Skip to content
Zero Company Builds
Build

Mechanic

Zero Company action points explained

Each squad member has three Action Points per turn. Movement, attacks, Utilities and Abilities all draw from that pool, and you can take those actions in any order. Attack costs vary by weapon, and some attacks consume every remaining AP — which ends that Operator's turn immediately.

Confirmed
Confidence
Confirmed
Verified
27 August 2026
Version
Pre-release evidence, plus retail launch-build observations (August 2026)

The three-point turn

Three AP is the entire budget for an Operator's turn. There is no separate move-then-act structure: movement, attacks, Utilities and Abilities all come out of the same pool, and you choose the order.

That flexibility is what makes turn planning matter. Moving twice and attacking once, moving once and attacking twice, or standing still and using an Ability three times are all legal within the same three points — assuming the costs allow it.

Not all attacks cost the same

Attack AP cost varies by weapon, and all four are now reported from the retail build. A Pistol always costs 1 AP. A Longarm always costs 2. A Rifle costs 1 for the first shot and 2 for the second, which is exactly three. A Repeater shot consumes every remaining point, whatever that happens to be.

That turns the three-point turn into arithmetic. Three Pistol shots fit, for 6 damage each. One Longarm shot leaves a point over for a reposition, and never enough for a second shot. Two Rifle shots leave nothing, so a Rifle Operator chooses between moving and firing twice — and cannot do both without help.

The Repeater is the exception to all of it and the reason this page cannot give you a damage-per-point table. Its shot has no fixed price: fired first it costs three, fired after two moves it costs one, and its damage is reported to rise significantly with the points spent — by an amount nobody has published. It is the only weapon where *when* you fire decides *what it costs*.

So the all-AP rule EA describe has a weapon behind it as well as an Ability. Trick's Fire Repeating Blaster is still the only named Ability of that shape, scaling its damage with how many points were left and ending his turn on the spot; whether that is the Repeater's ordinary attack under a name, or a separate Ability that resembles it, is not stated.

Three is a holding limit, not a spending limit

The cap works differently from how it reads. Three AP is the most an Operator can *hold* at once — not a ration of what they may spend in a turn. A free assist is available every turn, and several abilities grant actions to a teammate directly, so a single Operator can take well past three points of actions in one turn.

That is what stops the Rifle's escalating cost being a hard ceiling. Two Rifle shots consume the standard turn, and an Operator who has been handed an extra point is not on a standard turn — which makes AP support and the Rifle a genuine pairing rather than two unrelated build choices.

Actions that sit outside the AP budget

Two confirmed systems bypass AP entirely. Call for Backup is a zero-AP support action that adds a teammate's assistance to the next attack. Advantage abilities are paid for out of the shared Advantage pool rather than AP — which is why a squad can fire a rocket and still move.

Advantage can also be spent to grant an ally an extra Action Point for the turn — the only known way to increase a turn's AP budget. It is widely reported as Hawks' unique Talent, once per turn, but EA list it without attributing it to anyone.

Confirmed

The rules as officially stated

  • Each squad member has three AP per turn.
  • Movement, attacks, Utilities and Abilities can all use AP.
  • Actions may be taken in any order.
  • Attack AP cost varies by weapon.
  • Some attacks consume all available AP.
  • A Pistol attack costs 1 AP, a Longarm 2, a Rifle 1 for the first shot then 2 for the second, and a Repeater every remaining point. All retail-reported.
  • Base damage per attack: Longarm 12, Rifle 10, Repeater 8, Pistol 6. The Repeater's is a floor rather than an output, because its damage rises with the points spent.
  • The three-AP limit caps what an Operator can hold at once, not what they can spend in a turn.

Planning

What this means for squad building

  • Display AP budgets per Operator and flag sequences that cannot fit in three points.
  • Weapon comparisons must include AP efficiency — possible at last for three of the four. The Rifle opens at 10 damage a point, the Pistol sustains 6 a point across three shots, the Longarm pays 6 a point for one large hit. The Repeater cannot be compared this way and should not be forced into the table.
  • A Rifle Operator plans one shot and a move, or two shots and no move. The second shot is the expensive one, and it is the choice the builder should surface.
  • A Longarm leaves exactly one point over, which is a reposition — so pairing it with anything that wants a spare AP is free.
  • A squad with no AP support and several all-AP attacks will have very little movement.
  • Free actions — Call for Backup, Advantage abilities — are how a turn gets more done than three points should allow, and the holding cap means there is no ceiling on how much more.

Open questions

Points the shipped game has not yet answered for us, or that need a controlled comparison to state as fact — recorded rather than guessed at.

