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Zero Company injuries and permadeath explained

When an Operator is downed they suffer an Injury. Three Injuries cause permanent death on standard difficulty. Allies can Rally a downed Operator to bring them back up. Permadeath is enabled by default, but it can be disabled in the settings — so the risk level is a choice you make before the campaign, not a fixed rule.

Confirmed
Confidence
Confirmed
Verified
14 September 2026
Version
Retail 1.1, 9 September 2026 — official patch notes

Three strikes

Injuries accumulate. A single downed Operator is a setback; the third one is permanent. That turns every risky position into a decision with consequences that outlast the mission.

Allies can Rally downed Operators, which is what stops one bad turn from ending a campaign run.

What it does to squad building

Permadeath is what makes the Medic's Injury prevention valuable in a way that raw healing numbers would not capture. It also puts a real cost on authored Operators: Tel-Rea Vokoss is the only Jedi Padawan Operator, and permadeath can remove access to her entirely.

A squad with no sustain and no Injury prevention is playable — it is just running without a safety net, and a planner should say so rather than pretend the risk is not there.

An Injury means zero health, not any damage

This is the detail that makes the system more forgiving than it sounds, and it is the one previewers with XCOM experience single out. You do not take an Injury from being shot. You take one from being reduced to zero health and downed.

In XCOM 2 a single unlucky hit could sideline a soldier for several missions, which pushed players towards reloading saves or rotating their favourites out. Here you are expected to take damage. One previewer played roughly eighteen hours and never felt the urge to reload, because there was always a way to recover a bad turn.

The practical consequence for building: a squad that can stabilise a bad turn is worth more than one that tries to avoid bad turns. Recovery is a design goal, so builds should be rated on whether they can absorb a mistake.

Healing costs a cycle, and a cycle is a mission

Injuries persist between missions until they are treated at the Den. A standard Medbay bed takes one full cycle; a Bacta Tank is instant but costs Credits.

A previewer reports that you can run only one full combat mission per cycle. If that holds, the two facts multiply: a cycle spent healing is a mission you do not run, and because missions and Operations expire, a mission you do not run may be content you never see.

You also cannot heal everyone at once. That makes the Medbay a rationing decision that shapes the rest of your planning rather than a menu you clear between fights.

The Bacta Tank is once per cycle

Patch 1.1 fixed the Bacta Tank being usable more than once in a cycle, which is EA's way of saying the rule: one use per cycle. In the launch build, Credits could buy instant recovery for as many Operators as you could afford in the same cycle. From 9 September they buy it for one.

That closes the only route around the rationing above. With one tank use and one bed per cycle, a squad that took two Injuries in a mission is a squad that fields one of them next cycle at the earliest and the other a cycle later — Credits no longer compress that. It moves the Medic's Injury prevention from a nicety to the only thing that scales with how badly a mission went.

If you played the first fortnight and remember paying to clear the whole Medbay at once, that was the bug rather than the design. Nothing published says what the tank costs, and the patch does not add a figure.

Losing an Operator costs more than the Operator

A dead Operator takes their accumulated experience and every Bond they had built with them. A replacement recruited from the Den arrives with their own relationships at zero and has to rebuild from nothing.

That cost falls hardest on exactly the Operator you have invested most in, because the one you keep deploying is both the most developed and the closest to their third Injury. It is the strongest argument for spreading Bond investment across more than one pairing.

Hawks is the exception: Hawks cannot permanently die. Hawks falling ends the mission instead.

You can turn it off

Permadeath is enabled by default but can be disabled. That means build advice has to state which setting it assumes: a squad that is reckless under permadeath may be perfectly reasonable without it.

Difficulty appears to be a separate axis again. Previewers name normal, hard and expert tiers, one counts four settings in total, and an Ironman-style option that disables reloading saves is described separately from both. Exactly how these three switches relate is not yet clear.

Every build page on this site records the difficulty and permadeath assumption it was written against.

