Hi, A few of you, in the last few weeks, seemed to find the Scout Towers a "useless waste of resource". Well then, I am here to clarify why I have to disagree with it, and why I think the little straw-capped fellas are more than useful, in theory and practice! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32563868/945d9498323f889394029d0c46aab7bb19b00654.jpg[/img] After some of the recent feedback, I did further lower the Scout Towers building and repair costs too, but let me start with a list of the reasons why I think they are useful. [list] [*] Without Scout Towers you will have no information about enemy waves until they appeared in map (aka too late to build anything) [*] Scout Towers are the only mean to detect the Sappers special paths (tunnels, forest paths or blown up rocks) [*] Flying Enemies don't follow any standard path and have the ability to damage the headquarters also upon death. Scout Towers are the only mean to detect them and destroy them far enough from the Headquarters. [*] Skirmishers are invisible to the attack towers unless in the area of a Scout Tower, Rangers or Temple with the Eye of Kaer ability activated. In order to kill them in time, detecting the Skirmishers far enough from the Headquarters is often vital. [*] Scout Towers are very cheap (after the last update even cheaper) [*] A Scout Tower can be used as a cheap decoy to draw enemies damage abilities away from the attack towers. Build a Scout Tower in front (and far enough) from a Repeating Crossbow, to make sure Brutes and Steam Carriages won't take your best tower down and leave undamaged. [*] Upgrading a Scout Tower to Outpost Tower is cheap (it's also been lowered with the last update) and will make the Tower resistant to fire (and therefore a lot more robust against Sappers' and Gliders' fire bombs) [*] Outpost Towers have no attack abilities, but can be endowed with Caltrops (that cause continuous damage to enemies nearby) and Nets (that slow down passing enemies). [/list] As you can see, the Scout Tower has been designed to be a quite flexible asset. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32563868/e0fdf1884da342f7af7633481607389ee5094f17.jpg[/img] While in the first maps you can live with not knowing where the enemies are coming from (as long as you cluster all of your towers next to the Headquarters), in the later maps, being able to predict the exact paths of the next wave will allow you spread out your towers for a far more efficient killing ground. Once the Steam Carriages are in game, using Scout Towers as a decoy to protect your larger towers, becomes really paramount, as their front-mounted cannons can easily take out one tower with one shot otherwise. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32563868/f879c1d4c3bc941ef9ba6c0ae9d6cfe62af66d10.jpg[/img] I hope this clarified a few things, if you got question, ask away, I hope I also got answers for you! Cheers, Dr.H