Silica

Silica Beginner’s Guide (Commander or Infantry?)

Simon

2 November 2026

20 min read

If you’re new to Silica, start as infantry. In Silica infantry mode you learn the maps, the three factions and how a match flows without a whole team depending on your decisions. Once you understand what a good commander needs from the ground, step into Silica commander mode. You’ll probably end up playing both anyway.

#First, what kind of game is Silica?

Silica is a first-person shooter bolted onto a real-time strategy game, and both halves are full games in their own right. One player per faction sits in the commander chair with a top-down RTS view, placing buildings, researching tech and ordering units around. Everyone else on that team drops onto the sand in Silica infantry mode and fights the war the commander is planning.

Martin “Dram” Melichárek started it as a solo passion project with StarCraft and Dune as inspirations, and Bohemia Interactive (the Arma and DayZ studio) published it through its Bohemia Incubator program. The game hit Steam Early Access on 3 May 2023 and now the 1.0 release is right around the corner. If you want to know the official Silica 1.0 release date and what's new, we've got you covered with our blog!

The setting is Baltarus, a desert planet thousands of light years from Earth, and the whole war is over one mineral: Balterium. Three factions want it.

Sol: humans from Earth, who started the mining operation.
Centauri: humans from the Centaurus colony, who felt cut out of the deal.
Aliens: the planet’s native insect-like hive, which runs on biotics scooped from tar pits instead of Balterium.

Matches run humans vs humans, humans vs aliens, or a three-way scrap with all of them on one map.

#What 1.0 changes for new players

Version 1.0 is a far friendlier starting point than Early Access was. You get a fully voiced Centauri story campaign with save-anywhere, co-op Strategy with adjustable AI difficulty, 1 vs 1 matchmaking, Steam Workshop support, and a pile of commander quality-of-life upgrades: line formations, double-click selection, fire-at-ground orders and vehicles that can reverse.

#Silica commander mode: What you’re signing up for

Silica commander mode puts you in orbit above the map with a classic RTS camera: WASD to pan, scroll wheel to zoom, click the minimap to jump. From up there you place buildings, queue units, research upgrades and drag-select squads to send them wherever the fight is. One player per faction gets the chair. Everyone else on your side is a real person (or an AI) carrying out your plan in first person.

#The economy is the whole game

Every Silica commander lives and dies by one resource. Human factions mine Balterium: you build a Refinery, it comes with a Harvester, and that Harvester trundles out to the nearest crystal field, fills up and brings the haul home. Aliens run on biotics instead, with Shrimps scuttling out to tar pits and dragging their meal back to a bio cache.

#Tech tiers, linking and the sell button

Your tech level is tied to the Research Facility (or the Quantum Cortex if you’re playing aliens), and since the 0.9 update it belongs to the team rather than the building. Lose the facility and your tech drops to zero; rebuild it and the level comes straight back. Every structure also needs to stay linked to your HQ or Nest, because unlinked buildings stop producing, lose their turrets and slowly decay. If you misplace something, you can now sell it from the build menu for a partial refund instead of blowing it up.

#Why commanding is harder than it looks

The RTS half is deep enough to stand on its own. Sol and Centauri now have completely separate rosters (the Unit Split update added 21 units and 13 structures), so you’re learning one faction’s full toolkit. You’re also the only person on your team who can see the whole map, so scouting, base layout, build order and target calling all land on you at once. If the chair gets overwhelming mid-match, hand it to the AI and drop into infantry; nobody has to abandon the game.

#Silica infantry mode: boots on the sand

Silica infantry mode is the FPS half, and it’s where the game clicks for a lot of players. You spawn at your HQ or Barracks, sprint across dunes built at real-world scale, and fire weapons with ballistics that drop over distance. Flip between first and third person, switch on night vision when Baltarus goes dark, and climb into any vehicle your commander has built: a Light Quad for scouting, a Siege Tank for cracking bases, even the Harvester itself. Ammo is unlimited, so the only thing between you and the next fight is a reload.

#Human classes and vehicles

Your Barracks has a class-change terminal, and what’s on the menu depends on your team’s tech tier: you start with the two basic kits and unlock heavier ones as your commander upgrades the Research Facility. Since the Unit Split, Sol and Centauri field different rosters:

Sol: Scout, Rifleman, Heavy, Sniper and Commando.
Centauri: Militia, Trooper, Marksman, Juggernaut and Templar.

#Playing as the aliens

Alien infantry is a different sport. You belong to a hive, so you hop between creatures instead of respawning as one soldier, and you can walk straight up cliffs and rock walls. Crabs swarm and burrow, Hunters close distance in seconds, Horned Crabs and Shockers give you a ranged option, Wasps and Dragonflies own the sky, and the Goliath is the walking siege engine you unlock late. Most of the roster is melee, which makes alien play a game of ambush angles and terrain, and your night vision beats anything the humans carry.

