Star Wars Zero Company: How to Defeat the Coil Forces in Find the Coil Leader

The “Find the Coil Leader” objective in Star Wars Zero Company ends in a straight elimination fight. Every Coil unit on the map has to die, there is no console to hack or terminal to hold, and the enemy gets stronger every time you kill something. That last part is what catches people out.

Quick answer: Hold elevated cover, cover both approach lanes with Overwatch, and kill Coil Strikers before they reach melee range. Never leave an enemy sitting on three Resonance stacks. When the Coil Brute arrives with reinforcements, hit it with Easy Mark II and chain guaranteed critical hits from your long-range and melee operators.

Squad and loadout requirements for the Coil Forces fight

You are fighting organic Coil troops here, not droids, so an astromech contributes very little. What the encounter demands is sustain and range. It runs long, it comes in waves, and downed operators pick up injuries that stack toward permanent death.

Slot	What it does in this fight
Hawks (long-range rifle)	Picks off Strikers before they close and lands the chained critical hits on the Brute.
Medic	Combat Stim II and Surgeon’s Tools keep the front line standing through multiple waves. Give them a long-range rifle too, since they sit in the back.
Heavy	Taunts and absorbs the melee pressure so nobody squishier gets swarmed.
Trick or a melee operator	Rocket Strike III clears clustered enemies. Kabb’s Uppercut II knocks targets out of cover for follow-up damage.

Bring Impact Bombs or another grenade type. Grouped Coil units are the single best use of explosives in the encounter, and they also break enemy Overwatch when you need to move.

Resonance: the mechanic that decides the fight

Every Coil enemy carries Resonance. When one of them dies, a surviving Coil unit picks up a stack. Stacks cap at three, and hitting three triggers a surge that heals the unit, raises its combat stats, and switches on abilities it did not have before.

Stacks	Effect
1–2	Incremental buff. Still a normal target.
3 (surge)	Unit heals, gets stronger, and unlocks abilities such as Retaliation, invisibility, and melee attacks that reach through cover at range.

The practical rule is simple. A surged enemy jumps to the top of your target list the moment you see the stacks fill, because a surged Striker can cross the gap and hit you through the cover you were relying on. When two enemies are equally exposed, kill the one that is already stacked rather than the one that is nearly dead.

Operator on the darkened battlefield with the SHOCKED status effect highlighted mid-encounter — Status effects are called out on the unit portrait during the fight, so you can see which side is buffed or debuffed before committing an action. Image: Bit Reactor / EA

Opening turns: build a kill box before you attack

Melee Coil Strikers are the fastest threat on the board and the reason most runs go wrong. The opening is about denying them a clean charge.

Split your operators across separate cover rather than clumping them into one pocket. Coil attacks that hit an area will punish a tight formation, and one bad turn can leave two operators bleeding at once.

Put your long-range operators on the elevated position and keep the Heavy and your melee operator in cover below them. The high ground gives you sightlines on the approach and keeps your fragile units out of charge range.

Open fire on the closest grouped enemies with your longarm blasters and drop a rocket strike or grenade on any cluster. Early area damage is worth more than a single clean kill, since it softens several targets before Resonance starts moving around.

Aiming a longarm blaster at a marked Coil target during the opening exchange — Targeting a marked Coil unit at the start of the engagement, before reinforcements arrive. Image: Bit Reactor / EA

Spend leftover AP on Overwatch covering the choke points and bridges the Coil have to cross. Anything that steps into the zone eats a reaction shot before it can reach your line, which is how you stop Strikers without spending your own turns chasing them.

Overwatch selected as the final action, showing the covered area and its AP cost — Overwatch shows the exact area it will cover and the AP it costs before you lock in the turn. Image: Bit Reactor / EA

Use your Heavy’s taunt to pull attention onto the unit that can absorb it, then clean up whatever walks into the trap. Strip enemy cover with your remaining shots so the next wave has nowhere safe to stop.

Target priority for Coil Strikers, Enforcers, and the Brute

Enemy	Priority and how to handle it
Coil Striker	Highest early priority. Melee focused and fast. Kill it in Overwatch or shoot it before it can close the distance.
Coil Enforcer	Ranged pressure. Strip its cover, then finish it with concentrated blaster fire. Watch its Resonance stacks as the wave thins out.
Any surged unit	Drop everything and kill it. The heal and ability unlock make it more dangerous than a full-health unsurged enemy.
Coil Brute	Arrives with reinforcements and has a large health pool. Needs a vulnerability debuff plus stacked damage, not chip shots.

Targeting screen with a Coil Enforcer selected and Fire Longarm Blaster ready to confirm — Confirming a longarm blaster shot on a Coil Enforcer while clearing the first wave. Image: Bit Reactor / EA

Reinforcements and the Coil Brute

Once the first wave is down, a reinforcement warning appears with a marker showing where the new group will land. A Coil Brute comes in with them, and the objective updates to “Defeat the Coil Brute.” This is why you save at least one explosive.

Reinforcements incoming warning with a red drop marker showing the enemy landing zone — The reinforcement warning marks the exact drop point, giving you a turn to reposition and set Overwatch. Image: Bit Reactor / EA

Reposition before they land rather than after. Move anyone standing in the drop zone, and re-establish Overwatch on the lane the new group has to walk down.

Drop your saved Impact Bomb or Rocket Strike III on the group while it is still clustered. Reinforcements arrive bunched together, which is the only moment area damage hits three or four targets at once.

Apply Easy Mark II to the Coil Brute. The vulnerability it inflicts turns the follow-up attacks into guaranteed critical hits, which is the difference between a two-turn kill and a drawn-out slugfest.

Fire everything into the marked Brute in the same turn. Sniper shots and heavy melee hits land the biggest crits, and abilities like Bull Rush add damage while shoving the target out of position.

Bull Rush selected against a highlighted Coil Enforcer for one action point — Bull Rush costs a single AP and combines damage with knockback, which is useful for breaking an enemy out of cover. Image: Bit Reactor / EA

Clean up the surviving Enforcers and Strikers afterwards. With the Brute gone, the remaining Coil units are ordinary targets, and the encounter closes out as you delete them one at a time.

Keeping operators alive with the medic

Heal on schedule, not in emergencies. Every time an operator goes down they take an injury, and three injuries kills them outright with permadeath enabled. Combat Stim II and Surgeon’s Tools exist to keep your front line above that threshold, so use them the turn before someone gets into trouble rather than the turn after.

Note: your medic should be sitting on the elevated position with a long-range rifle. That way they contribute damage on turns when nobody needs treatment, instead of standing idle in the back.

How to confirm the encounter is complete

The “Defeat the Coil Brute” objective clears the moment the Brute drops. The main “Defeat the Coil Forces” objective only resolves once every remaining Coil unit is dead, at which point combat ends and the scene plays out. There is no partial credit and no extraction shortcut here.

If the fight is going badly, it is almost always one of these:

Operators standing too close together, so one area attack damages several at once.
A Coil unit left alive at three Resonance stacks, healing itself and reaching you through cover.
Pushing off the high ground into melee range instead of letting the Strikers come to your Overwatch.
Spending every grenade on the first wave, leaving nothing for the clustered reinforcements.
Attacking the Coil Brute without applying Easy Mark II first, so the damage never stacks fast enough.

If a run does go wrong, you can restart the mission from the game menu with the same operators and try a different opening. That is usually a better outcome than pushing through and losing a squad member you cannot replace.