Best base upgrades to unlock first in Star Wars Zero Company, including droids and medbay
Upgrading your base in Star Wars Zero Company is crucial for success, but the game forces you to build one upgrade at a time, and each takes several cycles to complete. While you can choose any order and still get by, picking the right enhancements early gives you a significant edge in mission planning. The upgrades are split into three categories: facilities, crew, and weapons, and each tree contains at least one or two game-changing options, including one that unlocks a new unit type entirely.
Medbay
The first medbay upgrade in the facilities tab should be a priority. Unlocking it allows you to heal two crew members simultaneously, getting them back to duty faster. Early missions feature docile enemies, so this might seem unnecessary at first. However, once you encounter The Coil, foes become much more aggressive and gain supernatural abilities that make them even more dangerous. Injuries are inevitable from that point onward, and injured units are useless until they recover. Speeding up the healing process keeps your team operational.
Crew quarters
Expanding your crew quarters under the crew tab is equally important, as this determines how many members Zero Company can hold. You start with space for eight people, including Hawks, which is enough for two full squads. That leaves room for only one character of each class, assuming you do not recruit droids, and offers little flexibility to experiment with squad combinations. More crew members mean more people you can send out for influence or on operations, and a wider variety of strategies for main story missions.
Droid repair bay
Unlocking the droid repair bay in the facilities tab lets you recruit astromechs. These droids cannot fight, but they are exceptional support units. They can equip three different utility items and gain additional uses out of them. Their talent is a built-in comlink that allows them to give allies extra action points at the cost of their own. They also increase ally accuracy and can self-heal. Astromechs have excellent mobility, able to ascend or descend vertical surfaces without needing stairs. Later, they develop a secondary analytics specialization that further boosts ally accuracy and defense. This makes them powerful as a healer or support class, pairing especially well with the game's one Jedi character, who burns through action points and often needs healing. However, they have no offensive abilities unless equipped with grenades, and even then only get a few uses per grenade. There are no other types of droid available to recruit in Zero Company. While M-3VO is a supporting character and various droids appear as enemies, such as the Destroyer Droid boss, only standard astromechs can join your team.
Teamwork
The teamwork enhancement in the crew tab unlocks the crew lounge. Crew members you do not take on missions hang out here and gain bond points together, increasing relationships and providing cross-training opportunities without needing to cycle members through missions. Higher-tier upgrades also increase assist damage, so revisit this as your den level increases.
Networking
Networking, found under the facilities tab, gives you influence when you place a contact. You can spend that influence to raise your reputation and unlock helpful bonuses. It is not as critical as the other upgrades on this list, so you can put it off for a while, but it is still worth building eventually.
Weapon mods
Each of the four main weapon types—pistol, repeating rifle, and so on—has a small tree of three upgrade types. These enhancements do different things, such as the initial standard rifle upgrade increasing damage and critical damage for all weapons of that type. Investing in weapon mods early ensures your firepower keeps pace with increasingly tough enemies.