Star Wars Zero Company Operations and Dilemmas: How to Spend Intel
What Operations are, when they expire, how a dilemma changes bonds, and the order to check before you spend Intel at the Holotable.
Operations are the non-combat assignments you pick up at the Holotable in The Den, listed alongside the ground missions. They cost Intel and they pay out immediately, either as rewards, story progress, or unlocked content.
Two things make them awkward: Intel is limited, and every Operation can expire. You cannot do them all.
How Operations differ from missions
The official wording is clear about the split. Operations resolve on the galaxy map — you send people rather than go yourself — and they can hand you instant rewards or unlock follow-up Operations and missions. Tactical Missions are the turn-based ground layer where you deploy your squad, sometimes with a short third-person free-roam phase before combat.
Each Cycle ends with a Tactical Mission deployment, and that is what moves the campaign forward. Story-critical activities become obligatory after a while if you ignore them.
Operations expire. So “let me just take one more fight first” has a price: the assignment you skipped might have been the one that never comes back.
Why dilemma Operations change your squad
The official material confirms that some Operations present a dilemma, meaning you have to choose an answer. What changes:
- Bonds. Taking a side shifts how companions feel about you, and bonds decide which Cross Trainings become available later.
- Side missions. Some answers open a side mission. Others close one.
That makes these Operations more than a resource trade. They change both squad growth and where the story goes.
The order to check before spending Intel
- Deadline first. Expiring Operations go ahead of anything you can defer.
- Then the Intel cost. If two are both expiring, do the cheaper one and keep Intel for the more expensive one that matters more.
- Then whether it is a dilemma. If it is, decide which relationship and which side mission you actually want instead of chasing the bigger payout.
- Then this Cycle’s deployment plan. Price the Operation and the Tactical Mission together, so you don’t spend down to nothing and then find you can’t fight.
The thirteen dilemmas
Dilemmas are authored decision points rather than resource trades. Hawks faces a choice, and the whole roster takes a position on it. They sit on the HoloTable beside Operations and Tactical Missions.
All thirteen are free. Every other HoloTable entry costs Intel, so a dilemma is never a spending decision. What it costs is agreement.
| Who | What changes |
|---|---|
| Everyone who backed the option you picked | Gains Bond with Hawks and with each other |
| Everyone who opposed it | Loses Bond with Hawks |
| A backer and an opposer, as a pair | Lose Bond between themselves |
How the squad reacts
Picking an option resolves every position at once. The last two rows are the part players miss. A dilemma moves the squad’s standing with itself, not only with Hawks. Operators who voted together grow closer. Operators who voted against each other drift apart.
Bonds generate Focus Points and unlock Cross Training. A run of divisive choices is therefore a progression cost as well as a story one.
Positions sit on four levels: Strongly For, For, Against or Strongly Against. The same Operator can hold different strengths on different options. A clean split is rare.
Named story Operators vote from their own history. Custom Operators vote by the Personality chosen at character creation. Gunny and Bruiser back force and pressure. Professional and Specialist back the businesslike option. Rake and Rogue back the profitable one. Firebrand and Mentor back the principled one.
A roster built from one end of that range agrees with itself often. That keeps Bonds rising, but it divides the squad from the story Operators.
The thirteen names
The Bond category names thirteen:
- Changeling Vengeance
- Dianoga
- Imperial Informant
- Millicreep Requisition
- People Skills
- Refueling
- Relief Ship
- Risky Business
- Rumors
- Shore Leave
- Team Building
- The Brothers Bep
- Witness Protection
They are time-limited like Operations. One left unaddressed until its window closes is gone for that playthrough. They are 13 of the campaign’s 155 Operations.
The good news and the bad news
The good news: Operations are officially confirmed to unlock new content and side missions, so doing them early usually beats doing them late, especially the ones that feed an unlock chain.
The bad news: EA has never published the option text or the reward numbers for individual Operations. Reward tables floating around online have no official backing, and patch 1.1 already changed several mechanics. That is why this page refuses to print “the most profitable answer” — those precise numbers go stale fast and then start misleading people.
If you want the mission and Cycle flow first, read how missions and Cycles work and your first Cycle. For squad building, read specializations and the Bond system.
Sources: official launch FAQ (27 August 2026, which defines Operations and Missions) and the official community Q&A round-up (21 July 2026). The thirteen names, the four-level opinion scale and the three-part Bond resolution come from the community wiki’s Dilemmas page.