Confirmed

The rules as officially stated

  • Downed Operators suffer Injuries.
  • An Injury is taken on being reduced to zero health, not from damage generally.
  • Three Injuries cause permanent death on standard difficulty.
  • Injuries persist between missions until treated at the Den.
  • A standard Medbay bed takes one cycle; a Bacta Tank is instant and costs Credits.
  • From Patch 1.1, the Bacta Tank can be used once per cycle. EA list the fix as a bug, so the launch build allowed more than one use.
  • Allies can Rally downed Operators.
  • Hawks is the only Operator who cannot permanently die.
  • A dead Operator's experience and Bonds are lost with them.
  • Permadeath is enabled by default but can be disabled.
  • An Ironman-style option disabling save reloading is described separately from permadeath.

Planning

What this means for squad building

  • Warn when a squad has no Medic and permadeath is enabled.
  • Rate builds for risk, not only for output.
  • Rate builds on whether they can stabilise a bad turn, not only on whether they avoid one.
  • Provide replacement suggestions for builds that depend on a specific authored Operator.
  • Treat Injury avoidance as a scheduling advantage: a healing cycle costs a mission.
  • Budget for one Bacta Tank use per cycle, not one per Injury. A second Injury in the same mission costs a cycle whatever your Credits say.
  • Spread Bond investment across more than one pairing to limit what a single death costs.
  • State the permadeath assumption on every build page.

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.

  • Whether Injuries carry stat penalties between missions.
  • Whether an Operator can be killed outright from full health, or only through three separate downs. One previewer describes losing someone who was surrounded; another says a third fall within one fight is fatal, which would explain it without an outright-kill rule.
  • Whether the three-Injury threshold is what the other difficulties use. The count of difficulty settings is no longer open — there are four — but what any of them changes is.
  • Whether the three-Injury threshold changes on other difficulties.
  • What a Bacta Tank costs in Credits, and how that compares with the value of a cycle. Patch 1.1 fixed its per-cycle limit and printed no price.
  • Whether the once-per-cycle limit is one Operator per cycle or one activation that might treat several. EA's wording is 'used more than one in a cycle', which reads as one use, and nothing describes what a use covers.
  • Whether Rally has an AP cost or a limit per mission.

Questions

Common questions

The way these come up in search, answered directly.

Can you turn off permadeath in Zero Company?
Yes. Permadeath is on by default and can be disabled in the settings.
How many Injuries kill an Operator?
Three, on standard difficulty.
Can you revive a downed Operator?
Yes — allies can Rally a downed Operator, and Trick can revive himself.
What happens if Hawks is downed?
The mission ends. Hawks is the only Operator who cannot permanently die.
What difficulty settings does Zero Company have?
Four — Story, Normal, Hard and Expert — plus a separate ironman option called Beskar Mode, and you can change difficulty between missions.

Every question, answered with its sources

Related mechanics

Sources

  • Answering the Internet's Biggest Questions about Star Wars Zero Company

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

    Supports: Squad limit of 4, with additional characters controllable in certain missions; roster starting at 7 and capped at 20, raised by Den upgrades, story progression and authored Operators joining; no species or faction weapon-proficiency advantage; Clone Trooper and astromech recruitment; permadeath default and toggleable; Hawks required on story missions. The headline itself is the evidence for the game's abbreviation: "Answering the Internet’s Biggest Questions about SWZC"

  • 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

  • Star Wars Zero Company — official game page

    Electronic Arts · Tier 1 — Official · accessed 15 August 2026

    Supports: Release date of August 27; platforms given as PC, PlayStation and Xbox, without a console generation; "Turn-Based Tactics" in the page title; premise

  • I played 54 hours of Star Wars Zero Company

    Dantics · Tier 3 — Hands-on preview · accessed 11 August 2026

    Supports: 5:26–11:55 — an injury is taken only on being reduced to zero health; normal, hard and expert named, plus an Ironman-style toggle; crisis operations; weapon mods slotted freely before missions; a second Specialization after cycle 18; every Bond level granting Focus Points and one of three joint training bonuses; the Sharpshooter's unmissable shot and the Soldier's rocket barrage

