If you have been following along, you know the drill by now. I am not an XCOM player, I have never really spent time in this genre, and my Star Wars gaming background is almost entirely Galaxy of Heroes. I covered the opening hours in my first article, and the Den and the Gorga problem in my second. This is Cycle 3, called “In Debt to the Hutts,” and it is the chapter where Zero Company stops being a story about owing a Hutt money and becomes something considerably larger.
It is also the chapter where the game frustrated me the most, and I want to spend real time on that, because I think it is worth talking about honestly.
The Medbay Problem
Kabb Uppercut came out of the Lothal mission injured, and I could not start the next mission without three operators. Hawks, Trick and Kabb are my entire roster. With Kabb down, I was stuck.
So I did what felt natural and went wandering around the Den looking for information. How long does he need? What do I have to do? Is there a timer somewhere I am not seeing? I walked that base for a long time trying to work it out.
Here is what I eventually figured out, and I am putting it plainly because I wish someone had told me: treatment is not automatic. You have to go to the Medbay and actively assign the injured operator to a bed. Nothing starts healing on its own while you wander around looking for answers. There are two options once you do. A standard bed takes one full Cycle and costs credits. The Bacta Tank is instant and costs more.
I got impatient and put Kabb in the Bacta Tank, which cost me a good chunk of currency I am still learning the value of. That is the honest state of my understanding right now — I know what the buttons do, I do not yet have a feel for what anything is worth.
I want to be fair to the game here, because underneath the confusion this is a genuinely good system. A standard bed costs you a Cycle, and a Cycle is a mission you do not run, and some missions and Operations expire. So the Bacta Tank is not just impatience, it is buying back content. That is smart design.
But it is smart design that the game does a poor job of surfacing to a new player. Being locked out of a mission for a three-operator minimum, with no clear indication that treatment requires an explicit assignment, is exactly the kind of wall that will make someone put a game down in the first few hours. I am the target audience for this game as a Star Wars fan, and I nearly lost my patience with it over a menu.
The lesson I took from it, which I suspect the game wanted me to learn eventually anyway: three operators is not a roster, it is a liability. One injury and you are done. Recruiting a fourth is not an upgrade, it is insurance.
Kaller, and What Extraction Missions Actually Ask of You
With Kabb patched up, I took the job for Gorga. The mission is called Stolen Goods, and it takes you to Kaller.
For the lore crowd, Kaller is not a throwaway. It is the planet where Order 66 catches Jedi Master Depa Billaba and her padawan Caleb Dume in the opening of The Bad Batch. Caleb survives that day and eventually becomes Kanan Jarrus. So we are fighting on a world that is about to host one of the most consequential moments of this era, and the game does not make a fuss about it. I appreciated that.
The mission itself is where I learned the most.
I leaned on Overwatch more than anything else, which felt effective at first. I had the crate secured, I had a side covered, and I was picking off Separatist droids as they came in. This was also my first mission with multilevel platforms, and shooting down at battle droids from elevation is exactly as satisfying as you would hope.
Then the droids kept coming. And kept coming. And I genuinely did not know whether they would ever stop, or whether I was missing something I was supposed to do.
I was. This is an extraction mission. The waves do not stop. They are not supposed to. Reinforcements keep arriving indefinitely until your entire squad reaches the extraction zone, at which point the mission ends immediately with no need to hold position or clear anyone out.
Here is the part I want to be honest about: I spent most of that mission thinking I was supposed to win, when I was actually supposed to leave.
That is the game correcting a habit it watched me build. Overwatch camping works fine on elimination objectives and supply runs. Extraction missions exist specifically to punish it, because the longer you sit trading shots, the more enemies arrive. Once I understood that, the mission stopped feeling endless and started feeling like a timer, which is a much more interesting thing to play against.
I also discovered mid-mission that Kabb has a safecracker ability, which meant he was not just a fighter anymore, he was the objective. Keeping him alive while droids started arriving from a second direction, after I thought I had one side handled, was the tensest stretch of the game so far.
I took a lot of damage. But I got Gorga’s equipment and got out.
The Return, and a New Injury
The ship comes back to base and gives you the post-mission accounting. We picked up the stolen goods, 1,200 credits, some Intel, and an ergonomic stabilizer, which is a weapon mod.
We also picked up an injured Hawks.
Hawks cannot die permanently, based on your game settings, so this is not a roster threat the way it would be with anyone else. But injuries still carry a cost. Each untreated injury follows you into the next mission as a stacking 10 percent chance-to-hit penalty, and Hawks is on every story mission whether you want him there or not. So he is the single worst person on the roster to leave wounded, which puts me right back at the Medbay decision I just fumbled my way through with Kabb.
Take the standard bed and lose a Cycle, or pay the premium and go now. I am starting to understand that this choice is the game.
Jae, a Republic General, and the Actual Story
And then the chapter turns.
Jae Mordant, who we met on the Serelonus mission, turns up in my office with another job. They are not alone — a Republic officer is with them, and between the two of them the picture finally comes together.
The Infinite Coil, the paramilitary cult we ran into during the tutorial, is not just a local problem. They are setting up avenues for the Separatists to invade Republic territory. The Republic wants Zero Company on it, and they are offering serious money to make it happen.
Hawks, being Hawks, asks them to double it.
That moment is the whole character in one line. This is a man buried under a Hutt’s debt, who has just spent an entire chapter running errands for Gorga to stay above water, and when the Republic finally comes to him with a real contract, his instinct is to squeeze. It is not heroic. It is exactly right for who this person is.
The general is setting up a base inside our headquarters, and all I have to do now is go find them.
Why This Chapter Matters
Looking back at Cycle 3 as a whole, the structure is clever. You spend the entire chapter doing a Hutt’s dirty work — collecting, retrieving, running down debts — and it feels small on purpose. Then in the closing minutes the game shows you what it has actually been building toward.
That HoloNet broadcast I stood and listened to back in the Den, the one about the Republic needing more forces on Serelonus because of its shipyards and Outer Rim transport routes, reads completely differently now. It was not set dressing. It was the setup.
TL;DR: Cycle 3 in Short
- Medbay treatment is not automatic. You must assign an injured operator to a bed. Standard beds take one Cycle and cost credits; the Bacta Tank is instant and costs more. The game does not make this clear.
- Three operators is not a roster. A single injury locks you out of missions entirely. Recruit depth early.
- Untreated injuries carry a stacking 10 percent chance-to-hit penalty into the next mission.
- The Kaller mission is Stolen Goods, the branch you get from choosing Kaller over Dantooine.
- Kaller is where Order 66 finds Depa Billaba and Caleb Dume in The Bad Batch. Good deep-cut setting.
- Extraction missions never stop spawning enemies. Get the whole squad to the extraction zone and the mission ends instantly. Overwatch camping actively works against you here.
- Position toward the exit before triggering the last stage of an objective, not after.
- Kabb has a safecracker ability, which turns him from a fighter into an objective you have to protect.
- Mission rewards: 1,200 credits, Intel, and an ergonomic stabilizer weapon mod. Hawks came home injured.
- Jae Mordant and a Republic officer bring the contract that pivots the campaign from Hutt debt to the Infinite Coil. Hawks negotiates for double.
Three chapters in, my read is that Zero Company is more patient than I expected it to be. It spent an entire cycle making me feel small and broke before showing me the war. Whether the tactical side keeps teaching me lessons this efficiently is the thing I am watching for next, because so far every mistake I have made has been a mistake the game clearly wanted me to make.