Scout guide
Sin's Scout Guide
Outdated content This is presented here for interest only.
[i]by[/i] Pvt_Sin
[i]lately of the[/i] 102nd Privateers
Introduction
Scouts are the Back Bone of this game, Should it not be for scouts, things such as Cap Rushes, early miner hunting, and aleph finding would be almost hopeless. They are a very needed unit you would have a lot of difficulty destroying Inceptors and Stealth Fighters or bombers. In my opinion, the faction order of the best scouts goes as the following *drum roll* Belter, Iron Coalition, Bios, then GigaCorp. I like Belter scouts because they are incredibly fast, and can use boosters with that. When you hit the maximum speed, you're at 400mps, the GigaCorp top speed is about 175mps, Bios is 160, IC is around 140. The handicap of the Belter Scout is that it cannot support a shield. The three most important things for the scout are A) The repair gun (mk1, mk2) (Garrison) B ) The probes (mk1, mk2, mk3) (Supremacy) C) The mines, Proximity and mine pack (mk1, mk2, mk3/ mk1, mk2,) (Expansion and Supremacy) First, I will talk about each of these items and how to use them
The Repair Gun
The Repair Gun isn't usually needed for 20-30 minutes, with the exception, a scout tries to save an injured Cap, Bomber, or Troop Transport, but usually it is used to repair a friendly base after it has been injured by a Bomber, Capital Ship, or Galvonic Guns carried by Fighters and your team has defeated them or they ran away. To use the Repair Gun, arm the Repair Gun on the load out screen. Then you launch =). Hang around a green loading door so you can get in quickly if your team spots a bomber, or something just as important in a sector, so you may prepare yourself and get into the action ASAP. Press "B" to target your base, get in range of the base, it is like trying to kill an enemy ship, use the HUD when it is green, you are then most likely hitting the base and repairing it. The Repair Gun uses a lot of energy, it is most effective to use all of your energy, and then wait for it to fill up 100% then continue shooting. The bases' shields repair themselves, but if you are expecting another Bomber run, or Cap run against you, the extra repairing will really help. Continue until finished or something more important happens.
The Probe
The probe is an eye in the sky, at the beginning of the game, everybody should load up in a scout and fill their Inventory with 6 probes and change their gun to the disruptor (if available). Plant a probe every 2500m. Why 2.5k you ask? Because the probe mk1 can see 1250 radius of itself, and there is no benefit of them overlapping. And you all know that 1250+1250 is 2500, so that's why =P. One thing scout fliers are nearly always unaware of is that the Probes are easy to see, somebody on an enemy team could follow your probes and find your base. So try to hide your probes a bit, the best two places to hide your probes are behind the Aleph, or next to a special asteroid. (He3, Ur, C, Si) the spot that probes never get destroyed is behind the Aleph, someone would waste a lot of time if he tries to kill it. He will waste one minuet minimum, but he will most likely go through the aleph in attempt to kill it and have to re-enter and waste more time.
The Mines
The Mines are very useful in combat, when you are 250-50m away from your enemy, let them go. The more skilled your enemy is, the better your timing has to be. If you do it perfectly, a mk1 should kill a scout, an mk2 should kill an injured fighter, and an mk3 should kill most fighter class ships, and injure a Bomber. The main difference between Proxies and the Mine pack is that you can use two mine packs before reloading, but they won't last as long as the proxies and do a little less damage.
Strategy
Aleph Finding
Using the F3 map is a good idea for this. You can get a better view of where you've already been. Plus you can still shoot and cloak and deploy probes use boosters etc… The Aleph is always over 2k away from the border. So you shouldn't look too far. Pick up cash when looking for one, I don't know why, but I usually find something when I go for cash, and HEY, what do you have to lose? =).
Miner Harassing
This is pretty easy, even if you don't have stealths, it's just harder to escape. Load up with a machine gun and a lot of ammo, use dumb fire missiles and try to line up right behind the miner. Remember, the miner costs 4000cr you cost nothing =(.
Capital Ship Fighting
If you had to take out a Capital Ship, and you know he's coming through an aleph near by, go through it, deploy a few mines, then hide behind the aleph to shoot and attack. If the Cap has no turrets, go right in behind it and blow it as much as you can, deploy mines to shake off enemy fire. Try to mine up the Aleph. Remember from the book "if he stops, good, if he goes through slowly, better, if he goes through full blast, best"
Dog Fighting
Two things, LRMs and Mines. Usually going in for a kill in a big battle with a single Machine Gun or Disruptor is suicide, try to leave the fighting to the Fighters. (Unless you see a bomber, or a Cap, or a Stealth. Scouts come in handy for fighting Stealths)
I hope you learned about the scout during this lesson =)
Pvt_Sin