  • I played Star Wars Zero Company early — new gameplay and details

    Star Wars HQ · Tier 3 — Hands-on preview · accessed 11 August 2026

    Supports: 5:01–12:48 — one full combat mission per cycle; Hawks alone cannot permanently die; the exotic classes restricted to Cly, Tel-Rea and astromechs; recruitment refreshing each cycle with a name, Talent, Specialization and weapon type; Medbay bed and Bacta Tank costs; ignoring Operations granting enemies lasting upgrades

  • Star Wars Zero Company: turn-based tactics that aren't just for XCOM experts

    IGN · Tier 3 — Hands-on preview · accessed 11 August 2026

    Supports: 2:15–12:39 — Advantage earned from successful attacks; four difficulty settings; ringing a droideka with Overwatch cones; Bonds granting health and critical damage; changing Hawks' species at the Den; the Bespin guest mission; preview-build defects including shots passing through solid cover

  • Is Z-COM our new X-COM? Star Wars Zero Company gameplay deep dive

    ChristopherOdd · Tier 3 — Hands-on preview · accessed 11 August 2026

    Supports: 2:13–13:51 — Sweeping Salvo at 4 Advantage with three uses per mission; Hawks granting an ally 1 AP for 3 Advantage; Combat Recon granting 1 Advantage per unit scanned; the Grit Talent's stacking invulnerability; Heavy attacks taunting; the droideka ray shield; the Scout's Spotted status; Defense as flat damage reduction

  • STAR WARS Zero Company — Patch 1.1 Notes

    Electronic Arts · Tier 1 — Official · accessed 14 September 2026

    Supports: Published 9 September 2026, the first post-launch patch; re-read in full on 14 September 2026, when it was still the newest entry on EA's News & Updates page. **Every item below is listed by EA under bug fixes**, which is what makes each one a statement about 1.0 as well as about 1.1. Secondary Specializations: their passive Cross Trainings "now correctly enter the selection pool at Relationship +8", and Secondary Specializations "now count for Specialization-specific Operation requirements and results". Chance-to-Hit: attacks displayed at 100% "can no longer erroneously miss". Scattergun: Tiers II, III and IV "no longer incorrectly use Tier I values". Droid Dismantler: Harmony "is granted only on Droid deaths, not on every enemy death". Tel-Rea: the Ranged Damage Cross Training bonus "is now applied once rather than twice" to her Force attacks, and Critical Damage bonuses "now correctly apply" to them. DC-17m Anti-Armor: it "can now critically hit" and "receives damage bonuses that apply to grenades". Ion Blasters "no longer double Critical Damage". Sweeping Salvo: "enemies outside the targeting cone are no longer hit". A Life of Labor II "can no longer infinitely accumulate bonuses when purchased repeatedly". Immovable: the status "now provides its intended bonuses". Bacta Tank, missed on the first read and added 14 September: "Fixed an issue where the Bacta Tank could be used more than one in a cycle" — EA's wording, typo included; the intended rule is one use per cycle. Overwatch, three lines, quoted verbatim on 14 September because the first pass had paraphrased the first of them too loosely: "Fixed an issue where Overwatch shots triggered against attackers caused the enemies to fire through solid objects at Operators they couldn't see" — an enemy-side line-of-sight failure, not the player's reaction shots passing through walls; "Fixed some instances of Overwatch triggering on a unit outside of the targeting cone"; and "Fixed various Overwatch issues that caused enemies and Operators to be unintentionally attacked". A fourth mentions it in passing: "Fixed a turn ordering issue that caused the Coil Captain to heal a target already slain by Overwatch". **Checked for and absent**: any figure for anything — no Scattergun tier statistics, no Harmony amount, no DC-17m damage, no figure for what Immovable now provides, no Bacta Tank cost. Also absent: any fix for Overwatch *failing* to trigger. Every Overwatch line corrects a shot that should not have happened, and none claims a shot that should have happened now does.