Rescue jobs in Star Wars Zero Company are hostage situations run as tactical missions. You take a four-operator squad, reach a captive who is being held or guarded, and get everyone off the map alive. They look like ordinary firefights, but the objective changes the order you are supposed to do things in, and doing them in the wrong order spawns more enemies than you planned for.
Quick answer: Thin out the enemy force first, then grab the hostage, then move the whole squad into the pickup area to evacuate. Freeing the captive too early triggers reinforcement spawns, and those reinforcements tend to land between your squad and the exit.
Rescue missions in the campaign and where they appear
Hostage rescue is one of the standard tactical mission objectives, alongside sabotage, elite target elimination, supply runs, extractions, and one-off narrative missions. Several rescue-shaped jobs show up across the 14-chapter campaign, and only one tactical mission can be run per cycle, so they compete with everything else on the Holotable.
| Mission | Chapter and planet | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| No Clone Left Behind | Smugglers and Slugrats — Ryloth | Critical mission, tied to Trick |
| Hostage Situation | Enter Fathom — Lothal | Optional |
| Rescue Operation | Jedi Undercover — Dantooine | Optional |
Timers matter here. Most regular missions stay on the Holotable for about four cycles, crisis missions vanish after a single cycle, and anything you leave too long disappears for good. Critical missions usually give you a few cycles of slack, but taking them the moment they appear compresses the run and can cost you crewmate missions later.
Read the briefing before you deploy
Every briefing on the holo-map lists four things: the mission description, the rewards, the objectives split into an explicit success condition and failure condition, and the unit requirements for your four squad slots. On story missions, Hawks is pre-filled and cannot be swapped out; on skirmish missions he is optional. Some missions also hand you control of extra characters beyond the four standard slots.
Check the difficulty rating too. Missions run Risky, then Dangerous, then Extreme, and the rating is a prompt to look at who is actually healthy. Operators pick up an injury every time they go down, and three injuries kill them outright if permadeath is enabled. Walking wounded operators into an Extreme rescue is the most common way runs fall apart.
How to clear a hostage rescue
Let enemies escape and they come back stronger
Units that flee or survive a mission are not reset for the next one. They return ghost-buffed, better equipped and harder to kill. On a rescue that ends in a scramble for the pickup area, it is tempting to leave stragglers behind, but each one you skip is a stronger enemy waiting in a later encounter. Where you can afford the turns, finish the engagement before you evacuate.
Enemy placement is built to punish sloppy positioning. Enemies frequently sit just outside first-turn reach while keeping the ability to counterattack once you close, and reinforcements often arrive between your squad and the exit rather than behind you.
Confirming the rescue worked
The mission resolves when the success condition on the HUD is met and the squad leaves the map. Completing a tactical mission advances the cycle by one, which is the clearest signal it registered, and you collect the listed rewards: Credits, Weapon Mods, Utilities, Focus Points, and Zone Influence for the region you fought in. Intel earned from the mission goes toward Operations back at the Den.
Failure conditions are equally explicit and are printed on the briefing screen before you launch. On story missions the standard one is losing Hawks; on hostage jobs it is the captive being reached by enemies. If a mission goes badly, you can restart it from the game menu and try a different approach with the same operators.
Crewmate missions unlock in the Den, not on the map
Companion missions tied to specific operators only appear after you talk to that character aboard the Den. Clearing both of an operator’s missions awards a trophy, so make a habit of walking the ship between deployments rather than heading straight for the Holotable.
Since a full run lasts roughly 30 to 40 cycles and only about half of the game’s 60-plus missions fit into a single playthrough, rescue jobs are worth weighing against what else is on the board that cycle. The optional ones pay out well and are usually shorter than the multi-stage story missions, but the moment a critical rescue lands, the clock on it is the one that decides your schedule.
