The RTSC Guide to Dawn of War
Part 5: Overwatching
Like most real time strategy games, Dawn of War
lets you queue up to six items by hand in any squad to save you a lot of
messy micromanagement. But if you don't have the dosh up front it will simply
refuse you. Overwatching is a game feature that
lets you automatically build, reinforce and equip your squads the instant
those resources become. You can have as many items overwatched as you like,
and you can still queue items by hand in the middle of it. They get top
priority in any overwatched squad. The only thing you can't overwatch are
squad leaders.
To activate Overwatch, right click on the reinforce
and heavy weapon buttons inside a squad that
you want to build up. The relevant icons will flash white to show its
enabled. Overwatching will keep adding new members and heavy weapons while
until it runs out of resources or all the available slots are filled.
Once a particular item is filled to capacity, Overwatch stops and disables
that button. The button won't unlock again until vacancies appear in the
squad.
Be warned. There are no warning sounds or messages
that let you know a squad has quietly stopped Overwatching. Keep your
eye on the ball here - its very, very easy to miss. You'll have to restart
further Overwatch by hand after the squad has taken fresh losses. In the
middle of a big fight, that's very easy to forget to do.
You can Overwatch units from any factory or
barracks - they will continue to be churned out until the relevant Squad
or Vehicle Cap is reached. Some factories will
even store an extra squad or unit, only releasing it when another squad
dies and frees up cap space. The instant you blow away a vehicle or a
squad, a fresh replacement materialises back at base. If your opponent
has set their rally point at your base or at the battle, then you have
a recipe for unit spamming. You can imagine
what this can let you do in a QuickStart game
with six Overwatched factories and too many resources...
The great thing about Overwatching is that it
gets around the problem of trying to add units when you have insufficient
resources; it will automatically build reinforcements and weapons for
you the moment the for resources become available. A small, basic squad
will automatically grow into a fully fledged force by the time it reaches
the front lines. There's absolutely no mucking about with your economy
or your build: you're freed up to skirmish with your opponent and control
the map at all times.
The bad thing about Overwatching is that it
can thoroughly bankrupt you in the early stages of a game and deprive
you of any spare resources to tech up with. There are times where you
really should mass troops early on with Overwatch, and other times where
you should reinforce of build by hand, especially if your army of guys
becomes obsolete when the first vehicles roll over you. Its a good idea
to pause global Overwatching if its grabbing
resources while your trying to get an urgent tech or some new units. Just
remember to turn it on again afterwards!
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Overwatching shortcuts
Two global hotkeys that you really SHOULD get to know. |
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Ctrl+O |
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This toggle pauses and unpauses
global overwatching across all your forces. When paused,
the last queued units, heavy weapons or builds will finish up, but
no further requisition or power will be spent, even though all
your Reinforce and Build
icons will still flash. The Overwatch button
will change to a yellow Pause icon when
Paused, and a green Play icon when restarted. |
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Ctrl+K |
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This cancels all global Overwatching
outright. Any queued up units, reinforcements or heavy weapons will
finish building, but all flashing icons are reset right across your
army. The green Play icon will still be enabled
though, so you can restart any new Overwatch commands afresh.
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Hotkey for starting
Overwatch. There isn't one.
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DoW Squads 
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