Scouts and their weaknesses

WALLS. Why do scouts always get caught with a wall between them and you. I wish they followed you more closely. Of course, they'd get hit by enemy fire more that way...

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Commander Cicion, commander of Audemedon 6th fleet

"Never tell me the odds!"
-Han Solo

Yea, they're bad, but you have 3 options:

1. Don't use it in net games. It gives away where you are.

2. Put it out only when you need it.

3. You can keep it from moving by holding down R and 2 for a second. This locks it in place.

If you assign "scout control" and "look forward" to the same key, this looks the scout in place with a single tap of the key. If you do this as soon as you start the game (when you're falling from high above), the scout will stay up in the skies, and you'll have a nice way to look down at the battle field. Also, your scout isn't exactly an easy target up there, so if anyone wants to inflict serious damage on it, they have to stand still and blast it with plasma. And I don't need to mention what happens to stationary targets in Avara, do I?

Hehe, yeah... you don't need to mention what happens to stationary targets in Avara.

evil grin

(This message has been edited by Robin Hood (edited 01-23-2000).)

I don't like scouts very much... I like the enemy scouts in certain multiplayer maps, though...

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I come, I go; You'll never know...

-Admiral Dennis
(url="http://"mailto:admiraldennis@mac.com")mailto:admiraldennis@mac.com(/url)admiraldennis@mac.com

It's your decision whether you use your scout or not. But placing it stationary high above the battlefield gives you the aforementioned advantage of being able to look down onto the battlefield. And if it gets blasted out of the skies you're no worse off than if you don't use it at all, right?

So there's no real idea in not using your scout at all.

My greetings go to Mr. Robin Hood. You don't know me, but I've heard lots about you. I hope to play against you some day.

I will take the lack of replies as a sign that I was right about the scouts.

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"Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
- Albert Einstein

I suppose you are.

-- The Raptor

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We are the gravity insect.

Oh, scouts have other uses, but you're not allowed to know what they are.

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I notice that nobody's mentioned scout-surfing. Ok, so it's not quite as slick as the super-jump (but is easier to do) and is slightly dishonorable in most of its uses (such as ducking outside a battlefield while your opponents kill each other in a free-for-all ), but it's still a valid maneuver. Enemy scouts ... I shoot at them occasionally in hopes that the enemy will pull them in and give me a location fix.

I think that they are usfull. Like when in IceBox, just have it stay in the air when you first start. Also, if somone starts out on your scout, have a button assigned to "Look left (or right)" + "Scout Control" and it will recall it back to you. you can then have it stay in place again, but it will no longer be an advantage. ohh well...

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First I was a learner,
But now I am the master

Kyle "Vader" Blessing

semi-newbie here, what is the super jump and how do you do it. I'v been told that you can jump out of the arena in icebox with it. And how do you scout-surf? I don't see how it would work

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"Sometimes I think that the surrest sign that there intellegent life elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
-GeX

GeX: I'll start with the scout surf, which is by far the easier maneuver (unless you have a joystick). Walk over to a wall, preferably in a light hull. Duck down. Recall your scout (using the scout command key, I think it's "r" by default) and then stop it (scout control + look forward) just before it enters your hull. Back away and then jump forward onto the scout. Now, order the scout to move forward (scout control + move forward, up arrow by default). It will try to fly forward and up to get in front of you, but the wall will block it from going forward, so it will just go up. (Of course, the wall is really irrelevant here, it just makes the ballancing act simpler. You can do this in the open, sending the scout in any of the four directions once you're on top of it.)

Now, the superjump. I'm probably the wrong person to answer that, but here goes. Due to an unclassified feature (AKA bug), it is possible to jump when you're already in the air. To do this succesfully you'll need at least two jump keys, preferably more. Kneel in front of a wall, walking forward. Release one jump key and, at the same instant, press another. If you time it perfectly, you'll go twice as high as normal. Slightly easier and more common is to take about four jump keys and simply rotate your finger around them, pressing them in sequence - you can get maybe three times as high a jump if you're lucky. For some reason the superjump works better if you are standing with one foot on a ramp and the other foot not. If you have a joystick (I don't) you can probably program a button to fire the jump keys with the proper (short) time delay in between.

Icebox, heck, in an unlaiden light hull, you can jump out of the arena in REDBLADE. Of course, you can scout-surf infinitely high (well, until you hit the bubble), so it's still superior IMHO. By the way, it's a good idea not to have anybody coming up behind you when attempting either of these maneuvers. If you want to practice, I recommend first trying to jump to the missile towers in bwadi, then jumping out of the arena in icebox from the corner, then in icebox from a side, and then out of redblade from a side. If you can pull that off, you're officially a superjumper.