There are various ways of losing a colony early on. Did you kill all the krosov siege frigates in the gravity well? Did the enemy build a novalith and shoot you with it? Are the phase lines changing color, then the enemy might be sending you his culture already.

Can we call this "The Vasari's Unknown Threat" bug?

Could it be the Reapers returning from Darkspace? Someone call commander Shepard!

Might also be your own Novaliths. Happened to me when I build 10 of them and left them on auto fire while my fleet was out conquering. The Novaliths fired before the planet was conquered, but I colonised it before the missile arrived.

It must be the enemy unknown!

You abandoned your colony? What? You cannot do that. The only thing I know that might cause you "abandoning" your colony would be "wail of the sacrificed", but that one should not autocast...

I'd like to have more information now. What race were you playing, how many research centers did you have, did you research any high level reasearches yet? How many enemies are on the map and what race do they belong to? What difficulty level are those?

My guess is, either you were in window mode and kept clicking other applications near the bottom of sins (where the scuttle button is) or you kept hitting the hotkey for scuttle (which you can disable via the menu)...

oooooooooooooooooooooooooh. So that's what it means when the phase lines change color. I had wondered about that. Thanks!

If you take over an enemy ship that is under heavy fire by your forces it might die even after changing sides. You can increase the probability of taking over ships by sending your fleet away or un-toggling auto attack, but you should only do that if the enemy force is weak.