What are Operations in Zero Company?

The non-combat half of the campaign — intelligence work and political manoeuvring, run from the HoloTable at the Den between missions.

Can you miss an Operation permanently?

Yes. Operations expire, and one whose window closes is gone for good.

Who is Kundri Fathom?

The leader of the Infinite Coil, a Separatist-aligned cult intent on spreading a deadly shadow plague.

Mechanic

Zero Company operations explained

Operations are the non-combat half of the campaign — intelligence work, political manoeuvring and shadow activity, run from the HoloTable in the Den between Tactical Missions. They are launched with Intel, which combat missions earn and the Espionage Talent adds to. They pay out Credits, Weapon Modifications, Utilities, Zone Influence, sometimes more Intel, and story consequences. They also expire: an Operation whose window closes is gone permanently. Some ask for a particular Specialization, and from Patch 1.1 an Operator's second class counts towards that.

Confirmed

Confidence: Confirmed
Verified: 10 September 2026
Version: Retail 1.1, 9 September 2026 — official patch notes

Intel is the constraint, not Credits

An Operation costs Intel to launch, and Intel comes from completing Tactical Missions. That makes it the campaign's second currency and, early on, the binding one — Credits buy equipment from an Armory that is always there, whereas Intel buys opportunities that expire.

This is the whole case for the Espionage Talent over Thievery in the opening cycles. Espionage adds Intel, Thievery adds Credits, and both cost an Operator slot. The one that buys the expiring resource is worth more while the expiring resource is scarce.

What they pay, and why it reaches combat

Operations return Credits, Weapon Modifications, Utilities such as grenades and medkits, Zone Influence, occasionally Intel, and story consequences that can surface cycles later when a contact returns with information or a new problem.

Two of those are direct combat inputs. Weapon Modifications are the only confirmed way to change a weapon's numbers, and Utilities are the equippable items an Operator carries into a fight. So a player who treats Operations as an optional side activity is choosing to fight with worse equipment, not merely to see less story.

They are not free of risk. Sending a squadmate into a risky situation can produce persistent injuries that carry into subsequent missions, so an Operation can cost you an Operator's availability the same way a bad fight can.

Some Operations pay in statistics, and charge for them

The reward list above is what an Operation pays *the company*. A multi-cycle Operation chain can also pay an Operator directly, and the first one published in full shows it doing so at a price — which is a shape nothing else in this database has.

A Friend of a Friend runs seven instalments across seven cycles from the Den's HoloTable. Its seventh offers four named improvements, and every one of them is a trade rather than a bonus: Unbroken Concentration is +2 Focus Points for −2 Max Health; Hand To Hand is +2 Melee Damage for −1 Ranged Damage; Keen Eyes is +3% Ranged Critical Chance for −1 Critical Damage; Compounding Strength is +1m First Movement for −5% Ranged Chance-To-Hit. Two independent guides list all four with identical figures.

That changes what campaign progression is for a build planner. Every other company-wide bonus recorded on this site — a Zone's +2 Focus Points, its +4 Max Health, its +1 Weapon Mod Slot — is purely additive, so taking it is never a decision. These are decisions, and three of the four are the familiar build question in miniature: Hand To Hand and Compounding Strength both pay a melee or mobility build out of a ranged one's pocket, and Unbroken Concentration buys progression with survivability.

Keen Eyes is the one to read twice, because it is nearly a trap. It is +3% Critical Chance for −1 Critical Damage — chance bought with severity — and on a weapon whose base Critical Chance is 5%, three points is a large proportional gain. It also shares its name, all but a letter, with the Gunslinger's Keen Eye passive, which is +6% Critical Chance and costs nothing. They are different things and this site keeps them apart deliberately.

The chain's fourth instalment pays the squad instead: Marcan Herb gives participating Operators an additional Bond boost, Bula Fruit gives them +4 Max Health, and Nysillin heals all their injuries, each for 250 Credits and 3 Zone Besh Influence. The Bond option is the one with compounding value, because Bonds are one of the two published sources of Focus Points — but no source says how many Operators 'participating' means.

Some Operations ask for a Specialization

Patch 1.1 lists a fix stating that Secondary Specializations now count for Specialization-specific Operation requirements and results. That sentence is the only evidence on this site that such requirements exist at all, and it is worth separating the two things it establishes.

The first is that an Operation can want a class. No guide, no preview and no EA article read here has ever described one — the campaign layer has been documented in terms of Intel, Credits, expiry and injury risk, and never in terms of who you send. So this is a real gap in the site's coverage of Operations, now visible and not yet fillable: nothing names a single such Operation or what it asks for.

