ok, removed my opening line, as you obviously can't get that particular arghument. . .
. . . now if it was a warship, with a scout ability, maybe it would need to divert power to it's scanners, so it would be an SA, but it is designed and built as a scout, so why in the blue hell would you not be able to scout with a scout, it's it's very function in life.
however if thats the way you think it should work, surely a carrier should need to use a special action to launch any fighters? it's the exact same principle.
warships shoot guns, carriers launch fighters, scouts um, well scout.
I'm sorry, but having to do a special action do do your job it's bloody ridiculous. I understand your point on special actions, but the scouting ability is priced into the cost of the ship, to then penalise it by making it do a special action to do it seems daft, now then, if all scouts got boosted to be bonafide warships, plus having a scout ability (ok this is the whitestar) then yes, make it a special action by all means, the scout is already a rare enough ship in most fleets, bar the whitestar, why make it worse?
as for jump engines, if the power requirement of a spiffy radar was the same as ripping open the fabric of space, this might be relevant, but until we understand how to rip open the very fabric of space, we have to accept that scanning something is a probably a whole lot less power consuming.