If Star Wars Zero Company feels a little clumsy when you are picking abilities mid-fight, the game’s default control scheme is probably the culprit. Out of the box, it uses a radial ability menu — a ring of icons you spin through — when many tactics veterans would rather have a clean, XCOM-style list. The good news: there is a single setting that swaps it, and once you know where it lives, combat instantly feels faster and more readable.
This is one of those quality-of-life tweaks worth doing before your first real mission, especially if you have logged serious hours in other turn-based strategy games.
How to Change the Ability Selection Style
Open the settings menu and head to the Gameplay section. Scroll to the bottom of the General area and look for the option labeled Ability Selection Style. By default it is set to Radial. Switch it to Linear for the traditional list view, and that is it — the change applies immediately, no restart required.
It is a tiny menu buried at the bottom of a submenu, which is exactly why so many players never find it. Make this the first thing you check after starting a new campaign.
Radial vs. Linear vs. Hybrid: Which to Pick
You actually have three choices, not two. Radial shows abilities as an icon ring around your selected unit — flashy, but it asks you to memorize what each symbol does. Linear drops the abilities into a row along the bottom of the screen, each mapped to a hotkey, so you can see cooldowns and descriptions at a glance. Hybrid splits the difference: the radial menu pops up when you select a unit, but exiting it reveals the linear bar if you still want the hotkeys.
For genre veterans, Linear is usually the fastest option. Seeing hotkeys, cooldowns, and effects laid out in plain text beats squinting at icons, particularly in longer missions where one misread ability can cost you a soldier — and in a game with permadeath, those mistakes stick. If you are still learning the roster, Hybrid is a comfortable middle ground while you build muscle memory.
Why This Small Setting Matters So Much
Star Wars Zero Company wears its XCOM inspiration proudly, and part of that DNA is fast, information-dense decision-making. The radial menu looks slick in trailers, but the linear list is what makes the game play like the tactics classics it is chasing. Because losses are permanent — a point we broke down in our look at how permadeath makes Zero Company a better RPG — every ounce of clarity you can add to combat pays off directly in survival.
It is also a reminder to always dig through a strategy game’s options before you commit. Developers ship defaults tuned for controllers, newcomers, or presentation, not necessarily for how you want to play. Zero Company is already generating buzz for how it handles tactical combat and for a cast that leans on Clone Wars nostalgia — so give yourself the interface that lets you enjoy all of it.
Set It Once, Play Better All Campaign
Swapping the radial menu for Linear takes about ten seconds and changes how the entire game feels. Head to Gameplay, find Ability Selection Style, and pick the view that matches how your brain reads a battlefield. Your squad — the ones you would rather not lose forever — will thank you for it.