A boss you do not kill
Raids are live. The target does not die, so the sortie is scored on the damage you did to it — and if your alliance found it, the whole alliance can come.
Pacifications clear a threat. Extractions bring something home. Raids are the third thing, and they work differently on purpose.
The target survives you
A raid boss is not killed. It is worn down, and what your fleet is scored on is the damage it dealt before it turned for home. That changes the question you ask before launching: not “can I win this”, but “how much can I take out of it this time”.
What is rationed is the number of sorties you get, not access to the target. You can always go back. You cannot go back forever.
Whoever finds it, brings friends
A boss found by a member of an alliance is shared with that alliance. Everyone can throw a fleet at it, the damage adds up, and the screen shows you who else is hitting it right now — which is the first thing in the galaxy that made a Void Marshal’s warband bonus mean anything, because until now there was no warband to buff.
The loot stays individual. A shared target is not a shared prize: what you take home is what your own sorties earned.
Solo still gets there
Worth saying plainly, because the opposite got repeated for a while: a raid is the faster road to the top of the ladder, not the only one. Everything a raid can eventually give you is reachable alone. It just takes longer, which is the trade the whole game is built on.