they could have added an audible event/message for that.

Really, how? By sacrificing dozens of scouts trying to reach through the AI fighter swarms just to die at the next gravity well? What if I told you I have many much better things to do during a game than just controlling otherwise suicidal scouts just to reveal planetary ownership on planets that are like 10-20 jumps away?

On a medium Large map if you play FFA, you can barely reveal the whole map unless you invest heavily in scouts and manually manage their exploration, and seriously, you have much better things to do than this (and your money is better spent on different things). after this phase when you reach choke points, starbase it and build up eco to be able to finally break the AI, and you want to know what he does, where his planets are, scouts are not really sufficient to do this task. If you want to waste thousands of credits on this instead of building trade ports and ships, then it's up to you. This circle thingy is not really doing anything online, as by the time you reach the planets near your opponent, they are most likely colonized anyway, and you can tell if your opponent is colonizing elsewhere if you just send some scouts, but against AI it is not this easy.. Against harder AI this colored circle is the only way to tell where his planets are.

And honestly, can't just these advanced races have like telescopes to check planets in their own system? why do they need ships for this?

Well, that's kind of the nature of the war, yes?  If you were playing against a human opponent and didn't want them to know the true vastness (or lack thereof) of your Empire, then you'd be doing all you can to stop their scouts.  Thus, if they want to truly know, they'll need to put more effort into it.  That's what scouting is supposed to be all about.

Against a human you don't have 5-10 fighter squadrons at every planet and micro fleets scattered around the universe like the AI does. You are most likely having 1-2 major fleets that are not impossible to be bypassed. Against humans it is not unlikely to be able to place a scout on his random world for several minutes until he realizes it. It is easy to sneak a scout through his awareness as these are just tiny ships compared to a hostile fleet, and are really easy to miss these. Not the AI, that just likes to hunt these down with everything it has lol.

I understand what you are trying to say and agree with it, but since this game lacks free jumping Like Endless space after a specific research that you can freely reach any stars in the galaxy, and you don't have abilities to reveal worlds if you are not Advent... Scouting becomes exponentially more difficult, not like you don't have enough things to do in a war already.

Impressive trolling by turchany in this thread. Maybe he is another head of the Seleuceid Hydra?

If you cannot contribute anything useful to this conversation, why comment?

May the runtime errors be ever in your favor...

Hehe, well, I guess you and I have different opinions on how easy or hard it should be to scout. :)  Don't forget, too, anything the AI can do (barring actual cheating like the bonus resources they get) a human can technically do, too.  If the player decides not to build hangars at their back worlds... that's their choice.  But they have the option to and so anything that bypasses this for scouting affects MP as well.  I, personally, would not want someone to be able to get intel on me through a means other than a legitimate game mechanic.  Doesn't matter that I'm mostly a single player and the AI wouldn't even know how to use (let alone get) this bugged intel, the fact that it's there I don't want it.

Also, the Advent's scouting... I don't think is quite that good.  If I remember right, aside from lingering presence, the other scout ability they have is of a world their culture touches, is it not?  I don't usually play them so it's hard for me to remember.  Granted, even if that is the case, they have have their orbital LRC.

Vasari, on the other hand, have two additional tricks up their sleeves.  1) their orbital LRC so they can send their "scouts" directly to a world further back, and 2) their Cap ship Marauder has an ability that increase's its and surrounding ally's speed and maneuverability while decreasing that of an enemy's.

TEC... I gotta admit, they're kind of pooched, there, and certainly could've used some lovin.

Against AI when you have your titan, you can build a Revelation, that has an excellent ability for revealing planets for a short time, that's why I mention Advent continuously. No other race can do this, reveal planets this easily.

For the Vasari part, you will never be scouting with a Marauder as you never have one and using Kostura for exploration would be a bit.. desperate lol.

Lol wut? TEC has the best scouting ability in the game.

Eh, to each their own... I do usually build at least one.  I once even used it in successful combination with regular phase gates and the Kostura cannon for attacking an AI's backwater worlds and drawing part of its main fleet off the front line... allowing my main to push forward.

Oh, yes, sorry... their scout's can "probe" an enemy's world.

I know the Marauder has it's own advantages, but let's be honest, Jarrasul, Skirantra and Kortul is way better in combat.. And LOL you used it once successfully, well that's something. With a Kortul you might have been able to crush the enemy fleet without part of it leaving, assumin his fleet wasn't hugely superior to yours.

For like 70 antimatter you can see a partiicular planet for some time, like 1-2 minutes, has a cooldown of 15s for all levels. It is quite good, if you can manage not having a real offensive capital ship..

Well, first, I've had success with it more than actual once.  I was just thinking of one instance off the top of my head to tell you about.

Second... for this particular one, me + 2 AI ally standing off against 3 AI (allied to each other) and the fleet sizes were to cap.  I don't think 1 additional combat orientated cap ship would've turned the tide of that battle.

You know those techs you can research that allow your scouts to bypass PJIs?  Scouts should just get those abilities for free....

If the map is big enough that enemy empires are literally 15-20 planets deep as you mentioned earlier, you should absolutely build Marauders. Mobility is all-important on such a huge map, it would take years to get anywhere, and the mobility bonus to your fleet from Distort Gravity would thus be very worthwhile.

Yeah, definitely the solution here. My personal favourite is the Marauder of the TEC Rebels and Advent Loyalists. those are soo awesome.

Trololol

Yeah, that would be a good thing. Should make scouts a bit more useful earlier.