Under attack: immediate response protocol

Situation: Hostile action against your territory
Goal: Minimize losses, protect critical assets, survive to fight another day
Principle: Act in priority order. Panic loses more than the attacker takes.

Immediate Response Protocol

When you detect an attack—raid, struct assault, or fleet engagement—execute this sequence. Do not skip steps. Do not reverse the order.

Know the budget before you start. Against a raid you have roughly four minutes total: median 2.1 min from initiated to shieldsVulnerable, then a hard ~2 min 6 s lock before loot. Every step below has to fit inside that. Defenders who returned fire within ~1.8 min are the only ones in the dataset who ever defeated an attacker; the median losing defender responded at 12.3 min. See defense.md.

Trigger on raid_status: initiated (or a hostile fleet arrival), not on damage. Waiting until structs are hurt spends most of the budget.

1. Check Power Status

If you go offline, you cannot act. Before anything else:

• Verify capacity covers load ((capacity + capacitySecondary) >= (load + structsLoad))
• If marginal, do not activate new structs
• If overloaded, deactivate non-critical structs to stay online (struct-deactivate works even while offline)

A dead base cannot defend or respond. Power first.

2. Deny the Prize — You Cannot Finish a Refine Mid-Raid

A successful raid seizes all of your storedOre. Starting a new refine does not help: ore stays stealable for the whole refine PoW (~34 h at D=3), and partial progress does not shrink the loot.

While a visitor heads the raid queue, mine and refine compute and complete are rejected (under_raid). There is no “finish it if already completable” path — the chain pauses those proofs until the raid ends, then shifts the planet clocks so pre-raid age is preserved. Skip to step 3. Pre-raid discipline (“refine as soon as ore lands”) is what zeroes the prize.

3. Stop the Raid (this is the fight)

Inside the four-minute window, two actions actually change the outcome:

1. Restore shields if they are down — Command Ship online with the fleet onStation. That flips status to ongoing and blocks planet-raid-complete.
2. Shoot the raider’s Command Ship — co-located return fire. Destroying it ends the raid (attackerDefeated). Only on-station fleet (and anything else already parked at this planet) can shoot; combat is co-located.

If you run Desktop MCP and your commander has armed Standing Automation Grants, structs_players autoresponse is built for exactly this window — do not hand-time shots slower than the loop. See SAFETY.md and team-operations.

Do not spend the budget activating unused defenses or starting new builds. PDC/jammers already online help; mid-raid builds will not finish in time.

4. Assess Attacker Strength (only after 1–3 are moving)

Gather intelligence while responses are in flight:

• How many ships? What type?
• Is this a raid (steal ore) or an attack (destroy structs)?
• Solo or guild-coordinated?

Raid = economic loss (all storedOre). Attack = structural loss. Different follow-ups.

5. Decide: Hold or Cut Losses

Hold when:

• Shields restored or raider CMD under fire
• Ore already refined / near-zero
• Allies or autoresponse covering the planet

Cut losses when:

• You cannot restore shields or reach the raider CMD before the lock
• Ore is already gone (raidSuccessful) — rebuild CMD, refine future ore faster, do not chase

You own one planet. “Evacuate” means protect what you can (refine-if-ready, keep CMD alive), not abandon for another base mid-fight.

6. Planned Counter — After the Clock

Do not save return fire for later — mid-raid shots are step 3. What waits until you are secure is a planned counter-raid on their home (fleet move, siege doctrine, revenge timing). Reactive home-raids while your own shields are still contested often fail. See Tempo and combat.md.

Behavioral Notes by Attacker Type

• Killer: Expect sustained pressure. They want the fight. Deny them ore value; fortify for the long game.
• Entrepreneur: Likely raiding for resources to fund their build. Hit their economy in a planned response.
• Achiever: May be chasing a goal. Identify it; make it costly.
• Explorer: Rare attacker. If they’re hitting you, you’re in their way. Clear and decisive defense usually deters.

See Also

• Defense — What a raid can take and the four-minute clock
• Early Game — Why power and refinement matter from the start
• Resource Rich — Rich targets get attacked; prepare accordingly
• Guild War — When attacks are coordinated
• Counter-Strategies — Beating the Killer and other aggressors
• Tempo — When to counter-raid
• Team Operations — autoresponse / Standing Automation Grants