I know that advanced scouting allows you to better assess projected ratings and potential  of players, but does it also function in the way advanced scouting does in real baseball.  i.e. scouting of  upcoming opponent's tactics, trends to help prepare for upcoming series?

No.

Lots of experienced owners drop advanced scouting budgets all together.

there's little to be gained from advanced scouting. resources better allocated elsewhere. 

I don't spend a ton on advanced scouting but I'm always worried I"m not spending enough... for fear that I might be missing out on some ratings potential... this thread really has me conflicted. Are there other owners that are spending the bare minimum on advanced scouting as pjfoster suggests?

In the two worlds I commish, I'd say 95% of the owners are at 0 or working their way to 0.   Both worlds are for experienced owners only.

Short version on ADV:    If you're not trading for 2nd year players, it doesn't matter.   Development patterns are pretty straightforward and 3rd year players will have a recognizable pattern.   Of course, if the owner has low training or poor coaches, he's restricting development but, because of the way HBD is structured, you can see the ratings of his coaches/amount of his training.   Armed with that info, you can determine if he's hurt a player's development. 
As for your own players, you can trust your HS/College/Int scouting you used to acquire them.   If you deemed a player good enough to be the 13th pick using 14m in HS scouting, you should trust yourself.    "Seeing" his projections won't matter, you have to develop him anyway.

All that said, if you're a guy who wants to constantly trade for young players, you can save yourself a lot of research time by having higher ADV.   I think it's a bit of a waste but, if I were going to make 6-8 trades a season for 2nd/3rd year players, I'd probably want a good amount in ADV.

I guess that wasn't that short.

Posted by whunt1 on 11/20/2014 2:30:00 PM (view original):
I don't spend a ton on advanced scouting but I'm always worried I"m not spending enough... for fear that I might be missing out on some ratings potential... this thread really has me conflicted. Are there other owners that are spending the bare minimum on advanced scouting as pjfoster suggests?

When I started out I boosted my ADV to 14 and it helped me learn the development patterns, so it's not totally useless in that sense as a teaching tool.  But like Mike said, if you navigate to the spreadsheet of all the teams' budgets you'll notice that the good teams all have 0 ADV and 20 training.  To each his own of course, but these two settings are virtually mandatory (training because it's the best money you'll spend, and ADV because you're playing with a handicap basically).  

What is kind of aggravating is that when you take over a new team you're only allowed to adjust your budgets by +/- 4 instead of +/- 5, which means that you can't max out Training or zero out ADV until year 3 instead of year 2, and trust me you'll definitely begin noticing the difference.  Every little bit counts

Similar to just about everyone else on here that's commented, but I started out my first 5 seasons with a 20 ADV budget trying to recognize trends in player development and potential. After those 5 seasons, I steadily reduced ADV to 0 and always have 0 in ADV now. I have found since then that giving yourself an ample coaching budget, and a 20 Training budget will produce good long term development results.

I'm a contrarian here. I use it and I'm decently successful. I've zeroed out Int. Scouting because all the guys are over priced, anyway. Impact players often get $15M, or more (although one guy in my league will be really good and went for $10M). I figured you needed more than $25M total to take care of IFA's: >$10M in Scouting and then the extra $15M in Prospects.

I've got zero in Int. Scouting and $8M in Prospects.

I'm a fairly active trader, I like Adv.

I've only been playing for about a year, but I jumped on the 0 ADV bandwagon right away. It might be nice to see the exact projections of my prospects, but it's just not worth taking money away from other things.

Even the par about trading for second year prospects isn't that big of a problem. You can get around it if you have good draft scouting. I always take a screenshot of the top 25-50 draft prospects' projections and save it. That way, if I were offered one of those guys in a trade the next season, I'd have a quick place to check on their potential.

I am in a pickle, because I took over a team with 0 advanced scouting. I never had 0 as I have only had  4 or 5 total seasons under my belt.  It is confusing to figure out potential ratings, when there is no pattern to judge.  It looks like I have some good players in the minors.....but with 0 advanced  those ratings might not be totally accurate. Is there any 'law or rule" to try and judge the ratings by with 0 advanced scouting?

With a bit of sleuthing you can figure it out.

Look where the player was drafted or how much it cost to get them as an IFA.

Did they become a DiTR? (The little gem beside their picture).

If they are in their second or 3rd year, look at what categories they grew in and how much and which ones remained the same.

Look at individual ratings progressions and you'll see a pattern that can be easily predictable.

For instance if this is season 25, and you see this progression for a particular rating:

S22 -> S23   -   +7 points
S23 -> S24   -   +5 points
S24 -> S25   -   +3 points

It's pretty safe to assume that he'll progress another point or two this season, maybe one more next season, and then pretty much be done.  This does not account for injuries and other factors (lack of playing time, poor coaching, etc).  So you have to factor those in as well.

Thanks  my biggest problem is I took the team over right after Spring Training, and my ML roster and entire system was bare of players....had to sign and scrap some to fill the rosters....now I am getting trade proposals, but most of the players are  or just finished their 1st year in the minors....pretty much no progression to see or judge. They were drafted  high or if they were IFA...signed for quite a bit of money.....but sometimes that is no indication on what they are......

Check out how much money the people offering have in ADV.   They probably smell blood in the water and are circling the new fish.