Dawn of War Codex

Hi all, title says it all. I don't know the full extent of what you can and can't do with modding tools, but if it is possible I would love the ability to overwatch tier upgrades.

Afaik you can't set them on overwatch.

Yes but he (?) is asking if we could make it a feature in Elite.

I've long maintained that the lack of this feature has always been a Chaos buff

Tbf, I don't use overwatch purchases anyway, but I think leaving if this way is good as is. There should be some reward for people who are prompt on their economy.

Well, the Tier purchases are technically "Upgrades" while the squads are Squads (sbps in the game files). They are implemented in the files differently, but I haven't checked if it's actually possible to use overwatch with upgrades.

If this could technically be added, it'd be a great addition. Lowers the "micro" bar for economics a touch to let more focus be on map positioning and such. I'm universally in favor of all things that put player attention more on unit micro, as this is the most interesting aspect of the game to play and watch.

Heck, I'd be in favor of being able to queue all purchases for free (ie: queue a tac, scout, dev, T2, and as the resources come in they are purchased in that order).

I'm totally against what Cyris proposed.

This game is already brain dead easy on the macro end of it. It's not like you need anymore than like maybe 100 APM to play this game at a good level. Compared to a lot of other RTS games out there, we have a pretty good deal as it is.

The tech change, specifically T1 to T2, is a huge part of the game and people should be rewarded for being prompt on managing their economy.

Yeah. Paying attention to your economy is a part of the game. It is already easy enough as it is.

Just wondering; why don't we remove overwatch complitly? If going to next tier manually is a part of the game, why selecting units one by one in the right time is not?

Not saying it is a counter post, don't get me wrong but I would like to hear an answer.

firatwithin wrote:Just wondering; why don't we remove overwatch complitly? If going to next tier manually is a part of the game, why selecting units one by one in the right time is not?

It’s a valid point.

firatwithin wrote:Just wondering; why don't we remove overwatch complitly? If going to next tier manually is a part of the game, why selecting units one by one in the right time is not?

Not saying it is a counter post, don't get me wrong but I would like to hear an answer.

Because it isn't an argument from principle. Its "dont-change-anything" syndrome. If this game had been made with no overwatch function and no ability to queue multiple units, we'd be seeing the same arguments against those functions, if someone was to propose them. If tier upgrades could be overwatched in DOWII by default, I don't expect anyone would be arguing for its removal on the principle that it would make the game better.

I would love if overwatch was removed at the HQ completely. Nothing wrong with requiring skill on the macro end.

Tex wrote:I would love if overwatch was removed at the HQ completely. Nothing wrong with requiring skill on the macro end.

This.

I am with Cyris on this.

There is something called a skillfloor and a skillcap.
Making it so that you can set the Tier on overwatch would help people who are bad, and not reduce the ability of people who are good to showcase that they are good.

It is not like if you press it at exactly 125 power everyone in a Stream goes: "WOOOOO did you see that. Craaazy! Only the most skilled players can pull that off". But if you forget it, it can singlehandedly lose you games. That doesn't make for interesting games. Your opponent won't even notice it.

The fact that DoW2 doesn't focus on macro, is a pretty good argument for this small QoL Improvement. It's a feature of DoW2.
The focus of DoW2 never was on: "Build a worker every 30 seconds manage all your buildings and fight."

I feel like the "mechanic" of having to press it at the right moment is as engaging as having to press 1 every 30 seconds. If you would set it on overwatch, it's not like the game would make the decision for you or anything. You have the intention of: When I have enough ressources I want to buy that. You would still have to make a decision. I am always for making it easier for your Intention to be what happens. Adding more APM and "distractions" only for the sake of adding more APM is boring and unneeded.
Well I guess I can understand if you want a game like that. It is certainly a skillset. But its not the skillset I like playing games for. And it doesn't seem like Dow2 is intended to be a game about that skillset.

Just think about this:
How much is it hurting your gameexperience if we would change this?
How much could this improve the game experience for other people?

Let me try with a Dota analogy Wards recently got an update so that when placing them, you get shown their radius. Really helpfull for noobs, doesn't change much for Pros. In the end it makes for better pug games, because of more/better warding, which in turn increases the quality of the matches as a whole. To relate it to Dow2, I think everyone would have better matches. Who really wants to win a game just because the Opponent forgot to tech when he wanted to tech. On which you have basically no influence.

Well yeah, I don't think its very important to add overwatch on Tiers, but it would certainly not hurt, and I am quite a bit baffled by you guys

Lichtbringer wrote:I am with Cyris on this.

