Every unit in Zero Company gets 3 action points a turn, but that number only describes what you can hold at once, not a hard spending limit. Abilities, assists and character synergies generate extra action points mid-turn, and a unit that starts with 3 can easily end up spending 5 or 6 before the turn passes to the enemy. Missing that distinction is the fastest way to play the game like a slower, more cautious XCOM when it actually rewards the opposite.
Bit Reactor, the studio behind this turn-based tactics game set during the Clone Wars, was founded by developers who worked on XCOM, XCOM 2 and Marvel’s Midnight Suns, and the DNA shows. But the systems here are tuned differently enough that XCOM habits, especially the instinct to hoard resources and play defensively, actively work against you.
The action point economy, and why hoarding is wrong
Spend, do not save
Advantage points, the game’s other resource layer, accumulate up to a maximum of 10, and the intended play is to spend them proactively rather than banking them for an emergency that may never come. An unspent Advantage point at the end of a mission was potential you left on the table, not safety margin you protected. Combine that with action points that regenerate through ability chains and squad synergies, and the whole action economy is built to reward a player who commits to a plan each turn rather than one who keeps units topped up “just in case.”
Push for synergy chains, not clean kills
Because team composition carries very little opportunity cost between most character choices, the game wants you experimenting with combinations rather than locking into one safe squad. A unit that generates bonus action points when a squadmate lands a specific effect is worth building around even if that unit’s raw damage looks unremarkable on its own. If your turns are ending with points unspent, you are not being efficient, you are leaving damage or positioning on the table that the enemy AI will punish next turn.
Unspent Advantage points represent wasted potential, and the same logic extends to action points generated mid-turn: if you are not spending them, you built the wrong turn.
Use the environment, not just your abilities
Maps lean heavily on bottomless voids and catwalks lined with flimsy guardrails, and pushing an enemy off an edge kills it regardless of how much health it has left. This matters most against tougher droid units where a straight damage race is slow and expensive in resources. A knockback ability aimed at a ledge is frequently a better use of an action point than a direct attack, especially once you have burned your best offensive cooldowns earlier in the turn.
Utility items, grenades and health packs, refresh at the start of every battle, so there is no reason to carry them between missions like a limited campaign resource. Use them liberally inside a fight rather than saving them for a harder mission down the line, since the harder mission will hand you a fresh set anyway.
Extraction missions want a different rhythm than kill missions
A significant number of missions are structured around reaching an extraction zone with your whole squad rather than clearing every enemy, and new threats keep spawning until your team fully extracts. Treat these as timed pressure rather than a fight to win outright:
- Do not clear side rooms for loot once the extraction timer or enemy pressure has started ramping. The mission ends the moment your full squad reaches the zone, so lingering only costs you resources for no objective credit.
- Send a mobility specialist, like a Mandalorian using jetpack movement, ahead to scout the extraction path rather than advancing the whole squad as one slow block.
- Budget your Advantage points knowing the mission has a hard endpoint, not an open-ended grind, so there is even less reason to hold them back.
Difficulty is adjustable mid-campaign, use that
The game offers four difficulty settings and lets you change difficulty between missions rather than locking you into a choice made at campaign start. If a specific mission type, extraction runs under heavy pressure especially, is fighting your playstyle, drop the difficulty for that mission instead of grinding through repeated failures on the setting you started with. There is no permanent penalty described for adjusting it, and treating difficulty as fixed is a habit worth dropping from other tactics games.
Zero Company rewards a squad that spends its resources with intent every turn. The 3 action point number on your unit’s card is a display limit, not a budget, and the sooner you play around that, the faster missions stop feeling like attrition and start feeling like the puzzle the developers actually built.
