Comment 2 for bug 794483

Indeed not ... :) Sorry about the wrong place...
You're right, it does give more control - and also it is almost a micro-managing feature, which we really would not want. So, yes - I was never sure, if others would approve.
I have filed that all the same, because this seems to be the real problem with the scouts - and I found no better way then. (maybe now?)
For me there is almost one use for scouts only - and that is at the very beginning of the game.
There are other rare occasion, related to spying and warfare, but I exclude them for now.
Where are mountains, water, stones, trees?
Are there mountain passes which I can try to block? (on smaller maps)
Which direction should I expand my realm first?
And it's exactly this situation, where they perform poorly and performance is (time) critical.
I think there must be some routine in place that draws the scouts towards unknow territory; at least they never explore my own realm.
But it seems that the status quo is not updated by the explorations they have already done.
So they explore regions that were unknown at the beginning over and over again, and others remain blackened. (Just my observation, someone else may be able to verify this from the code)
Better than what I had in mind first, would be to send the scouts systematically to unknown territory within their reach, and have "unknown territtory" redifined every time before they set out.
That would be more in line with the widelandish philosophy, I think.