The most upvoted thing on r/ZeroCompany in the game's first nine days is not a tactic, a bug or the furlough story. It is squads. Custom operators in matching armour, clone battalions with a uniform policy, and a lot of people who looked at a Star Wars character creator and thought about Futurama. Here are seven of the best, embedded from the people who made them, with our two sentences on each.
Every post below stays on Reddit under its author's name; we have not copied a pixel of anyone's screenshot. If you made one of these and would rather not be here, tell us and it comes down.
Go Go Power Rangers
Four clones in red, pink, green and blue, named to match, lined up on the squad-select screen with Trick standing in for the blue one. It works because the clone armour paint system does exactly one thing and does it well: solid colour, clean lines, and a helmet that gives the operator a modulated clone voice, which the developers confirmed before launch. 3,300 upvotes.
The C team
Runa Blask, Clev, Disha and Bennic Halloren are Den staff, the people who keep Zero Company running and never deploy: Runa handles operations and finance, Bennic is Republic Intelligence. This player rebuilt all four as custom operators and sent them on a mission. The backstory field in the character creator exists for exactly this kind of joke, and the squad-select screen sells it: Scout, Assault, Scoundrel, Medic, all of them visibly out of their depth.
Ronald MaulDonald and his signature Big Mech
A Zabrak in a yellow jumpsuit and red-striped sleeves, standing in the Den next to an astromech painted in the same colours. The species list, the outfit palette and the droid paint options were all built for Clone Wars authenticity, and this is what happens when you hand them to the internet. Nearly 1,900 upvotes for a pun, deservedly.
The Planet Express crew
Hawks as Fry, red jacket and all, with a backstory rewritten to match, and the rest of the Futurama cast filling out the roster as they get recruited. The character creator lets you rename Hawks and write their history, and this is the most complete commitment to that we have seen. The two voice options Bit Reactor described as "outlaw cowboy" and "by-the-book FBI agent" were presumably not written with Fry in mind.
A uniform policy
The opposite instinct: every operator, Hawks and Jae Mordant included, in the same white-and-red clone kit with the same markings. The Den's roster screens make a matching squad look like a real unit in a way the mismatched default cast never does, which is the strongest argument for the paint system being as deep as it is. A 251-comment thread asking "Did you guys give your company specific color schemes?" suggests a lot of people agree.
The Fab Four
John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, in green, pink, orange and blue, on a rescue operation. Squad-select screenshots are the subreddit's favourite format because the game lays the names, specializations and outfits out like a lineup card, and no lineup card has ever needed a caption less than this one.
Captain Fordo
For the people who came to this game for the Clone Wars rather than the jokes. Fordo is the ARC captain from Genndy Tartakovsky's 2003 microseries, and this recreation gets the red markings, the kama and the pauldron close enough that anyone who watched those shorts will recognise him at a glance. It is also a reminder that the clone armour system, which Bit Reactor promised would let you field a full squad of clones, is where a lot of this game's goodwill is being earned.
Why this matters more than it looks
Bit Reactor said before launch that "outfits do not impact gameplay" and that no species has better weapon proficiencies, which means everything on this page is cosmetic and every one of these squads plays identically to a default one. The subreddit is treating the character creator as the game's best feature anyway, and the numbers back it up: the top post of the week is a squad, five of the top ten are squads, and the biggest thread of all, "Show me your Hawks," has 440 comments of people posting their own.
That is what a customization system is for. The tactics are the game; the squad is why people keep playing it, which is also what our review said. If you want to post your own, the "Show me your Hawks" thread is where the subreddit is doing it, and we will run a second round of these once the first patch lands.
