Many people have the impression that the scout is a solo class that's supposed to cause harassment to enemy resources and take on a whole army of soldiers pouring out of a sabotaged barracks. I think not. The scout is a support class, supposed to take out key targets and coordinate his team to allow for the fast demolition of vital buildings. He can be used for solo play, but then much of his potential is lost when coordination and teamwork could have been used to compliment him. (except for ninja raxes) BEGIN TUTORIAL Motto: If the scout is one less person on the same team, then make the enemy short a few of their men. Overview: The scout is most of the time looked down upon because of its infamous ability to attract noobs that want to 10-0 with the scout rifle. This guide is meant to aim people to realize the usefulness of scouts and look beyond their disadvantages so that they can utilize them, and win with them in their army. Requirements to be a scout: Patience. It is the utmost important virtue to the scout. Patience means being able to sit still in a spot to wait for enemies to go by, or waiting for the perfect opportunity to eliminate your target. Patience also means the necessity to persevere so they can withstand other people's insults about your behavior, or die when they have invested a lot of time in a sneak mission. Alright, on to the beginners tips. Skills that I normally choose as scout. 1.Hide 2.Regen 3. Speed 4. ??? If you are a scout without hide, you are probably in a vehicle. If you are not, then you need hide. Period. It allows you to gain the jump on the enemy and penetrate defenses slowly, but low profile. Regen is a good choice if you take random damage, seeing as you will not be in combat much for a long duration of time. Speed is self explanatory. You shouldn't get melee upgrade for the scout, as men from a barracks (except rifleman) can be one hitted, and melee also has horrible registration. If you use vehicles, the scout should get vehicle speed first, and radar stealth second. With these two, combined with the scouts sabotage, he can take out a barracks in about 10-20 seconds in an AFV/LT, good for attacking neglected bases. DO NOT USE JEEPS BY YOURSELF. They are too high profile and can immediately tell the enemy that a scout is going to their base. Plus, it adds to the vehicle limit if you do not destroy it. DON'T USE SNIPER RIFLES. A kill isn't always guaranteed, as the enemy has to be weakened somewhat before a kill. If an engineer is nearby then you are just wasting ammo. And if you are close enough to the enemy to one hit kill, you still have to wait through the cocking of the rifle. And don't exploit with this thing, it is just a one way street to bannsville. And a tip for hide, stand still, and be near more than one surface, it makes you more transparent. Concepts for the Intermediate Sometimes as a scout, you will have to make hard decisions. What I say here will help you assess the situation to improve your chances of survival. Aggro: When two people are shooting at each other, they are probably going to look at each other as well. Multiply that amount, and you have Empires. For this situation, gauge where your allies are, and your enemies, and assume where they are looking. Make sure you are very careful in the No Mans Land of battle, where the field of view there is very hot. When behind the enemy, you can breathe a sigh of relief BUT DON'T MAKE A RUN FOR IT YET! All it takes is one soldier to spot you and kill you. You should always stay in hide unless there is no one in proximity. Motion: The human eye is mainly attracted to motion. There is no exception to this in Empires. When using hide, you must be able to know where your enemies are so you can IMMEDIATELY STOP when they can see you. It's not that hard to see a moving silhouette. Even if you aren't next to any walls, you can still manage to sneak by if you can JUST PRONE STILL. YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO LOOK EITHER, THAT MOVES YOU TOO. If you have to move, try to imagine Call of Duty 4 in the moving grass. Make slight movements to avoid tanks rolling over you and move slowly when trying to look. *edit #1 Stacking Damage: This concept is based on the scout marking the target building for all his allies to focus fire on. First, he approaches the building, primes the sabotage charge (meaning that the sabotage bar is nearly done, but not completed, as this would alert everyone to your presence) and when his allies give him the go, he completes the sabotage, making the building take half damage and damage over time, good to use against a barracks that is constantly being repaired or after high value targets, like a vehicle factory. Radars are generally not a good target unless in the early game. Enemy Alertness: I hate to say this, but imagine this game as Metal Gear Solid. (preferably the PS1 title, not PS3) If you do get spotted by an enemy tank or whatever, try to hide as a last resort. Be aware that the enemy tank most likely has something better to do than hunt for scouts, so he will eventually be agitated and go away. Pray that he will not hit you, and if all else fails, just try to run back into your allies or into an area where the tank cant follow you, like water. This concept completely changes with infantry, however, whereas they have the time and mobility to find you and hunt you. Again, just try to stay in one place, don't move and pray that you wont get shot/melee'd. But you can fight back against infantry. The scout excels at close range combat, but don't expect to be able to waltz in the enemy base once you kill a guy, because they will be alerted to your presence. *edit #2 Foiliage: You dont need to act stealthy if you are in a forest, the trees make you invisible anyways. Foiliage can also work in an area that is absent of cover, like in Slaughtered. You can sneak through enemy lines if you combine hide and a bush. You will blend right in. Combos: It is preferable you use these with a disposable, yet fast jeep. Rifleman + Scout = Ticket Bleeder This combo is good when you need to get a ticket advantage. Seeing that the rifleman has a rifle that can do a 50+dmg headshot at close range, the rifleman should be willing to help you out on this endeavor. Sab the barracks, and kill anyone that comes out. Grenadier + Scout = Stealthy Wrecking Crew This does not work with a jeep. The scout creeps up to the enemy building, sabs it, and the grenadier pours mortars on it. Assuming the scout is still sabbing and the grenadier still mortaring, it can still bypass an engineers repair. The grenadier should be firing a few seconds after it has been sabbed, as to allow a smaller time interval from warning to destruction. Engineer + Scout = High Profile Wrecking Crew This is the most efficient, yet most noticeable, way to demolish a building. This should only be done on a lightly guarded base, or you risk death. An engineer stocked with seismics and a scout can level a barracks in five seconds. It is a quick hit-and-run tactic, but it tends not to work on a heavily defended area. The scout sabs and defends while the engineer spams seismics inside the barracks and switches to decon when he runs out. This will almost instantaneously level the barracks. *edit #1 There is no Scout + Scout combination. This just makes sabotaging the base somewhat faster. For the Pros: What you may not know. Your performance to scouting may be dependant on the map and its textures for the scout/cover. For Canyon it is a bitch for an NF scout to move behind enemy lines because his skin is so noticeable compared to the grass, while the BE black skin is much more submissive. Also, if you get shot the blood wound that may or may not appear on your body can give away your position, even if you are completely transparent. Your wounds do not go away, and they do not disappear when you hide. Another reason to avoid combat. This is the end of the tutorial, and I will keep updating it whenever I come up with a new revelation. Begin flaming now.