There is something called a skillfloor and a skillcap.
Making it so that you can set the Tier on overwatch would help people who are bad, and not reduce the ability of people who are good to showcase that they are good.

It is not like if you press it at exactly 125 power everyone in a Stream goes: "WOOOOO did you see that. Craaazy! Only the most skilled players can pull that off". But if you forget it, it can singlehandedly lose you games. That doesn't make for interesting games. Your opponent won't even notice it.

The fact that DoW2 doesn't focus on macro, is a pretty good argument for this small QoL Improvement. It's a feature of DoW2.
The focus of DoW2 never was on: "Build a worker every 30 seconds manage all your buildings and fight."

I feel like the "mechanic" of having to press it at the right moment is as engaging as having to press 1 every 30 seconds. If you would set it on overwatch, it's not like the game would make the decision for you or anything. You have the intention of: When I have enough ressources I want to buy that. You would still have to make a decision. I am always for making it easier for your Intention to be what happens. Adding more APM and "distractions" only for the sake of adding more APM is boring and unneeded.
Well I guess I can understand if you want a game like that. It is certainly a skillset. But its not the skillset I like playing games for. And it doesn't seem like Dow2 is intended to be a game about that skillset.

Just think about this:
How much is it hurting your gameexperience if we would change this?
How much could this improve the game experience for other people?

Let me try with a Dota analogy Wards recently got an update so that when placing them, you get shown their radius. Really helpfull for noobs, doesn't change much for Pros. In the end it makes for better pug games, because of more/better warding, which in turn increases the quality of the matches as a whole. To relate it to Dow2, I think everyone would have better matches. Who really wants to win a game just because the Opponent forgot to tech when he wanted to tech. On which you have basically no influence.

Well yeah, I don't think its very important to add overwatch on Tiers, but it would certainly not hurt, and I am quite a bit baffled by you guys

You are right to the bone.

I'm with Tex and Ace.

You could possibly make the case that macro should just be eliminated from this game because that's not the focus of it, but T1-> T2 is probably the single biggest purchase point in the game. Usually.

I don't understand the QoL argument either. Honest question, is buying your squads so taxing on your micro that it hurts your ability to play the game?

Just remove overwatch completely imo. Pushing F1 -> (squad button) is not that hard.

Macro might not be the main focus, but it's part of the game, how about we make gens on overwatch too?

Atlas wrote:I'm with Tex and Ace.

You could possibly make the case that macro should just be eliminated from this game because that's not the focus of it, but T1-> T2 is probably the single biggest purchase point in the game. Usually.

I don't understand the QoL argument either. Honest question, is buying your squads so taxing on your micro that it hurts your ability to play the game?

Just remove overwatch completely imo. Pushing F1 -> (squad button) is not that hard.

Nah, buying squads and T2 is not really taking away time from the action.
But as you say, buying T2 or even more so forgetting to buy it has a huge impact on the game. A 1v1 is basically over when you forgot for 2 minutes and thought it would already tick in the background.

I see the theoretical overwatch option as more Controll for the player.

When do you make the decision that you have enough stuff in T1 and want to go Tier 2? I am mostly making that decision right after a purchase. I want in that moment when I make the decision to be able to tell the game that. When there are 1-2 intense minutes between me making the decision and me executing it, I forget Maybe I think I have already done it. (Because I already made the decision.).

If we look at the greater design, I think I see not much value in the game making it harder for you to achieve what you want. You guys remember vehicle pathing in CoH1? When you wanted to back up and not expose reararmor, you would have to rapidly click behind your Tanks so that it doesn't turn. As it is now in Dow2 with the difference that turnspeed in Dow are pretty good. In CoH2 they introduced an extra button with which you can reverse with one click.

I want to make sure you guys know I don't want to dumb the game down. I want a high skillceiling. Hard to master. I can totally understand your concerns if we look at it as a slippery slope. Maybe for you guys researching T1 at the right time has become so easy and engrained that you view it as something totally simple? And then we come and want to dumb that simple thing down, whats next?^^

Coming back to my decisionmaking process, maybe you handle that differently. Just as people learn things differently, people structure their thoughts differently I guess, if you know what I mean

I hope you can understand better where I am coming from.

Would this lower skill ceiling?
I say no. The best player will ALWAYS be the one who buy exactly what they need at the right times. Queueing up your build order at the start of a match (tac, scout, dev, T2, razor, T3, pred) or even just T2 upgrade, will always be less competitive then the player who picks each purchase with care and proper timing. Same goes for queuing gens, which I think would be great addition.

Would this raise skill floor (competency needed to preform baseline)?
Yep! It will be easier for new players to get into the game and gain a baseline level of competency. As they get better, they will learn that queueing can be a trap, and it's best to be jazz: adapt and react.


