Scout

The “Scout” behavior, found under the Orders Menu, instructs the currently-selected units to move around the map automatically, attempting to uncover areas shrouded by the fog of war.

The “Scout” button will light up with a green icon whenever it is active. If you want to check the status of one of your scouting units, select him and look at this button. Scouting is a persistent behavior that will last until you give the unit a different order. You cannot change the behavior settings of a unit that is scouting, but you can tell the unit to stop first, then adjust them as you wish.

Scouting units try to avoid enemies, but they don’t always know the best direction to flee, so sometimes they end up running directly into the unfriendly gunfire of even more enemies. As such, you should consider your scouts to be expendable. They may come back, but they probably won’t.

If you have a Field Hospital or Repair Station built and set the unit’s Damage Tolerance to LOW or MED before you send him scouting, he will return to the hospital/repair station to be patched up when his health gets low. Once repairs are finished, he will resume scouting automatically. No intervention is required on your part. This is a good idea to do this to keep your scouts alive longer, since otherwise their life expectancy is not high.

If you morph a unit into a tree or other terrain object and then send her out to scout, she will stop moving if she sees an enemy, and hide there motionlessly for a little while. So if you see one of these units just sitting there not moving while under this behavior, she is probably hiding. Note that if the enemy manages to spot her while she is hiding, she will not flee if fired upon, and usually this spells her death.

The scout behavior can be useful early in a mission to uncover areas of the map while focusing your attention on building up your base and your attack forces. Build one or two cheap units early on and send them off to gather reconnaissance about the location of your enemies and how far along they are in the tech tree. Even if your scouts are destroyed, the terrain of the areas they uncovered will still be visible under the fog of war, and so their deaths will not be for nothing.

You can also try scouting with morphed Scouts (appropriately enough), which may last a little longer since they spend more time hiding and less time moving. Even they, however, tend to wander into trouble sooner or later. They are fast enough that they can frequently return to the hospital before they are destroyed, but you should be prepared for their eventual destruction in any event.