The second is what it does to dual-classing. A second Specialization now satisfies these requirements, and did not in the launch build. That makes the second slot a way to cover a hole in the company's class coverage rather than only a way to improve one Operator's turn — a roster with no Scoundrel has one the moment somebody takes Scoundrel as a secondary. It also means a campaign played before 9 September was being asked for classes it demonstrably had.

Crisis Missions and the two enemy upgrades

Crisis Missions are high-stakes Operations tied directly to enemy strength. Each cycle the Infinite Coil gains two permanent enhancements, and a Crisis Mission blocks one of them. Ignore the crisis and both take effect.

That is the sharpest confirmed number in the campaign layer, and it reframes the clock. Cycles do not merely pass — they make the enemy permanently stronger at a fixed rate, and a Crisis Mission halves that rate for one cycle. Permanent means it does not come back off.

It also sets the priority order plainly. An Operation that pays Credits competes with an Operation that stops a permanent enemy upgrade, and those are not the same kind of choice.

Confirmed

The rules as officially stated

Operations are non-combat assignments run from the HoloTable in the Den, between Tactical Missions.
They are launched with Intel, which is earned by completing Tactical Missions.
Rewards include Credits, Weapon Modifications, Utilities, Zone Influence, sometimes Intel, and story consequences.
Operations expire. If the window closes before you act, the opportunity is gone permanently.
Sending squadmates into risky Operations can inflict persistent injuries that affect later missions.
Each cycle the Infinite Coil gains two permanent enhancements.
A Crisis Mission blocks one of those two upgrades; ignoring it lets both take effect.
Consequences can resurface cycles later.
Some Operations are multi-instalment chains. A Friend of a Friend runs seven, one per cycle, from the Den's HoloTable.
Its seventh instalment offers four Operator improvements, each carrying a penalty: Unbroken Concentration (+2 Focus Points, −2 Max Health), Hand To Hand (+2 Melee Damage, −1 Ranged Damage), Keen Eyes (+3% Ranged Critical Chance, −1 Critical Damage) and Compounding Strength (+1m First Movement, −5% Ranged Chance-To-Hit). Two guides list all four identically.
Its fourth instalment offers three squad rewards for 250 Credits each: Nysillin heals all injuries, Marcan Herb grants an additional Bond boost, and Bula Fruit grants +4 Max Health — all to "participating Operators".
Instalments pay Zone Influence as well: 3 or 4 points to a named Zone, and one option pays 5 for 25 Intel.
An Operation choice can cost Credits, Intel or an item, and one instalment offers a Contact.
Some Operations carry Specialization-specific requirements and results. This is stated only by Patch 1.1's notes, in the course of fixing something else, and no source names an example.
From Patch 1.1, an Operator's Secondary Specialization counts towards those requirements. EA list the previous behaviour as a bug.

Planning

What this means for squad building

Treat Intel as the scarce currency early, and prefer the Espionage Talent over Thievery while it is.
Prioritise Crisis Missions over reward Operations. A permanent enemy upgrade costs more than a batch of Credits.
Do not treat Operations as optional. Weapon Mods and Utilities arrive through them, so skipping them means fighting with less.
Keep an Operator in reserve. Operations can injure the squadmates you commit to them.
Check expiry windows before committing Intel elsewhere — an expired Operation cannot be recovered.
Read an Operation's Operator improvements as build decisions, not as free bonuses. Three of the four in A Friend of a Friend VII pay a melee or mobility build out of a ranged one, so the right answer depends on what the Operator taking it already is.
Do not put Compounding Strength or Hand To Hand on a Sharpshooter or Gunslinger. Both charge ranged performance, which is the whole of what those two do.
Prefer Marcan Herb's Bond boost over Bula Fruit's +4 Max Health where the squad is not hurting for health. Bonds are one of the two published sources of Focus Points, so the Bond option compounds and the health does not.
Spread Specializations across the company rather than duplicating the good ones. Some Operations ask for a class, and from Patch 1.1 a second Specialization answers — so the roster's class coverage is a campaign resource, not only a squad one.

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.