Bad tutorial, you told me to move slow and be patient. Heres how I play scout. Buy Jeep Drive to all unguarded Refs Sab them. Suicide jeep into enemy main If survive, sabotage barracks radar and VF, hide inside one of the m and continually sab it. Die. Respawn. Repeat. Nothing slow or subtle about it.
I almost never get hide except on crossroads or other boring linear maps. Hide is only useful against turrets and against comm attack orders. I usually get speed first, then regen, silencer, and melee upgrade. If I'm using a jeep or tank, I get vehicle speed and radar stealth. I think by far silencer is better for most of the scout's specialties. If you are sniping or running around in the enemy base, it usually has a far greater affect on confusing and distracting the enemy than hide does, even after you die. Plus you can squad hide anyway if you are the leader of a decent squad. I prefer smg2 over 1 for the scout most of the time too, because if you have to have a ranged fight with someone, chances are you won't win anyways.
But do you really accomplish anything besides a few wasted seconds of an enemy repairing a building, and maybe a destroyed refinery or two? Not to mention that if the enemy captures your jeep you immediately cripple your teams vehicle power by 1/10th for a good couple minutes.
On most empires maps at least half of the refs are more or less unguarded. Refs will die due to sabotage most likely before they are repaired. Also the refinery produces one half res IIRC until it is fixed. Do this to most of your enemy's refs and you have a crippled and frustrated enemy. You can see this drastically affect a game on maps like Isle or Arid. If, by chance, the comm sees the distant refs smoking, there is not much he can do apart from trying to drive to one and repair it before it dies. Even when the refs aren't particularly far away, like on mvalley or canyon, one more engy repairing them is one less player actually fighting and making progress for the team.
1 or 2 scouts on a team is actualy good. Scouts can also be usefull sqaud leaders(Stealth Sqauds, Or sqauds with allot of speed.) For example, 2 scout sqaud leaders can make you reach the city or NW faster, and in most cases win you the game. It is also common to go middle and kill their refs, 2 engies, 1 with repair, other with revive, rifleman, grenadier and a scout sqaud leader.
suggestion for skill 4- Enhanced senses. Good for finding other scouts and it lets you see where people are looking. Dont get the sniper rifle. If you are going to get a jeep, and most of the time the com will not mind if the team has 2-3k+ res, and are not about to rush. But be sure to sink the jeep in water or have someone drop you off so they can use the jeep after. Nothing annoys the team like haveing 4 empty jeeps scattered about.
If i play scout on open maps like cyclopean or duststorm I grap speed upgrade and run to all the enemy refs and sab them. If thats done I start to visit the first ref again that is proparbly rebuild.
I ruin the enemies economy for only 50~ resources, cause constant diruption in their base, they never "capture" my jeep and I tajke up to 4 engineers out of combat zones because they need to fix the base, kill the scout, build new refs and waste time in general.
I'll reformat it, this guide isn't really up for debate, I'm using it on the forums so that people can criticize it and I can edit it. Anyways, Varbles, I think that helping my team destroy a heavily used barracks is much more useful than destroying several refineries. It occupies engineers, is a loss of 400 resources, and its also dependant on the map how easy or hard it is to defend refineries. Given the fact that refineries are prime targets, the scout's main goal should be to support demo teams, given if refineries are isolated on the map this priority can shift up a notch.
lololololol u fail, its very good against stupid players (which there is alot of on all servers) plus scunt rifle + speed upgrade + melee and accuracy upgrade = 1 hella fun game. FYI this tutorial is completely useless...only really nubby nubs should read it if they plan on sucking more XD
People like you are utterly useless in game. This guy actualy tries to do write a tutorial to prevent noobs from scunting/being useless. What he said is true, if a scout is sabbing a base while it's under attack then it will be much easier for people to take it down. Scout suck at combat, avoid it, once you are spot you're dead. You instead, waste a player slot, waste tickets, waste resources for vehicles that you are going to lose anyway and are probrally utterly useless and contribute absolutly nothing to your team. You go around, sabbing shit, kill the engineers repairing the VF or the barracks, then sab it. Sab enemy refineries, sab the enemy radar when they aren't looking. Team should have 2 scouts MAX, Scouts can also be very competent and talented, and sometimes valuable sqaud leaders do to the fact they have scout hide. They can perform early rushes. Stop scunting, start being usefull for your team.
Empires is filled with akward stuff that is only in because "it was always like this" or "every fps has it so empires has to have it too" and dont forget the "uh I like it so much that i dont care that it ruins the game".
