Combat System

Overview

Star Wars Zero Company uses a turn-based tactical combat system. Missions deploy a squad of four characters. Each character has 3 Action Points (AP) per turn, spent on movement, attacks, and abilities. The squad also shares a single Advantage pool used for special abilities outside the AP economy.

Combat is resolved in team turns: your entire squad acts first, then the whole enemy force takes its turn; actions are not interleaved unit by unit.

Figures on this page were checked against the launch build on 30 Aug 2026. See Game Updates.

Action Points

Every unit begins their turn with 3 Action Points. AP cost varies by action:

• Movement: costs AP based on distance
• Standard attacks: cost AP
• Abilities: cost AP (varies by ability)

Unspent AP does not carry over between turns.

Action Points are spent operator by operator in any order the player likes, and can be interleaved: a squad is free to move one operator, act with a second, then return to the first. The enemy AI plays each of its units out in one go, so this freedom is a player advantage rather than a shared rule, and it is what makes setups like spotting a target before a second operator fires possible within a single turn.

Action Types

Ability cards label each action by type, which tells you which resource it draws on:

Cards also carry their own use limits and targeting mode, independent of cost: many abilities are capped at 1 per turn or a number of uses per combat, and the targeting line states whether the ability hits a Single Enemy, a Target Area, or (for Chained Ranged attacks) any combination of enemies.

Hawks’ AP ability: Hawks can spend Advantage to refresh 1 AP for any squadmate, once per turn.

Advantage System

The entire squad shares a single Advantage pool, which holds a maximum of 10 Advantage at a time. The squad gains +1 Advantage each time it successfully damages an enemy, so the pool fills through ordinary offence rather than through any dedicated action, and a missed attack generates nothing. Advantage can then be spent on special abilities independently of AP. The Scout is the only class that generates it by other means: Combat Recon grants +1 Advantage for every enemy inside its assessment area, so a tight enemy cluster can be converted straight into pool, and the Tactical Timing passive adds a 20% chance of +1 Advantage whenever that operator defeats an enemy.

• Every class has an Ultimate ability demanding a large Advantage spend; see the ability tables on the Classes page
• Other confirmed Advantage abilities include granting an extra AP to an ally for the turn, calling in a rocket strike, temporarily raising Chance-to-Hit for the entire squad, and taunting nearby enemies into attacking a single operator
• Smaller abilities also draw from the same shared pool
• Advantage spending is a squad-level resource decision, not a per-character one
• Because Advantage doesn’t cost AP, it can rescue a squad after its AP is spent, or set up a calculated burst turn

Hit Chance

Each attack displays a Chance-to-Hit against the target before you commit. A clean, well-positioned shot can reach 100%; cover and range reduce the chance, while flanking or attacking from higher ground raise it back up. A 70% shot therefore signals that something is working against the attacker, and the game rewards eliminating those factors before firing: the opposite emphasis to XCOM, where accuracy is built up from a lower base. A launch-build bug recalculated a displayed 100% chance lower when the shot was taken, so a shot presented as certain could miss. It was fixed in Patch 1.1 on 9 September 2026.

Statuses

Abilities apply named statuses, shown on the ability card with a stack count (Vulnerable 1, Marked 1), and stack counts are how several buffs scale: Morale, Retaliation, Lethal, Evasion, Harmony, and Sharpened Senses all describe their strength in stacks. Statuses named so far:

An enemy that has been Dazed or Stunned gains Stun Resistance for the rest of that combat, so control effects cannot be chained on the same target: the window they buy is a single turn, and it only comes once.

See Classes for the abilities behind each entry. Vicious and Invulnerable come from the Universal Talents pool rather than from a class ability, so any custom operator can bring them regardless of Specialization.

Statuses that arrive with an ability’s upgrades, rather than at its base rank, are marked as such above: Stunned, Impervious, and Immovable all appear only at the top rank of the ability that applies them. Preview coverage described Morale as a flat +9% Chance-to-Hit per stack lost on taking damage, which the ability data replaces with the healing and injury-penalty immunity shown here. See the class pages for the per-rank values behind them.

Battlefield and Reaction Statuses

Statuses that come from position, terrain, or an enemy’s reaction rather than from a named ability:

Enemy Statuses

Statuses carried by enemies rather than applied to them, which change how a target has to be approached:

Plague Statuses

The Infinite Coil carry Fathom’s plague, and it gives their units a set of statuses that work as a chain rather than individually:

The chain is what matters tactically: killing Infected units feeds Resonance into the survivors, and three stacks turns one of them into a Surged unit. Clearing a group in the wrong order concentrates the plague rather than dispersing it.

Defense and Defense Penetration

Defense is the protection an operator gets from armour, toughness, or skill, and it reduces the damage taken from incoming attacks. The Heavy’s Heavy Armor Training passive raises it.