The Intel cost of any individual Operation.
How many Operations are available per cycle, and how long a typical window stays open.
How many Operators an Operation commits, and whether a committed Operator is unavailable for combat that cycle.
How Crisis Missions are signposted, and whether more than one can appear in a cycle.
What the two per-cycle Infinite Coil enhancements actually are.
How injury risk scales with the Operation chosen.
Which Operations require a Specialization, what they ask for, and what the 'results' a Specialization changes actually are. A patch note establishes that all three exist and describes none of them.
Whether A Friend of a Friend VII's four improvements are permanent. Both guides list them as outcomes and neither uses the word, so this site does not either — a stat change lasting one cycle and one lasting the campaign are completely different decisions.
How many Operators receive them, and which. Neither guide says, and neither applies the chain's own phrase "participating Operators" to that instalment.
Whether the four are exclusive — whether taking one forecloses the others, and whether the chain can be run more than once.
Whether other Operation chains offer improvements of the same kind. One chain is published in full and there is no reason to think it is the only one.
Whether Bula Fruit's +4 Max Health stacks with the identical +4 offered at two Zone tiers.

Questions

Common questions

The way these come up in search, answered directly.

What are Operations in Zero Company?: The non-combat half of the campaign — intelligence work and political manoeuvring, run from the HoloTable at the Den between missions.
Can you miss an Operation permanently?: Yes. Operations expire, and one whose window closes is gone for good.
What is Intel used for in Zero Company?: Launching Operations.
Who is Kundri Fathom?: The leader of the Infinite Coil, a Separatist-aligned cult intent on spreading a deadly shadow plague.

Every question, answered with its sources

Related mechanics

Sources

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
Star Wars Zero Company preview — after 15 hours
Arekkz Gaming · Tier 3 — Hands-on preview · accessed 11 August 2026
Supports: 3:15–9:43 — conversations at the Den unlocking side missions; late companions forcing a rethink of squad composition; missions carrying a limited window; fighting alongside Anakin Skywalker late in the preview; fifteen hours without a crash
I played Star Wars Zero Company — my honest thoughts
EckhartsLadder · Tier 3 — Hands-on preview · accessed 11 August 2026
Supports: 3:18–12:36 — no hunker-down action, so a spare AP goes to Overwatch; astromechs carrying three utilities and extra uses of each; Trick able to negate some injuries along an upgrade path; twelve galaxy zones; super battle droids telegraphing a rocket one turn ahead; many of the 150+ planets being text-only
Star Wars Zero Company: A Friend of a Friend Guide
Power Up Gaming · Tier 3 — Retail review · accessed 1 September 2026
Supports: The full seven-cycle choice chain. Framing: "A Friend of a Friend is a multi-part Operation Chain in Star Wars Zero Company, which involves dealing with a friendly contact and making distinct choices across the seven different cycles", accessed "via the Den's Holotable, where outcomes can involve various injury risks if you make certain choices". Cycle I — "Assign her to upgrade a Facility: +3 Zone Jenth Influence; +100 Den Level" or "Bring her on as a Contact: +3 Zone Jenth Influence; +1 Contact". Cycle II — "Attack first — High Risk: +3 Zone Besh Influence; high chance of Operator injury"; "Bribe the assassin: +3 Zone Besh Influence; −1,500 Credits"; "Call the authorities: +5 Zone Besh Influence; −25 Intel; −500 Credits". Cycle III — "Purchase the Thermal Imploder Grenade: −1 Capacitor; receive Thermal Imploder Grenade"; "Purchase the Horizon Scope: −1,750 Credits; Horizon Scope (reduces Chance-To-Hit penalty on ranged attacks by 15%)"; "Pass: No cost, no reward". Cycle IV — "Try the Nysillin: +3 Zone Besh Influence; −250 Credits; participating Operators heal all injuries"; "Try the Marcan Herb: +3 Zone Besh Influence; −250 Credits; participating Operators get an additional Bond boost"; "Try the Bula Fruit: +3 Zone Besh Influence; −250 Credits; participating Operators get +4 Max Health"; "Decline: No reward". Cycle V — "Assign an Operator (Kabb): +3 Zone Esk Influence (+5 more if successful, for potential total +8); +1,500 Credits" or "Report Qwiitl: +1,000 Credits". Cycle VI — "Every option here grants +4 Zone Besh Influence", then payoffs at −250, −1,000 and −1,500 Credits (the largest also "+1 Contact") or none. Cycle VII — "Every option here grants +4 Zone Besh Influence", then "Unbroken Concentration: +2 Focus Points; −2 Max Health"; "Hand To Hand: +2 Melee Damage; −1 Ranged Damage"; "Keen Eyes: +3% Ranged Critical Chance; −1 Critical Damage"; "Compounding Strength: +1m First Movement Bonus; −5% Ranged Chance-To-Hit". The phrase "participating Operators" is the guide's own and appears on Cycle IV only; it is not defined, and it is **not** used of Cycle VII. The guide nowhere calls the Cycle VII effects permanent and nowhere states how many Operators receive them. Bylined Serhii Patskan, "On Aug 31, 2026"
Star Wars Zero Company Choices Guide
Gamers Heroes · Tier 3 — Retail review · accessed 1 September 2026
Supports: An index of campaign choices and their listed outcomes, filed by Operation and instalment number. "A Friend of a Friend #4" — "Try The Nysillin": "+3 Zone Besh Influence, -250 Credits, Operators Heal All Injuries"; "Try The Marcan Herb": "+3 Zone Besh Influence, -250 Credits, Operators Get Additional Bond Boost"; "Try The Bula Fruit": "+3 Zone Besh Influence, -250 Credits, Operators Get +4 Max Health". "A Friend of a Friend #7" — "Unbroken Concentration": "+4 Zone Besh Influence, +2 Focus Points, -2 Max Health"; "Hand To Hand": "+4 Zone Besh Influence, +2 Melee Damage, -1 Ranged Damage"; "Keen Eyes": "+4 Zone Besh Influence, +3% Ranged Critical Chance, -1 Critical Damage"; "Compounding Strength": "+4 Zone Besh Influence, +1m First Movement Bonus, -5% Ranged Chance To Hit". Every figure matches `retail-powerup-friend-of-a-friend` exactly, from a separate byline. This page also does not call the effects permanent, does not say how many Operators receive them, and does not use the phrase "participating Operators" at all. Bylined Blaine Smith; the page gives no absolute date, displaying "5 days ago" when read on 2026-09-01, which places it on or about 2026-08-27
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.

