Star Wars Zero Company: How to Set Up Overwatch

Overwatch in Star Wars Zero Company lets an operator hold fire and shoot enemies during the enemy phase, as long as those enemies move through or act inside a cone you place on the battlefield. Because the cone is adjustable and can interrupt movement, it works best as the last thing an operator does on a turn. Here is exactly how to arm it during the tutorial mission and confirm it fires.

Quick answer: Select an operator, open the radial menu, choose Overwatch, aim the cone over the path enemies will use, then end your turn. Any enemy that enters the cone during the enemy phase gets shot.

How Overwatch works in Zero Company

Overwatch is one of the actions each operator can spend Action Points (AP) on, alongside moving, attacking, using a Utility, or activating an Ability. Every operator gets three AP per turn. Unlike a simple reaction shot, Overwatch here uses a cone that you point in a chosen direction, and the shot triggers when an enemy either moves through the cone or takes an action inside it.

A few rules shape how you use it:

Using Overwatch immediately ends that operator’s turn, so treat it as a final action.
The number of enemies the operator can fire at scales with how much AP you put into the action.
Your Chance-to-Hit changes with the length of the cone you place — a shorter cone generally means better odds.
An enemy hit while moving may have its movement interrupted.

Set up Overwatch in the tutorial mission

The tutorial walks you through arming two operators and covering separate enemy paths. Follow these steps in order.

Select Hawks and open the radial menu. Choose the Overwatch action, which is mapped to button 3 in the tutorial. This puts you into aiming mode for the cone.

Radial menu open with the Overwatch action selected and the reaction cone highlighted on the map — The Setting Up Overwatch prompt with Overwatch chosen from the radial menu and the reaction zone highlighted. Image credit: Bit Reactor / via @PazarGamingGuides

Aim the Overwatch cone down the path enemies will use. In this tutorial mission you need to extend the cone all the way to the end of the highlighted path so the coverage lines up with where enemies approach.

Move your second operator, Aurelio, to the highlighted cover position. Positioning matters here because you want the second Overwatch cone to cover the adjacent path rather than overlapping the one Hawks already holds.

Aurelio being moved to the highlighted cover spot to set a second Overwatch angle — Moving Aurelio into the highlighted cover position to establish a second reaction shot. Image credit: Bit Reactor / via @PazarGamingGuides

Select Aurelio, open the radial menu again, and set up a second Overwatch zone over the adjacent path. With two cones covering both approaches, enemies have no clear route in without being fired on.

End your turn to start the enemy phase. Overwatch only resolves during the enemy’s movement, so nothing happens until you hand the turn over.

The Fight Your Way Out objective active with the End Turn button highlighted — The Fight Your Way Out objective with the End Turn button highlighted, ready to trigger the enemy phase. Image credit: Bit Reactor / via @PazarGamingGuides

Confirm Overwatch fired

You know the setup worked when the enemy phase begins and your operators automatically shoot at any enemy that steps into a cone. Enemies caught while advancing may stop short as their movement is interrupted. If both cones are covering the routes correctly, the incoming units take fire before they can act.

If Overwatch does not fire, the usual reasons are simple. The enemy never entered the cone, so re-aim it over the path they actually use. The operator’s turn was spent before you could arm it, since Overwatch needs to be the final action. Or the cone was placed too far in the wrong direction, leaving the approach uncovered.

Get more out of Overwatch

Two habits make Overwatch far more reliable. Keep the cone short where you can, since hit chance improves as the cone shrinks, and pour extra AP into the action when you want a single operator to fire on more than one enemy in a phase. Layering two or more operators over separate approaches, as the tutorial does, turns a chokepoint into a kill zone.

Overwatch also pairs well with abilities that reposition enemies. Combining a knockback move like Tel-Rea’s Force Push or Kabb’s Uppercut to shove an enemy out of cover and into a prepared cone sets up a clean reaction shot on your next enemy phase. Since there is no Fog of War in Zero Company, you can see enemy positions clearly and plan those cones with full information about where threats are.

Once you have the rhythm down — move, aim the cone, end turn — Overwatch becomes one of the most dependable tools for controlling how the enemy phase plays out.