Ebbtide real time strategy gameplay: Combat, Supply, and Evacuation

How Ebbtide’s real-time strategy gameplay works

Ebbtide’s announced real-time strategy gameplay combines citywide military command with direct control of soldiers and vehicles. You will lead TF-1 “Ark,” humanity’s last carrier task force, starting in Los Angeles: direct forces and convoys on an operations map, zoom into ongoing battles, and evacuate troops, survivors, equipment, and supplies. The official Steam listing lists the game as “Coming soon”; the mechanics below describe its announced design.

The central feature is continuity between the operations map and combat. Scrolling into a street will reveal the live 3D pixel-art battlefield without a loading screen. Scrolling back out will leave the fight running, with soldier losses, zombie kills, and building destruction reflected on the map. The listing describes a connected conflict without separate missions or hidden automatic battle resolution.

Command Los Angeles and choose whom to evacuate

The Los Angeles operations map will support pausing and speeds up to 4x. Its 15 districts can move from Hold to Crisis to Lost, making withdrawal and rescue part of the strategic challenge.

Your announced command options include:

• Ordering National Guard, LAPD, and LA County Sheriff’s units to hold, delay, or withdraw.
• Calling in Marines from Camp Pendleton.
• Sending truck and helicopter convoys carrying supplies, troops, or refugees.
• Extracting units and survivors cut off behind the lines.

Only hordes within your forces’ line of sight will appear on the map. The Nexus, the hive mind controlling the zombies, is described as ambushing convoys, cutting roads, besieging bases, and hunting stranded units. The listing promises a warning before each attack, allowing a response such as rerouting, retreating, or calling in fire support.

These systems put transport routes at the center of evacuation decisions: reaching survivors and getting them out depends on moving through a city where the enemy can disrupt roads and convoys.

Zoom into battle and take direct control

At battlefield level, Ebbtide will let you set squad formations and combat stances while commanding infantry, armored vehicles, and helicopters. The announced vehicles include tanks, Bradleys, LAVs, Humvees, and Apache and Viper attack helicopters.

TAB is the announced key for taking direct control of a soldier, tank, or helicopter. This connects individual combat with the wider command layer.

Helicopters will also transport troops. Black Hawks can deploy soldiers by fast rope, while helicopters can land on rooftops to unload squads. Those positions will still face threats: zombies are described as piling up to climb walls and rooftops and clinging to helicopters hovering close to the ground. Soldiers killed by the horde will rise again as zombies.

Build bases and sustain your forces

Forward operating bases will provide defensive positions and places to replenish ammunition and fuel. You will choose where to build, then add HESCO and concrete walls, gates, scaffolding, gun nests, CIWS, mortar pits, an ammo depot, a fuel point, and lighting.

Base placement will therefore affect both defense and logistics. A base provides a replenishment point, but building its walls and keeping forces supplied require deliveries through threatened routes.

Call in fire support with limited ship ammunition

Fire support will be available from the operations map and the battlefield. Announced options include M777 howitzers, HIMARS rockets, destroyer guns, Tomahawk cruise missiles, aircraft strikes, AC-130J gunships, and MQ-9 drone orbits.

Two constraints give these weapons strategic consequences: ship ammunition reserves will be finite, and heavy weapons can destroy buildings. Calling in support will draw on those reserves where applicable and can change the terrain your forces are fighting through.

Carry your evacuation results into the world campaign

The people, troops, equipment, and supplies brought to the Port of LA will form your starting force aboard the Ark for the world campaign. What you extract from Los Angeles will therefore shape the resources available for the next stage.

The announced campaign will let you choose regions to assist, bring the carrier group’s guns and aircraft within range, and resupply at friendly ports. It will also involve rescuing pilots and specialists you cannot train, adding allied warships to the fleet, and searching for the Nexus’s hidden command nodes.

That connection makes evacuation a campaign objective: saving personnel and equipment in Los Angeles will help establish the force you take into the wider war.