IF YOU ARE SKIMMING AT THIS POINT, STOP HERE AND READ THIS PART

3. Yes Scouts have advantages, but they also have some really key disadvantages that make them less effective at some things than others right?

Of course! Today I played 5 matches, 4 of them were against full squads using all Caldari scouts. I ran my Proto Amarr Assault with a prof 5 Viziam to show them the pain.
http://imgur.com/0XDBHw5

Oh wait, out of their entire squad only one of them had a single death?
That's strange, when I spawned in I thought that Caldari scouts could easily be taken out with a few shots from a scrambler.
huh
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The main disadvantages of the scout:

Lower average HP values (The Caldari Assault can get 100 more shield compared to the scout)

Only 6 H/L slots at proto (One more than the Sentinels, one less than assaults, but they do have two equipment)

Alpha damage can be brutal (Can't take a sniper shot / PLC / Mass Driver easily like other suits)

I just sat here for 30 minutes trying to figure out more but that's about it right there unfortunately.
However, I started thinking about Destiny and how they balance the classes between 3 stats...let's do that for Dust really quick

Armor: To put it simply, your total HP
Recovery: How fast you can recover your HP after you have been hit
Agility: Movement, strafe, air control, hump height...things like that.

In Dust, Scouts have the best Recovery and Agility while having decent HP values
Assaults have about medium everything
Heavies are best in HP, medium recovery, and low agility
Logistics have medium HP values, a bit higher recovery, but slightly low agility.

To put simply, Scouts have two things they are best at, which is bad for balance.
This is even more true of the Caldari Scout, which has even more things it is best at, as described in the first post.
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4. What are our solutions then?

A. Swap recovery values for Scouts and Assaults.
-Caldari Assaults have the best shield regen, Gallente Assaults have the best base armor regeneration.
-Possibly reduce them a bit so that we don't have Amarr and Gallente shield recharge so high.
-Scouts now have recovery values slightly higher than Logistics, but NEED to sacrifice HP modules if they want to have a fast recovery
-Shield delay values should stay the same. Assaults are long delay fast recovery; scouts are short delay slow recovery.

B. Reduce Base HP
-If Scouts get max recovery and agility, they should be insanely easy to take out.
-Still allows scouts to tank their suits if they want to, but reduces the effect
-The best scouts will then become those that can flank and hide,
-Discourages head to head engagements and encourages the use of e-war

C. Decrease fitting capacity drastically, increase skill fitting reduction of cloaks, decrease fitting cost of e-war and hacking mods
-Makes it more worth it to run a damp, range amp, or hack mod than a plate, also easier to fit.
-Possible to fit 4 complex extenders and a proto weapon if you fit nothing else (or use cpu/pg mods in lows)
-Cloaks will still be easy to fit, but you won't have a huge excess of fitting space if you don't use one.
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Final Thoughts/TLDR:

I want scouts to be competitive but I don't want them to be the best slayers in the game because their base stats tell them they are. I want scouts to be the best ones at being sneaky and getting kills while the player isn't paying attention rather than being able to dance with a heavy and win.

I want it to be punishing for a scout to be detected. If I see a scout charging right at me, they should die quickly. If they decloak right in front of me it shouldn't take 10 seconds of direct hits to strip away their HP. They shouldn't be able to hide behind cover for 5 seconds and have their 450 shields back up.

I want scouts to use e-war mods rather than HP mods, to be punished more (not less) for stacking shield extenders, to have a reason to use armor repairers and shield rechargers/energizers rather than relying on insanely high base recovery values built into the suit. To still have to use modules that relate to their skill bonuses...

I want to be killed by high HP/fast regen slayer assaults, which I can dampen my suit against, that can't see me sneaking up on them, which I can destroy in my heavy if they get out of hand, which can't cloak and tank their suit at the same time.
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Discussion time!

What do YOU want scouts to be?
I eagerly await your posts :D

Dude, to be completely fair, V-E-X is a total stomping kizzunt. 1.U.P (like Slayers Unite., before it) is a corp for tryhards.

This turd tried recruiting me one time, even though I told him I didn't measure up to his corp's 4.5 weekly KDR requirement. Told me to join his "training" corp with a 20% tax!!!. XD ROFLOLOLOL!!!! He was in a corp channel telling everyone they should run proto--pretty easy for him to say when he's taking 30K - 60K/match from the noobs he's "training"!

After stanking up the battlefield with his tryhard mangina, V-E-X gets together with duna and jenza to reenact scenes from Brokeback Mountain.

This!!

It is ludicrous that I can be engaging a group of Infantry, and get killed from 5m away by the 80gj Neutron Blaster Madrugar that just rolled up behind me, completely invisible.

@ Shayz

Read the entire post; agreed with many of your points. As Broker pointed out earlier, we've reached out to the Devs in hopes of seeing some of these issues resolved.

The central theme of our proposal is efficacy bonuses. We believe that "slayer" Scouts should leave behind their scout-perks when they tank up and pretend to be Assaults. By replacing base bonuses with their equivalent in efficacy bonuses, we believe we'd see an increase in ewar module usage (and a decrease in hp tank).

600+ HP Scouts are a joke; they should be the exception, not the norm. We hope to see fewer of these abominations come Charlie; with luck, the ham-fisted slayer crowd will migrate to the Assault frame. Should they linger, we look forward to implementation of efficacy bonuses come Delta.

All that to say, the Scout Community agrees with a number of your assessments and has been working collectively toward seeing these issues resolved. Yatta yatta.

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While I'm here .... aren't you an uber-logi?

Seeing as Scouts are doing their part, perhaps you can talk sense to some of your Heavy friends? They're a 'bit spam-sandwiched these days, and they are quite sensitive about it. At least when we bring up the issue.

Maybe you'll have better luck :-)

1st AR has +10% vs shield.
Second, people are butthurt vs the Tanked Cal scout because they want to use their CR-RR and win against everything...heh

I take Proto CAl scouts with an ADV BREACH freakn AR (me being an above average player) and you are telling me you people cant kill them even with proto weaponry...

This is not Cal scout Opness, this is lack of skill.

Get a freakn Mouse and keyboard to make it easymode for you , dont nerf the freakn suit because Butthurtness.

'' then they must boost the Gallente scout somehow''

WT* IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?
The Gal scout is at the moment the best scout with more diversity of fits end everything.

I can run under CAl scouts radar all day with my Gk.0 while making holes in their Face with AR's and SCR's.

as easy as taking out my BREACH SCR PISTOL and 1HKO them in the watermelon...