Tazskool

Football Manager 2007 new features blog part 3 of many
Current mood: sleepy

Today's blog is going to deal with the new scouting module



Scouting was an area identified for a major overhaul for Football Manager 2007 by both the users of our forums and the FM dev team. Whilst completely functional before, it wasnt that much fun, and tended to give you information that you already new about, so the team known as media corner decided to completely revamp it.



Whereas previously youd scout a player once, and could set up scout searches for different areas in the world to find out info on players, you now have to scout players multiple times to reveal all of their information, which is presented to you both as a simple star rating system, but also a scout report card which adds more info each time you scout until full. And this isnt just the info that youd see as numbers like scouting in our previous games, but adds information that is normally hidden to the user too, such as personality info, their current happiness at the club, the kind of fee youd need to pay to get them, and whether they are likely to join you and stay with you in the long term, or see you as a stop gap club.



On top of this, its not just about looking at the numbers and providing the information. Whilst having a set figure for player potential is imperative for other areas of the game and, in particular, long term balancing of the database, no one can ever truly predict just how good or bad a footballer will become in the future, so the new scouting system takes this into account, offering a much more realistic outlook on the footballing world through the eyes of scouts and the media.



Scouts also have knowledge bases now. A scout with a good knowledge of an area will complete scouting missions in that area quicker, as they have already built up a good network of people to help them out. It also makes for a fun mini-game of trying to have complete world wide knowledge!



Scouting the next opposition is also radically improved, with much more feedback, and information about likely tactics that will be used against you using a tactics analyser to try and work out what tactic they will use against you, as well as their normal in game tactic.



Whilst only your scouts can go on missions (and you can set up multiple missions at any one time to keep them really busy), you can also ask any member of your staff to check out individual players, rather than just your scouts, to get an ever clearer view of whether you should be signing a player or not.



Oh, and theres no cheating allowed on the knowledge mini-game. No longer can you just take on 30 scouts and cheat your way to the top. In Football Manager 2007, your Chairman will only let you have a certain amount of staff to help you. And if you dont have much money in the bank, they might also block you from scouting certain countries that they simply cant afford to send your scouts out to.