Defense Penetration is the counter to it: an attack carrying it bypasses that protection and deals more damage as a result. The Scoundrel’s Scoundrel’s Instinct passive grants it on that operator’s attacks.

Call for Backup

Call for Backup is a free action costing no AP, usable once per turn by each Operator. It lets that Operator nominate a teammate to assist their next attack: most assisting Operators fire alongside them, while some provide a bonus instead. Because it costs nothing, it adds damage without reducing the actions available that turn.

Strike Penalty

Every weapon has an optimal Range band, listed on the Weapons page. Attacking a target outside that band incurs a Strike Penalty, which is the mechanical reason a Longarm rewards distance and a Blaster Pistol rewards closing in. It sits alongside the other Chance-to-Hit modifiers above.

Squad Size

The standard combat squad is four characters. Players choose which four squad members to deploy from their full roster at the Den before each mission. Certain missions let players control additional characters beyond the standard four.

Terrain and Exploration

A key design feature is that combat is influenced by player exploration. The terrain and layout of a mission area changes based on how the player has explored it prior to or during combat, providing strategic advantages or disadvantages depending on knowledge of the map.

Story missions open with a small third-person free-roam phase: a main-story-only espionage segment where exploring before the fight grants Intel and Advantage Points for the combat encounter ahead. Weather effects during combat are purely cosmetic and do not affect visibility or efficiency.

Cover

Cover is a confirmed mechanic with two levels, and both carry a fixed Chance-to-Hit penalty for the attacker:

Cover works the same way in both directions: it makes targets harder to hit, and it makes line of sight harder to achieve, for your operators and for enemies alike. Flanking a target by moving around its cover leaves it Exposed, and attacking from higher ground likewise negates the protection cover provides. The game features destructible environments, so cover can be eliminated during combat (a rocket launcher or explosive can clear enemy cover outright), and holding one position too long risks ending up fully exposed.

Environmental kills are confirmed: an enemy pushed into a void (turbolift shafts, water, cliffs) dies instantly. Some enemies can be cloaked, and a droid’s map scan can reveal a cloaked target.

Environmental Kills

Health totals can be bypassed entirely. Many abilities push enemies out of position, among them concussion grenades, Force pushes, and Kabb Uppercut’s Uppercut, and maps are built with catwalks, guardrails, and open drops that make those pushes lethal. An enemy shoved off an edge is removed from the fight regardless of how much health it had left.

This is the efficient answer to armoured, high-health targets. Droidekas, the rolling shielded droids, are singled out as the clearest case: grinding one down through its shield costs a great deal of squad output, while a single well-aimed push does the job outright.

No Fog of War

Zero Company does not use Fog of War. Unlike XCOM, the player can see all enemy positions at all times before engaging. This is a deliberate design departure: in XCOM, concealment of enemy positions was a primary driver of the overwatch-crawl strategy. Without that uncertainty, overwatch becomes a less dominant tactic.

Seeing everything does not mean shooting everything: Bit Reactor notes that snipers still need line of sight, so a full Sharpshooter squad is viable but may land fewer kills than a balanced one. Objective design also pushes against a pure Overwatch crawl; it suits holding ground in supply runs, but sabotage, rescue, and extraction missions all demand movement.

Overwatch in Zero Company is also cone-based rather than omnidirectional: a unit in overwatch covers a defined, adjustable firing arc, and the number of enemies it can fire on scales with the AP invested. The longer the cone, the less accurate the shot, so extending coverage trades hit chance for area. An operator on Overwatch automatically attacks enemies that move through the zone or take an action inside it. Placing Overwatch immediately ends that operator’s turn, making it an ideal final action, and a landed Overwatch shot has a 50% chance to stop the target where it stands, ending its movement for that turn. Combined with the absence of Fog of War and map structures that force players to advance, this pushes squads toward active, forward engagement rather than static defensive play.

Breaking Overwatch: an Overwatch is cancelled outright when the operator holding it takes damage. This is symmetrical, applying to enemies and to your own squad, so shooting a unit that has pinned an approach is a reliable way to clear it before moving through. Enemies use Overwatch to pin down operators in exactly the same way.

Mission Objectives

Missions feature a variety of objectives, including:

• Eliminating all enemies
• Rescuing specific characters
• Defending strategic points

Map layouts vary between close-quarters environments where defensive positioning is appropriate and longer maps where players must advance while completing objectives simultaneously.

Missions that end in an evacuation require the whole squad to reach the evac zone. Operators cannot be extracted one at a time as they arrive, so a straggler holds up everyone, and the retreat has to be planned a turn or two before it starts. The mission ends the moment the last operator steps in, with no turn spent holding the zone, and enemy reinforcements keep arriving until it does.

Glossary

The game’s own tooltip text for the terms used across this page and the class pages. Two entries carry numbers stated nowhere else: the Chance-to-Hit penalty per Injury, and the base Intel reward for a mission.

References

If information is missing, it has not yet been confirmed. Corrections are welcome.