Why does everyone keep saying Raids are OP? Do they not function as intended?
(Nota bene that I can only talk about the now outdated version since I can't play this on my own hardware :] )
Raids totally function as intented, I'd guess: They reduce enemy presence by 2 stages, you can only bring the infantery (and dreadnaught) part of your forces, but you also face a smaller portion of the enemy(by 1 stage, it was stated), and tactically battle starts much closer to the enemy lines. All that seems completely intented and reasonable.
The OP part comes into play when you compare them to regular Attacks: Those reduce the enemy presence by only
1... even though you will kill more enemies when victorious. You bring your vehicles, but you also face a bigger portion of the enemy. You also start further away from the enemy on the tactical scale.
Against a weak enemy, both are equally effective on a tactical level, making raids 2x as effective on a strategical level. Against a strong enemy, the vehicles may be worth battling the bigger enemy forces, but the way your troops were arranged (which now seems to be customizable!
Duke rules. ) that line of tanks was positioned so far in front of your troops (even before your dreadnaughts...) that a lot of the marines could not fire at the enemy for long (or at all) before they entered anti-tank melee, your assault marines kept sitting around doing absolutely nothing while your tanks were wittled away. Even assuming that is now fixed, the 2x bonus for raids is still worth the higher risk in that situation.
And if you're seriously outnumbered, and have good reasons not to bomb the enemy from orbit, Attack becomes actually worse than Raid, because the enemy will bring a whole lot more specialists, among them anti-tank specialists, that can wreck, like, 100 rhinos a turn... and other elite units that will wreck your precious marines. So facing a smaller army is 100% worth leaving your tanks home.
Unless maybe if you pack all the tanks and a few Space Marine
Panzergrenadiere into a li'l fleet exclusively Attacking weakish xenos. That might actually be a fun strategy, but I doubt its usefulness.
Tl;dr: There is almost no situation where Attack is better than Raid, as long as the former only reduces enemy presence by 1
E: Cosmetics.