The counter web

Every weapon in Steel Tide carries a table of damage multipliers per armor class, and every unit has exactly one armor class. Those two facts are the whole combat system: there are no hidden modifiers, and the numbers on each unit's page are the numbers the game uses.

Armor classes

Class	Who has it
Light	Engineers, buggies, howitzers
Medium	Light tanks, flak, SAM launchers, tank destroyers, MLRS
Heavy	Battle tanks and heavy tanks
Structure	Every building
Ship	Surface vessels
Submarine	Submerged vessels, visible only to sonar
Aircraft	Everything that flies

Who answers what

Threat	Answered by
Light vehicles	Machine guns and autocannons: Recon Buggy, Wolf Light Tank, MG Turret, Gunboat
Medium and heavy armor	Cannons (Bison Battle Tank, Cannon Turret) and guided missiles (Viper Tank Destroyer, Cobra Attack Helicopter)
Fortifications and massed armies	Splash: Thunder Howitzer, Tempest MLRS, Vulture Bomber, Sovereign Battleship
Aircraft	Dedicated anti-air only: Flak Track, Hawk SAM Launcher, AA Turret, Falcon Fighter, Aegis Frigate
Surface ships	Anti-ship missiles (Missile Boat, Albatross Naval Striker) and torpedoes
Submarines	Sonar platforms only: Orca Destroyer and other submarines

Two rules matter more than any multiplier:

• Targeting is absolute. A weapon that cannot target a domain does no damage at all. A Bison cannot shoot a helicopter, a Falcon cannot shoot a tank, and only sonar-equipped ships can even see a submarine.
• Multipliers stack with cost. A Viper's missile does ×1.8 against heavy armor, so a few of them out-trade a Mammoth that costs three times as much.

The full matrix

The best multiplier of each armed unit against each armor class. Green is a hard counter (×1.3 or more), red a poor match (×0.55 or less), and a dash means the weapon cannot target that class at all.