#You can command a squad without leaving the ground

Since the 0.9 update, infantry players can press F to recruit AI units into a personal group (up to 8 of them) and lead them around the battlefield. It’s a useful middle ground: you get a taste of giving orders while still shooting things, and your commander gets a squad that does more than loiter outside the Barracks.

#Commander or infantry: how to pick your first role

Work through this order and you’ll be a competent Silica commander within a week without tanking anyone else’s match along the way.

Play the Centauri campaign first. It’s a guided, fully voiced tour of the game with checkpoints and save-anywhere, so you can experiment without wasting anyone’s time.
Go infantry for your first online matches. Spawn, grab a Light Quad, scout for your commander and read the team chat. You’ll learn map names, unit names and what a healthy base looks like.
Take the chair in co-op Strategy before PvP. The host sets the AI difficulty, so you can fumble your first build order against an easy AI commander while your mates hold the line.
Then take commander online. By now you know how the economy feels, what infantry are asking for, and what each faction’s early units do. For a pure RTS test, 1 vs 1 matchmaking pits you against one other commander with AI armies on both sides.

Before you queue: each faction has one commander slot, chosen on the role selection screen, and once a player holds it nobody can take it until they step down. In a public lobby you may be on foot whether you like it or not.

#Go commander first if

You’ve put real hours into StarCraft, Company of Heroes or Supreme Commander.
You’re comfortable with the whole team’s result sitting on your shoulders.
You’re playing with friends who’ll forgive a lost match while you learn.

#Go infantry first if

You’re coming from Battlefield, Squad, PlanetSide or Hell Let Loose.
You want to be shooting at something within 60 seconds of loading in.
You’re joining a public lobby where nobody knows you yet.

#Rookie mistakes that lose Silica matches

Skip these and you’re already ahead of half the lobby.

#In the commander chair

Leaving Harvesters unescorted. Your entire income is one slow, enormous truck. Park a quad next to it and queue a second one early.
Sprawling your base. Unlinked structures stop producing, lose their turrets and decay. Keep everything inside HQ range and watch the minimap for the pulsing unlinked icon.
Treating the Research Facility as optional. Your tech tier lives there. If it dies your tier drops to zero, which also locks your infantry out of the better classes.
Trickling units in. Stage an attack before committing to it, and use line formations and double-click selection to move proper groups.
Going quiet. Your infantry can only follow a plan they’ve heard. Ping targets and say what you need in text or voice.

#On the ground

Ignoring the commander’s pings. They can see the whole map and you can’t.
Walking to the enemy base. Grab a vehicle, or use the Barracks teleporter and expect to land a little off-target over long distances.
Charging aliens head-on at night. Their night vision beats yours; fight them in daylight and on open ground where melee has to cross distance under fire.
Sticking with the starter kit all match. Check the Barracks terminal every time your tech tier ticks up.
Watching the Harvester die. If nobody else is near it, hop in or escort it. That truck is your team’s whole economy.

#Getting good faster, especially with friends

Silica rewards a stable group more than most shooters: a commander who knows the people on the ground, and infantry who trust the calls. Public lobbies are a coin flip on who ends up in the chair, so if your friends also grabbed 1.0, set up your own matches and do the following.

Rotate the chair. Swap commanders every game so everyone learns what the role needs. After a few sessions you’ll stop blaming the commander, because you’ve been the commander.
Use co-op Strategy as a ladder. Start against an easy AI commander, then raise the difficulty once you’re winning cleanly. The reworked AI expands, stages attacks and backs off when they fail, so it’s a decent sparring partner.
Tweak the match settings. Strategy lets you adjust starting resources, tech tier limits and starting distance, which is handy for drilling specific stages of a match.

Running those sessions on one person’s PC means the match dies the moment the host goes to bed. If your group plays at different hours, or you want a lobby that’s always up with your rules loaded, Silica server hosting with Shockbyte gives you a dedicated server you control: you set the match variables, you decide who gets the commander slot, and nobody loses a two-hour game to the host’s internet.

#Silica commander vs infantry FAQ

#Can you switch between commander and infantry mid-match?

Yes. A commander can step down at any point and the AI takes the chair until another player claims it, so a team can pass the role around within one match.

#Can you play Silica solo?

Yes. The 1.0 campaign is single-player, and in Strategy the AI fills every seat you leave empty, including your own commander slot, so you can run a full three-faction war alone in either role.

#Which faction should a beginner pick?

Start with Centauri or Sol. The human factions play like a familiar sci-fi shooter on the ground and a familiar RTS from above, and the campaign is told from the Centauri side. Save the aliens until you know the maps, because wall-walking, creature-swapping and a mostly melee roster take a few matches to click.

#Is the AI commander good enough to carry a team?

Better than it was. The 2026 AI rework taught commanders to expand, stage attacks and pull back when a push fails. A human commander who talks to their infantry still beats it.

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