Sector Raids

New in v0.16.0 “Resistance is Useless.” Holding ground has a cost. Once you push the frontier beyond home Alpha, every sector you own becomes a target: while you are online, a hostile fleet drawn from that sector’s own alien race can scramble to annihilate your sector station. This is a distinct layer from the older per-asteroid colony raids — sector raids strike your station infrastructure, and your turrets, plating and garrison now feed a sector defence strength that holds the line.

All numbers on this page are read straight from data/combat/sectorRaids.json and client/js/systems/sectorRaids.js. Like everything pre-1.0, they are first-pass / balance TBD.

When a Sector Can Be Raided #

A sector is raidable only if all of these hold:

• You are online. The whole system suppresses itself during offline fast-forward — nothing raids you while you’re away. Come-back sessions start clean.
• It is not home Alpha. Alpha (the safe tier) is permanently exempt — its per-minute raid chance is hard-set to 0.
• You have built a sector station there. No station, no infrastructure to attack.

While online the game rolls for a new raid once per minute per eligible sector. A minimum gap of 30 minutes is enforced between raids on the same sector, and a sector can only host one raid at a time. A well-defended sector is also raided less often — the roll is suppressed by up to 60% based on how much your defence out-matches the expected fleet.

The Attacking Fleet #

The raiders are drawn from the sector’s own alienFactions — you are attacked by the locals (Vorgon in Beta, Betelgeusians in Gamma, and so on up to the Krikkit war-robots in Theta). The fleet’s raw strength is:

fleetStrength = baseStrength(300)
              × tierWeight[sector tier]
              × sector baseDanger
              × (1 + threatIndex × 0.15)

Deeper, more dangerous sectors field far heavier fleets:

The Threat Index #

Every sector tracks a threat index that climbs by 1 each time it is raided (capped at 20). A higher threat index makes each future fleet +15% stronger per point and raises the per-minute chance of the next raid. Repel raids promptly — a sector you keep losing ground in only draws heavier assaults.

Defending a Sector #

Defence is something you commit to in advance. From the Defense panel’s “🌐 Sectors” tab you park units in a sector’s orbit and repair its station. Your sector defence strength is the sum of four contributions:

sectorDefence = Σ parked-capital attack        × 1.0
              + Σ parked-drone count × role power (≈ 8 each)
              + sector turret rating             × 2.0
              + garrison dwarves × 15

Committing & Recalling Your Fleet #

Parking ships is a real commitment:

• Capital ships in an active rift dive cannot be parked — pull them out first.
• Deploying and recalling both take travel time: 120s + 60s × sector distance each way. A capital only starts defending once it arrives; a recalled unit only rejoins your free fleet once it gets home.
• Parked drones are removed from your free fleet immediately on deploy, so you can’t also field them in a rift until you recall them.

Infrastructure Durability #

The station has an infrastructure durability pool that an un-repelled fleet grinds down over time. Its maximum scales with station level:

How an Attrition Round Resolves #

After a raid spawns, a warning comms message fires and the first attrition round lands ~2 minutes later; subsequent rounds tick every 15 minutes the raid goes un-repelled. Each round:

1. Your defenders fire first — the incoming fleet’s remaining strength is reduced by your sectorDefence.
2. If the fleet is destroyed, the raid is repelled and the station takes no damage that round.
3. Otherwise the station loses 1% of its maximum durability, and your parked defenders take casualties — proportional to how badly they were out-gunned, capped at 50% of the force per round.

Drone swarms that take casualties are destroyed (their count is reduced), but parked capital ships are never lost to a raid — they are floored at 1 HP and healed back to full when the raid is repelled (“victory refit”).

When the Station Is Crippled #

If durability falls below the 25% operational threshold, the station is crippled and stops functioning as a hub until repaired. Because a sector station is the shared warehouse and build-anchor for its whole sector (see Stations), letting one fall over stalls that sector’s economy.

Repairing & Rewards #

Repair is done from the same Defense panel. It costs, per 1% of durability restored:

Repelling a raid pays out to the hub station: a random 250–750 Credits plus 3 × threat-tier Station Parts (so later, higher-threat raids reward more parts — the very first raid in a sector, at threat 0, pays no bonus parts).

Practical Defence #

• Garrison dwarves are the most efficient single contributor (×15 each) — station a few in every frontier sector.
• Stack turrets and plating in the sector; the turret rating is doubled into defence (up to the 300 cap → 600 effective).
• Park a couple of capitals you’re not currently diving with; they can’t be lost to a raid, so they’re safe garrison duty between rift runs.
• Repair before the 25% cripple line, not after — a crippled station costs the sector’s whole economy, not just the repair bill.
• Watch the threat index: repeatedly losing a sector snowballs into ever-heavier fleets. Fight the raid down early.

Implementation Status #

Sector raids, infrastructure durability, the defence-strength formula, the threat index and the repair loop are all implemented and live (sectorRaids.json, client/js/systems/sectorRaids.js, Defense panel “🌐 Sectors” tab). Save schema migrated v16 → v17 to back-fill the per-sector raid, threat and timing state; existing saves upgrade automatically. All balance numbers are first-pass / balance TBD.

See Also #

• Raids — the older per-asteroid colony-defense model
• Stations — sector stations, levels and the shared pool
• Rifts & Fleet — the capital ships and drones you park to defend
• Sectors — sector tiers, danger and alien factions
• Equipment & Loadouts — turrets and plating that feed defence