Skip to content
Steel Tide

Getting started

Your first ten minutes in Steel Tide: what to build, in what order, and why.

Steel Tide is a base-building real-time strategy game. You mine metal, keep the power on, build factories, and field an army that counters whatever your opponent fields. This page walks through a standard opening; the other guides go deeper into each system.

The first two minutes

  1. Queue Engineers. Your Headquarters starts the match producing Engineers. Queue two or three; they are the only units that can build.
  2. Claim metal. Send the first engineer to the nearest deposit and place a Metal Extractor. Deposits are the only income in the game, so every idle deposit is money left on the table.
  3. Add power. The second engineer builds a Power Plant. The HQ's own output covers about one extractor; after that, every building you add needs power behind it.
  4. A factory. Place a War Factory facing the enemy and set its rally point with a right click. Build a Recon Buggy first and send it around the map.
  5. Keep expanding. Alternate extractors and power plants, and never let the factory sit idle.

Reading the HUD

  • Metal is your bank. There is no cap, so spending it is always better than saving it.
  • Power shows production against consumption. When it goes into deficit everything slows down: production, turrets, mining and repairs. Build a plant.
  • Units counts population against the cap. Bigger units cost more population.
  • The minimap shows what your units can see. Fog hides everything else, so scout.

Five habits that win games

  • Never idle a factory. A queue of five is better than one unit at a time.
  • Scout before you push. A Scout Drone or buggy tells you what the enemy builds, and the counter web tells you what to build against it.
  • Attack-move (A + click) instead of move when heading into a fight, so units engage on the way.
  • Anti-air in every group once you see an enemy Airbase.
  • Upgrade before you sprawl. An Advanced War Factory and an Advanced Extractor beat a second base you cannot defend.

Where next