Ebbtide Core Mechanics: Map, Districts, Horde and Supply Lines

Everything on this page comes from the Steam store page's own description of the game. ProjectAlive has described systems in unusual detail and published almost no numbers, which makes this the rare case where a mechanics breakdown can be complete and still contain no invented figures.

Ebbtide's systems all push toward the same pressure: you cannot hold everything, and the thing that breaks first is usually logistics.

• Map and battlefield are one continuous space, no loading
• 15 LA districts fall from Hold to Crisis to Lost
• Ammo and fuel only reload at bases you hold
• The Nexus specifically hunts convoys and cuts roads

Doesn't apply when: Every number you might want — unit costs, ammo capacity, district HP, horde size per wave — is unpublished. We have left them out rather than fill them in.

1. The map is the battlefield

Scroll into any street on the operations map and it becomes the live battlefield, with no loading screen. Scroll back out and the fight keeps running.

The store page is unusually blunt about what this rules out: no separate missions, no hidden auto-resolve. Every soldier lost, every zombie killed, every building destroyed carries back to the map.

Why this matters more than it sounds: most strategy games quietly cheat here. You leave a battle, the game rolls dice, you come back to a result. Ebbtide is claiming it does not do that, which means the strategic layer can never be a summary of the tactical layer — it is the tactical layer, at a different zoom.

Confirmed· Store page: "There are no separate missions and no hidden auto-resolve: every soldier lost, zombie killed and building destroyed carries back to the map."

It also explains why the game has no mission list. If you have been looking for an Ebbtide walkthrough structured like a normal campaign guide, there is nothing to structure — see our note on why we do not publish walkthroughs yet.

2. Fifteen districts, three states, no good answer

Los Angeles is split into 15 districts. Each slides through three states: Hold → Crisis → Lost. You can pause, or run the operations map at up to 4x speed. Both the district count and the speed ceiling are stated on the Steam store page.

Source: The 15-district count and the 4x speed ceiling are both stated on the Steam store page. checked 2026-10-22.

The load-bearing sentence in the store page is this one: "You cannot save everyone, so decide who to pull out first."

That is a design statement, not flavour text. It tells you the intended experience is triage, not defence. A district is not a wall you repair; it is a position you choose to stop paying for.

The speed control is the tell. If the map could be paused and solved at leisure, a speed setting would be pointless. The game expects you to be making triage decisions under time pressure across a whole city.

Unknown· The names of all 15 districts are not published. The store page names only the two ends of the map — Hollywood Hills and the Port of LA. We will fill the table in from in-game observation after release, not from guesses.

3. Units you can order to give up ground

You command National Guard, LAPD and LA County Sheriff units, and can call in Marines from Camp Pendleton. The three orders are hold, delay and withdraw.

Delay is the interesting one. A hold/withdraw binary is a courage test. Adding delay turns it into a scheduling problem: you are buying time for something else to move. Combined with the district triage above, this is the game's core loop — not "can this position be held" but "how long do I need this position to last".

Transport is truck and helicopter convoys carrying supplies, troops or refugees — the "or" matters, because a convoy carrying refugees is not carrying ammunition.

You can also pull out units and survivors cut off behind the lines before the horde reaches them. That is a rescue operation with a deadline, and it competes with everything else for the same transports.

4. You only see what your units can see

Only hordes within your forces' line of sight are visible on the map.

This is the mechanic most likely to generate frustrated searches after release, because it inverts a habit. Players are used to full map vision on a strategy layer. Here, the operations map is not an omniscient view — it is a picture assembled from what your units can actually see.

Practical consequence: gaps in your line are not just tactical weaknesses, they are information weaknesses. You will not know what is coming through a district you have stopped watching.

5. The Nexus fights back, and it warns you first

Los Angeles is overrun by "a million zombies, perhaps more". They are controlled by a hive mind called the Nexus, which ambushes convoys, cuts roads, besieges bases and hunts stranded units.

Every attack comes with a warning. The store page states plainly: "You always get a warning before an attack: reroute, retreat or call in fire support from the map."

