You have 3 types of scouting-
1) Tells you where the enemy is not
2) Tells you where the enemy is located when it dies upon finding the enemy
3) Tells you what the enemy is- giving you a SPOT/SALUTE report
The first is easy to determine, the second tells you where your ex-scouts ran into pickets or a screening force (you know, those folks tasked to keep your scouts away), and the last one is the scout that gives you the valuable information; the marks of a professional.
Ideally a scout/recon unit should not be seen/detected because the most valuable information they can give you is to make sure you know things that your opposition does not know you know.
But sometimes they are also going to have to brave some fire and go into harm's way to get information you need (are those really Alacorns dug in on that ridge or are they dummies? or Pikes mocked up to be Alacorns?) which is where surviving to get into a position to observe/detect and get the information back (which means surviving period or at least until you can transmit).
That said I agree with all the rest of it. Standard armor only. If ferrous fibrous helps, and you have the space for it that’s fine too, but most of these mechs are going to use most of their crit space on jump jets, endo steel and XL engines. Get up to 10/15/10 or faster and you basically run out of space for ferrous fibrous armor only anything with more firepower than an ostscout.
Light mechs have the crits to spare usually . . . now you start piling on XL Gyros, XL engines, Partial Wings, and full jump jets for the high speed mechs, and yeah you start using them up.
As for TAG/C3 . . . yeah, you are talking a niche type of recon, a "FIST'er"