Damage Protection (known as a "bubble" among the game's player community) is an impenetrable force field that forms around your base when it takes significant damage from a PvP attack. Unlike all the preparations we've talked about in this article, Damage Protection is completely automatic--when applicable, it turns itself on or off. As long as Damage Protection is active, your base may not be attacked. (Any deposits or platoons you control on the World Map may still be attacked, though.) Damage Protection is visible to all players; when you're looking at a bubbled base, the bubble will be a different color depending on your relationship with that player.

For example:

Player's Base

Friend's Base

Enemy's Base

Your Base will appear blue when you view it on the world map, your friends' bases will appear green, and your enemies' bases have red bubbles. Rogue faction bases (bases not controlled by players) will have orange bubbles.

Damage Protection is temporary. You can check how much time remains on your Damage Protection by entering your base and looking in the upper right corner of the HUD. (The timer will not appear here if you do not currently have Damage Protection.)

New bases automatically receive 7 days of Damage Protection. This gives you time to get your base established before having to repel enemies. This is the only instance in which Damage Protection is not caused by battle.

The rest of the time, the duration of the Damage Protection your base receives is determined by the amount of damage dealt to your base's buildings (units and barricades do not count) in the attack. 

If the attacker does enough damage to trigger Damage Protection, Damage Protection is applied as soon as combat ends. (During our Warpath events, Damage Protection lasts only 4 hours. This is unique to the Warpath event type.)

The most common way to lose Damage Protection is by allowing the timer to expire. There is no way to extend Damage Protection, and the bubble goes away at the end of its time limit whether or not your base was fully repaired while under Damage Protection, so plan accordingly!

If a player under Damage Protection attacks another player's base, platoon, or deposit, their own Damage Protection will end early--and by early, we mean "right frakking now." Players refer to this as "popping" your bubble. Attempting to attack any of these target types will prompt a warning with the time remaining on the Damage Protection.

Just clicking "Attack" will shut down your Damage Protection regardless of the outcome or the quantity of platoons deployed in the fight (even if change your mind after clicking "Attack" and deploy no platoons!), so don't click that "Attack" button unless you're ready to go! 

Attacking a Rogue base or an Event base will not end Damage Protection. As long as you're not attacking another player's assets, your Damage Protection will count down normally.

If you end your own Damage Protection by attacking another player's assets, it will not reactivate for 10 minutes. This means that if you pop your own bubble, you can hypothetically be attacked by multiple opponents during that cooldown period. This is not a malfunction, so if it happens, don't bother ticketing in about it. You brought it upon yourself, commander; as the old adage goes, you reap what you sow! And on the battlefield, we sow mayhem and destruction.

Sweet, sweet mayhem and destruction.