That warning is the entire design philosophy in one sentence. The game is not testing whether you notice an attack — it tells you. It is testing whether you respond correctly with the tools you have, and whether you have kept those tools in the right place.

Three responses, three different costs:

• Reroute — costs time, preserves the convoy
• Retreat — costs ground, preserves the unit
• Fire support — costs finite magazine depth and possibly the buildings nearby

6. The horde climbs, and your dead join it

Zombies pile onto each other to climb walls and rooftops, and cling to helicopters hovering close to the ground. Soldiers killed by the horde rise again as zombies.

The second half of that is the cruellest mechanic in the game and the one with the clearest tactical consequence: every failed defence strengthens the next attack. A wall you hold until the garrison is spent is not a victory, it is a donation.

The helicopter detail also quietly nerfs a habit — hovering low to unload troops is exactly what the horde can reach.

7. You can take direct control

Press TAB to take direct control of a soldier, tank or helicopter.

Set squad formations and combat stances, and command tanks, Bradleys, LAVs, Humvees, and Apache and Viper attack helicopters. Fast-rope troops from Black Hawks, or land helicopters on rooftops and deploy squads.

The devlogs are the best evidence of how much this matters: there is a dedicated video on AH-6M Little Bird flight deck takeoffs and another on rotor wash during rappelling. ProjectAlive is not treating direct control as a novelty.

8. Fire support is finite and it demolishes real estate

Fire support can be called from the operations map or the battlefield:

Two constraints turn this from a power fantasy into a decision: ship magazines are finite, and heavy weapons bring buildings down.

In a game where districts are the unit of loss, dropping a Tomahawk is not just spending a resource — it is potentially destroying the cover you were defending. The store page does not say whether destroyed buildings can be rebuilt. That is unresolved and we are not going to guess.

Unknown· Whether destroyed structures can be repaired or rebuilt is not stated on the store page. Unconfirmed.

9. Bases are where you dig in, not where you start

You choose where to build a forward operating base. Walls are HESCO and concrete, with gates and scaffolding to defend the walls. Structures named so far: gun nests, CIWS, mortar pits, an ammo depot, a fuel point, and lighting.

Read that list again with the supply rules in mind. Ammo depot and fuel point are base structures. That means your ability to keep fighting is physically located on the map, in buildings the horde can besiege.

10. Supply is the real front line

This is the system we think will decide most players' campaigns, and it is the one no existing coverage explains.

• Soldiers, vehicles and aircraft consume ammunition and fuel
• They can only rearm and refuel at bases you hold
• Every wall needs building materials hauled in by hooklift truck or helicopter sling
• The horde hunts your convoys and cuts your roads

Put together, these four lines describe a game where your army is only as strong as the road behind it. It also explains the otherwise strange emphasis on convoys carrying "supplies, troops or refugees" — every convoy is a choice, and every choice leaves something un-carried.

11. The campaign leaves the city

The people, troops, equipment and supplies you bring to the Port of LA form your starting force aboard the Ark for the world campaign.

From there you choose which regions to help, bring the carrier group's guns and aircraft within range, and resupply at friendly ports. You rescue pilots and specialists you cannot train, grow the fleet with allied warships, and hunt the Nexus's hidden command nodes.

Note what this implies about Los Angeles: it is not the tutorial, it is the recruitment phase. What you extract becomes what you can project. That reframes the district triage — every district you abandon is also capacity you will not carry into the next region.

What we still do not know

Listing unknowns is not a weakness, it is the difference between a guide and a fan fiction. As of 22 October 2026:

Unknown· All six rows above are genuinely unpublished, not merely hard to find. We checked the store page, the appdetails API and the official news feed.

Frequently asked questions

What to read next

• The arsenal — the units and structures named above, with a source for each
• System requirements — including the Apple Silicon-only line on Mac
• Ebbtide vs They Are Billions — how this compares to the closest released game
• Release status — none of these systems can be tested until launch
• Is this the right Ebbtide? — three entities share the name

Source: All system descriptions are quoted or paraphrased from the Ebbtide Steam store page (App ID 4915700), retrieved 22 October 2026. No numeric values were available to cite, and none have been supplied. checked 2026-10-22.