  • What a Repeater shot deals at 2 AP and at 3 AP. The scaling is reported and unquantified, which is what stops the weapon being comparable to the other three at all.
  • The exact AP cost of every Ability and Utility.
  • Which Abilities consume all remaining AP, beyond Trick's Fire Repeating Blaster — and whether his is the Repeater's ordinary attack under a name.
  • Whether movement cost scales with distance or is a flat per-move charge.
  • Whether any Focus Tree nodes reduce AP costs.
  • Whether a Pistol's third shot in a turn costs the same as its first. "Always one AP" is the source's word for the cost, and three shots in one turn is the case nobody has described.

Questions

Common questions

The way these come up in search, answered directly.

How many Action Points does each Operator get per turn?
Three, spent in any order — and three is a holding limit rather than a spending limit, so an Operator handed extra actions can take more.
Does setting Overwatch end an Operator's turn?
Yes. Overwatch ends that Operator's turn.

Every question, answered with its sources

Related mechanics

Sources

  • Star Wars Zero Company: How Some of the Greatest Minds in Tactics Games are Pushing the Genre, Again

    Xbox Wire · Tier 2 — Developer interview · accessed 6 August 2026

    Supports: Greg Foertsch and James Brawley on the eight Specializations, Combat Stim + Gunslinger synergy, Advantage, and Specialization changes on authored characters

  • Lead Zero Company To Victory on August 27

    Electronic Arts · Tier 1 — Official · accessed 6 August 2026

    Supports: Operator introductions; 3 Action Points per turn; Advantage caps at 10; the eight Specializations; Bonds in the Personnel Facility; Hawks' species options

  • PC Review — 'Star Wars Zero Company'

    WorthPlaying · Tier 3 — Retail review · accessed 27 August 2026

    Supports: Weapons — "Regardless of specialization, operators can use any of the game's four ranged weapon types: blaster pistols, blaster rifles, longarms (sniper rifles), and repeaters (machine guns)", and "Blaster pistols deal the least damage but always cost one AP to fire. Blaster rifles cost one AP for the first shot and two for the second, using all three AP an operator starts with each turn. Longarms always cost two AP but offer the longest range." No cost is given for the Repeater. Progression — "Focus points can be completely reset and reallocated at any time, so you're never stuck with a bad build." Bonds — "Reaching a new bond level lets you choose one of three permanent buffs for both operators, including increased health, ranged accuracy, movement range, or additional Focus points." Published 2026-08-26

  • Star Wars Zero Company Tips for Tactics Padawans

    Xbox Wire · Tier 3 — Retail review · accessed 27 August 2026

    Supports: "Fit Check" — "utility items like grenades and health packs are refreshed at the start of every battle (even when you have multiple battles in sequence as part of a larger story mission)", and "you'll likely be shifting your best equipment around between different operators as you field different teams". "Action Economy Is King" — "The limit of 3 action points per turn only applies to how many they can hold at any given moment", a free assist available every turn, and abilities that grant additional actions to teammates. Opening paragraph — four difficulty settings, changeable in the menu at any time between missions. Autosave on the first round of a battle, then at cycle start. Bylined Will Fulton, Xbox Wire Editor. Published 2026-08-26

  • Star Wars Zero Company — najlepsza klasa broni: blaster, karabin i pistolet

    PPE.pl · Tier 3 — Retail review · accessed 27 August 2026

    Supports: Weapon class table, columns "Klasa broni | Koszt PA | Obrażenia broni | Obrażenia krytyczne | Zasięg | Typ broni", repeated in the per-weapon descriptions below it. Blaster długodystansowy (Longarm) — "Obrażenia: 12 | Krytyczne: +12 | Zasięg: Długi", "Wymaga 2 PA do wykonania strzału (wolna broń)". Karabin blasterowy (Rifle) — "Obrażenia: 10 | Krytyczne: +6 | Zasięg: Średni", "Pierwszy strzał w turze kosztuje tylko 1 PA (jako broń szybka), a każdy kolejny w tej samej turze wymaga 2 PA". Blaster powtarzalny (Repeater) — "Obrażenia: 8 | Krytyczne: +4 | Zasięg: Średni", "Ciężka broń automatyczna. Ma niskie obrażenia bazowe, ale zyskuje znaczne premie przy strzałach za 2 PA lub 3 PA. Oddanie strzału zawsze zużywa wszystkie pozostałe PA w danej turze" — no figures given for that bonus. Pistolet blasterowy (Pistol) — "Obrażenia: 6 | Krytyczne: +4 | Zasięg: Krótki", "każdy strzał kosztuje zaledwie 1 PA". The guide's own verdict names the Rifle the best general-purpose weapon, for economical AP use and balanced damage. No accuracy figure and no Modification Slot count anywhere on the page. Bylined Mateusz Wróbel, published 2026-08-26