Apply it

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Open the Squad Builder

Editor’s note

Updated 2026-09-10, and the addition is a gap rather than a fact. Patch 1.1 fixes Secondary Specializations not counting for Specialization-specific Operation requirements and results — which is the first indication on this site that Operations ask for classes at all. Six weeks of coverage has described this system in terms of Intel, expiry, injury risk and reward tables, and never once in terms of who you send. So the page gains a section that says what is now known and admits it is a sentence: such requirements exist, a second class satisfies them from 9 September, and nothing names one of them or what it asks for. Two `unknowns` carry the shape of the hole. The temptation here is to reason outward from the fix — to describe what a Specialization-gated Operation probably looks like — and that is exactly the invented completeness the blueprint forbids. Updated 2026-09-01 with the first Operation whose *contents* are published rather than its rules, and it earns a section because of one property: its rewards have prices. Every campaign bonus this database held before today was additive — a Zone tier grants +2 Focus Points and takes nothing — so no page here had ever had to say that a permanent improvement could be a bad idea. Three of A Friend of a Friend VII's four are exactly that for the wrong Operator. Two independent guides carry all four with identical figures, which is better corroboration than this database usually gets on campaign content. **They also agree in what they omit, and that is carried onto the record rather than smoothed over.** Neither calls the effects permanent and neither says how many Operators receive them. The research this entry came from described them as permanent; the sources do not, so this record does not, and both questions are in `unknowns`. A stat change lasting one cycle and one lasting the campaign are not the same fact. One naming collision is worth guarding. The instalment's Keen Eyes (+3% Ranged Critical Chance, −1 Critical Damage) is not the Gunslinger's Keen Eye passive (+6% Critical Chance, no cost) recorded in `content/abilities.ts`. One letter apart, different systems, different numbers. Neither record should ever be edited from a search hit on the other. The chain surfaced several items and currencies this database does not hold — a Thermal Imploder Grenade, a Horizon Scope reducing ranged Chance-To-Hit penalties by 15%, a Capacitor spent as currency, Contacts placed for Influence, a Den Level figure. None is entered here. They belong to `content/weapons.ts` and to records that do not exist yet, and each needs its own pass rather than being imported as a side effect of an Operations edit. Added 2026-08-14. The Crisis Mission rule is the reason this page exists rather than being a paragraph on the cycles page: two permanent enemy upgrades per cycle, one blockable, is a rate the player controls, and nothing else on the site describes a mechanic that makes the game permanently harder while you look away. It also gives the Espionage Talent an actual argument — the site could previously only say Intel buys Operations without saying why that mattered more than Credits.