I don't want to start a hostile arguement here. Why'd you hate it? I get a little lost when people say they hate the strategy. I'd like to know why.

Can understand that. In all fairness, it's not so much that carriers can't do the job anymore. It's that once the flak show up THEN they're screwed.

This is also why I try to not play rush maps. Rush maps are where you're hands are tied and there are only so many strats that can be employed. When the map gets bigger (not too big mind you), the options become more diverse and overall more fun. That's just me though. The fact that the majority of the community seems to love 5v5 huge single star and 4v4 large single star tells me I'm in the minority.

get a carrier or two out and put figters on hold position.

free exp for cap.

Scout rush is relatively well known and mainstream now.  Asking us if we've used some varient of it is a pretty silly question.

I frequently use my scouts in combat, either to hunt down colony frigates assigned to neutrals or to harass vulnerable enemies.  Great hit and run unit, and the benefit of having lots of scouts running around is invaluable.  I actually don't like using scouts in huge masses as my primary combat unit; works against the spammer, but most people know about this by now and will diversify.  Even a few other units can really tear up those scouts.

I feel I should clarify. I was under the impression that no one was using it, or at least, few were. I still get heat when I make them, so I wanted to see if there really are people out there using it. Nice to know there are.

I once tried to sit a sova on my enemies homeworld, and then use mass scouts + timed explosives... worked out ok... except he was getting feed, and started pumping out illums... which was ok, cause by that time I had lrms, and repair bays... but then the guys ally showed up at my homeworld... so i had to build an akkan and run for the center of the map... but the guy i scout spammed was out of the game trying to recover for a nice long while before he got back into the fight... at which point the rest of my team was doing well, since I managed to distract 2 players for the first 30-45 min.

Amish you should really mess around with the in-game map designer, its definitely confusing at first but you can make maps with a set amount of neutrals, and can even make maps with plenty of planets between players. I'm sure you could make a custom map far superior to the random single stars. You could even make maps with other stars that people can travel to (rather than start at different stars like the random multistar maps). Not to mention no pirate bases. If you'd like, I can give you a few tips on how to use it.

Admittedly at first, I was disillusioned by the fact that the maps were still randomly generated, but since most MP players play randomly generated maps, this could potentially be a popular map making tool.

Hmm...must tinker

I was playing as "Darvin", so you would have known if you were playing with or against me.  My ally was a pretty inexperienced Advent (the kind that needed to be told to get guardians at the 1-hour mark), but at least he listened to what I said.