A week ago we said we would run a second round of Zero Company squads once the first patch landed. Patch 1.1 landed on September 9, and the squads on r/ZeroCompany have changed more than the patch did. Round one was clone battalions and Futurama jokes built from what the character creator ships with. This week, three of the seven best squads wear armour that is not in the game at all: Senate Guard, Republic Commando and Phase I ARC kit, all from Nexus Mods, all inside a fortnight of launch. Here are seven, embedded from the people who made them, plus the complaint that round one did not have.
The patch matters to this page in one small way. It fixed the Databank bug where renaming one operator renamed another and wiped that operator's customization, and it stopped Trick resetting to his default helmet and outfit during the Stillwatch mission. If you lost a squad to either, it is safe to rebuild.
Every post below stays on Reddit under its author's name. We have not copied a pixel of anyone's screenshot, and if you made one of these and would rather not be here, tell us and it comes down.
The Senate Guard
Lieutenant Aurelius, Guardsman Septimus, Captain Marius and Guardsman Hadrian, four blue-plumed Senate Guards on the squad-select screen for a mission called Cold Metal, on cycle 7. The armour comes from a mod called Republic Armoury, which the poster says also adds Scout trooper and BARC trooper kit for clones. The comments are a Clone Wars fan reunion about how the Senate Guard looked incredible and then got flattened in every scene they were in, which is exactly the kind of unit a player rescues with a squad like this. The Latin names are the finishing touch.
Delta Squad
Two Republic Commandos, one in Sev's green and one in Boss's orange, on a Den walkway in a French-language build of the game. That is Delta Squad from Republic Commando, a 2005 game whose fans have been asking for a sequel for twenty-one years, standing in a 2026 tactics game two weeks after it launched. This was the third most upvoted post on the subreddit this week, and it is the clearest sign of where the customization goodwill is heading: the game shipped a paint system, and the community is now shipping the armour.
ARC troopers, Tartakovsky edition
Posted this morning and already climbing. Hawks in Captain Fordo's red Phase I ARC kit, kama and pauldron included, with a pistol raised, flanked by Trick, Outlaw and CT-17-9381 Rook in 501st blue. The title is Fordo's line from the 2003 Clone Wars microseries, and the squad is named Spoils of War. The Phase I ARC pieces are a mod too, and the poster's own comment is the interesting one: it is "all stuff in the game technically, just with some really minor edits and textures." Round one's Fordo attempt got the markings close with the base game. This one gets the silhouette, and it took a modder to do it.
CT-5379 "Scrapper"
No mods here, and the best-written dossier we have seen. A 501st chestplate and helmet over grey work trousers, a bandolier and a holster, with a backstory that runs from Geonosis through Umbara to Order 66 and ends with Scrapper joining Zero Company "as his way to atone." The comment thread's verdict, "clone armor with casual work pants is peak," is right: the mismatch is what makes him look like a man who left the army rather than a skin. Three separate replies then ask for the thing the game does not allow, which is putting armour plates and gear over Hawks's Republic officer uniform.
Womp rat
A human operator in a surplus Phase I clone helmet and homemade white plates, whose dossier explains they are "the self described biggest fan on Clones," spent their time arguing on Holonet clone fan forums, and enlisted after someone asked why they did not just join up. It is a joke about the subreddit, written inside the game, by someone who plainly read the same customization arguments we did. The Maverick personality is the correct choice.
The Bad Batch
Tech, Hunter, Wrecker and Echo in Clone Force 99's red-and-grey, on cycle 63, which means this player finished the campaign and kept going. The specializations are the part that shows care: Tech is the Medic and Gunslinger, Hunter is Assault, Wrecker is the Heavy, and Echo is the Scout with a Sharpshooter's rifle and the headset he wears in the show. The helmet with the red visor stripe on Tech is stock; the rest is paint. This is the squad the base game was built to make, and it holds up next to the modded ones.
An 80s street gang
Tesh Hawks with a red bandana and a moustache, Luco Bronc, Trick in a sleeveless blue vest, and Mosey Poqua in white with her rifle up, lined up for Stillwatch on cycle 28. All four are Scouts. No armour, no helmets, and it reads instantly, because the outfit system has enough bandanas, vests and rolled sleeves to do The Warriors if you commit. It is also the only squad on this page where every operator's face is visible, which is rarer than it should be.
The complaint round one did not have
A week ago the subreddit's argument was about paint schemes. This week it is about everyone who is not a clone. A player on their third playthrough went in with a no-clones rule and posted the helmet grid to show how quickly the non-clone options run out: a handful of goggles, caps and hoods, and then you are back to clone helmets. A thread titled "Does anyone like the non-clone armours?" makes the case for the matching grey plate with Hawks, Imani and Jae in it ("not for Trick though obviously"), and a third asks why the Phase I T-visor cannot be coloured in rank colours the way it was in the 2003 series.
Put those next to the three modded squads at the top of this page and the shape is clear. Where the game's own options stop, Nexus has started filling in within days, and the people doing it say most of the pieces were already in the files. Bit Reactor said before launch that outfits do not affect gameplay, so none of this changes a mission. It does change how long people stay, which is the number that has been falling since the second weekend.
One last one, for anyone who has recruited a custom operator and never taken them off the Den: the Potemkin Operators, a Rick and Morty edit in which a freshly built operator asks what their purpose is and Hawks tells them to stay home and farm bond XP. If that is your company too, the Show me your Hawks thread is still where the subreddit posts its squads, and the mods are on Nexus under Star Wars Zero Company.
