⚔ War and raids

Rivals raid you, and a raid has to get through three layers. Orbit: your ships at home and your orbital platforms meet their fleet first. The dome: what survives must break the Gluon Shield's see-through dome before anything can land; it recharges afterwards. The ground: whatever gets through lands and fights your squads and ground guns. You can raid them back from the map.

You do not have to fight to the last unit. During a ground battle you can retreat (your troops shelter and the raiders take what they came for), offer a truce (half of it; they may refuse) or, once you are winning, demand their surrender (they drop their loot). In orbit you can pull the fleet back to the docks to save ships.

• A landing (v0.84): while the dome stands, raiders form up on open ground outside and must break it; with no dome their dropships come down anywhere, at the edge or among your buildings. Every squad has a job: raiders strip your stores (vaults, depots, water towers, accumulators: big loot), saboteurs wreck what makes resources (drills, extractors, collectors, farms, forges), the vanguard hunts your units. The Core is the last thing anyone goes for.
• Meeting them: squads and wings on Alert move out to the colony edge on their own; Fortify holds its post. Wrecking a building takes a while, so a lost fight costs a few buildings, not the colony.
• The early game is the land: troops, ground guns and, after Gluon Confinement research, the dome. Space opens with the Hadron Hangar: ships first, then orbital platforms.
• Ships out on missions can't guard orbit. Bombers are the dome-breakers: they hit it twice as hard.
• Raiders usually land on your weakest side — move squads there before the countdown ends.
• The Planetary Cloak hides you completely, but it drains energy and attacking reveals you.
• While your colony is flying between stars, raiders find only empty space.