So it won't hurt high level and it will get more new players to spin up to high level? And watching casts will be as fun or more so? What's the downside.

I totally get that proposals that sound like they are "undermining the integrity of the game" can sound very bad. But it's important to get past initial gut reactions and think through the impact. Goals are important, and here are mine when I was thinking through this: Make DoW2 easier to play without impacting the depth of high level play. This NAILS it in my mind.

Lichtbringer wrote:I am with Cyris on this.

There is something called a skillfloor and a skillcap.
Making it so that you can set the Tier on overwatch would help people who are bad, and not reduce the ability of people who are good to showcase that they are good.

It is not like if you press it at exactly 125 power everyone in a Stream goes: "WOOOOO did you see that. Craaazy! Only the most skilled players can pull that off". But if you forget it, it can singlehandedly lose you games. That doesn't make for interesting games. Your opponent won't even notice it.

The fact that DoW2 doesn't focus on macro, is a pretty good argument for this small QoL Improvement. It's a feature of DoW2.
The focus of DoW2 never was on: "Build a worker every 30 seconds manage all your buildings and fight."

I feel like the "mechanic" of having to press it at the right moment is as engaging as having to press 1 every 30 seconds. If you would set it on overwatch, it's not like the game would make the decision for you or anything. You have the intention of: When I have enough ressources I want to buy that. You would still have to make a decision. I am always for making it easier for your Intention to be what happens. Adding more APM and "distractions" only for the sake of adding more APM is boring and unneeded.
Well I guess I can understand if you want a game like that. It is certainly a skillset. But its not the skillset I like playing games for. And it doesn't seem like Dow2 is intended to be a game about that skillset.

Just think about this:
How much is it hurting your gameexperience if we would change this?
How much could this improve the game experience for other people?

Let me try with a Dota analogy Wards recently got an update so that when placing them, you get shown their radius. Really helpfull for noobs, doesn't change much for Pros. In the end it makes for better pug games, because of more/better warding, which in turn increases the quality of the matches as a whole. To relate it to Dow2, I think everyone would have better matches. Who really wants to win a game just because the Opponent forgot to tech when he wanted to tech. On which you have basically no influence.

Well yeah, I don't think its very important to add overwatch on Tiers, but it would certainly not hurt, and I am quite a bit baffled by you guys

Great fucking post.
Yes, agreeing because I am shit but every little bit helps.

I don't care at all about this L2P issue. Anyway as long as you're playing TM it doesn't matter whether you hit T2 before your opponent.

I would actually might need this type of thing for my mod I am creating since there is a lot more for the player keep track of.


Also, I am trying to make ASM not stand around waiting for the whole squad to finish jumping (or stand around as the serg uses merciless) would people be interested in this if I got it working?

Yes please, they all walk back into formation for the sarge to do the strike. so ~~

Yah that merciless strike thing sucks ballerinas

I don't see why you shouldn't get punished from bad awareness. Just like if you forget a capper squad and it gets rekt, you get punished for not controlling and keeping track of your stuff.

Economical management is already minimal in the game and since this is a strategy game I do think it should play a part.

Forgetting to tech happens to me way too often and sometimes I 360 noscope myself with that and it is just me playing bad that shouldn't be rewarded.

Dark Riku wrote:Yes please, they all walk back into formation for the sarge to do the strike. so ~~

Well I kinda already fixed that with the change I did to the ability. It is not in this mod though. The Serg will not wait for the other ASM members to get into formation, he just does the ability.

I mean while he is doing the ability the other ASM members don't stop attacking in melee.


Also I suggest increasing the ASM and Raptors start jump distance to 75 or so. This will help against staggered jumps and when an ASM gets KB he doesn't have to walk to a point here he can jump to the targeted location. He just goes off on his merry way. This change would NOT increase the range of the squads assault jump however. It would just allow member to catch up to a squad after they jumped and make the members who already jump not have to wait. I would also suggest the same to every jump squad out there. But some might be against this.

If someone works on this overwatch thingy for the tiers let me know caz I am interested in this. Thanks.

Nurland wrote:I don't see why you shouldn't get punished from bad awareness. Just like if you forget a capper squad and it gets rekt, you get punished for not controlling and keeping track of your stuff.

When capping points in 1v1 I tend to shift-click a second movement back to some cover or somewhere not out in the open so the units will not be in as much danger after capping? Should that function also be removed?

Did I say that queing up orders should be removed?

I believe I said that there is no reason to make the game punish less from bad awareness.

I didn't say anything about making the game more demanding by stripping features common in other games.