Action Points & Cover
The Core Combat Loop
How turns work in STAR WARS Zero Company — three action points per operative, movement that costs AP, and a cover system that iterates on the modern XCOM formula from the same designers.
Three actions. One chance to get them right.
Zero Company’s combat will feel immediately familiar to anyone who has played the modern XCOM games — and that’s no accident. Lead developer Bit Reactor was founded by veterans of those titles, and the studio’s pedigree shows in the cover, accuracy, camera and cinematic kill shots that define a turn.
The action-point economy
Each operative gets three action points per turn, and crucially, movement spends AP rather than being free. That single rule is the heart of the tactics: every turn is a negotiation between repositioning, attacking and using abilities. Do you spend two points closing a flank and one firing, or hold ground and act twice from cover? With a squad of four, those small decisions compound into the shape of the whole fight.
Cover and flanking
Cover is the other pillar. Positioning an operative behind hard or soft cover reduces the enemy’s chance to hit — and flanking around that cover strips the bonus away, which is why so many of the game’s synergies are about forcing or exploiting bad positions. The most powerful plays in Zero Company are the ones that make an enemy’s cover meaningless before you fire.
Why it matters
Master the AP-and-cover loop and everything else in the game opens up: the Advantage system, the Force synergies and class kits all build on this foundation. Get sloppy with positioning, and even a strong squad bleeds operatives you can’t get back.