The orders you can receive from the "Aged Gentleman" are:
Retreat (Lets you save a unit from a potentially bad situation where they will get downed and die)
Medic Request (Pulls a downed unit off the field, not bad if you're really far from a downed unit)
Healing Request (If a unit is in a pinch and needs more health, does have uses)
Sniper Support (Attacks a unit with set 100 damage, extremely situational, it's kind of impossible to balance this so I can see why they removed it form later games)
Heal All (Heals 80HP to all units, extremely situational... not very useful. However it can heal your tank, which may be useful in a pinch if you've blown your treads out)
Awaken Potential (Makes potentials far more likely to be activated, broken if you can apply it properly, excluding its broken uses it's very useful if you plan on using one unit many times that has good potentials)
Recon Request (Makes all enemy units on the field visible. Extremely useful for certain maps, but only learnable in NG+... by that time you probably don't need it anymore lol)
Mortar Support (200 damage to enemies in range. Like Sniper Support, very situational with very few uses. Does vsPers damage so no sandbags will be destroyed)
Awaken All (See Awaken Potential. A little more situational since it costs more but can be useful in certain challenge maps)
Artillery Support (Just like Sniper and Mortar Support, very very situational (due to its cost). Deals 100 damage to all units on the field)
So while most of the Orders he teaches has use, the Support orders can be safely passed without worry.
And on the non-scout subject, I've been noticing something that I have not realized before while playing the PS3 and PC versions, though I'm convinced this affects those versions as well: Female Shocktroopers have a slower rate of fire compared to their male counterparts. This is most telling when wielding the Ruhm due to the unique sound it makes, but it is there for all the weapons.
I just tested it out with a 30 bullet T-MAG, and the firing sequence for the ladies was at least 30-40% longer in comparison to that of the dudes, and this is being generous due to my inaccurate method of measuring. This makes the males superior at intercept fire, but on the occasions that you get to line up several enemies for a double kill shot, the slower rate of fire means less bullets wasted on the corpse as they still have full hit detection at 0 hp. Weird.
That is such an unusual thing to discover. If I have time this weekend I'll take a look at it. There's a lot of hidden stuff in this game... you can tell it underwent a long development cycle.