Black Holes & Prestige

A black hole is drawn as a black disc ringed by arcs of infalling matter, and it stays visible however far you zoom out. It starts neutral and holds a garrison of megaprobes.

While nothing from outside can be launched into its galaxy, the time remaining shows under the garrison count, and the galaxy is ringed even zoomed out far enough that individual bodies stop being drawn. That lasts 3 days for a galaxy that starts out shielded; after it, the same spot shows the current border toll instead, falling to 0% as the galaxy ages (see Attacking & Capture). A galaxy created with no border has neither the ring nor the countdown, and its label starts on the wait for instability.

Once the toll reaches 0% the label counts down to instability, and after that to the moment the garrison runs out. That last one is amber, and an unstable galaxy is ringed in amber at the most zoomed-out view. Whichever of the three the label is showing, it also sits in the middle of the galaxy's disk at that zoom, where the black hole itself is no longer drawn.

Attacking

Only suns can attack a black hole. Drag from one of your suns and every 100 super-probes becomes 1 megaprobe on arrival, so an attack needs at least 100 super-probes. Beat the garrison and the black hole is yours.

You can attack a black hole in any galaxy, including from another one, where the border toll raises the minimum to up to 1,000 super-probes right after the border opens.

Collapsing

Two conditions must both be met before you can collapse a black hole you own:

• Every sun in the galaxy must be held by you or a clan ally. Suns owned by other players count against you, and so do neutral suns.
• 1,000 megaprobes must be garrisoned at the black hole. Send more super-probes to build it up; every enemy attack wears it down.

Once both hold, click the black hole and choose Collapse.

What a collapse pays

Collapsing pays no energy and no credits. It grants a permanent prestige level, which adds one energy per minute to every sun you own anywhere in the universe. The player who collapses the black hole gets a level, and so does every clan ally who holds a sun in the galaxy: one level each, however many suns they held. See Prestige.

A collapse also wipes the entire galaxy, including every planet and sun you hold there. Since you had to conquer the galaxy to qualify, most of what is destroyed is your own, and your income drops until you have rebuilt.

Instability

14 days after a galaxy is created, its black hole turns unstable and starts eating its own garrison: 1 megaprobe a day at first, doubling every day after that.

Days unstable	Megaprobes per day	Probes per day	Eaten so far
0	1	10,000	0
1	2	20,000	1
3	8	80,000	10
5	32	320,000	45
7	128	1,280,000	187
10	1,024	10,240,000	1,513
13	8,192	81,920,000	12,115

One megaprobe is 10,000 probes, two conversions deep, so the probes column is the one that compares against what your planets make.

If the garrison reaches 0, the galaxy collapses exactly as a player-triggered collapse does, every planet and sun in it destroyed, except nobody gains a prestige level.

The black hole has to be yours to feed: a hostile arrival subtracts from the garrison instead of adding to it. Holding a galaxy means holding its black hole.

Click a black hole you own and the menu names the time its garrison has left, the next megaprobes to come off it and when, and what the coming day takes, which is what a feed has to match to hold the garrison level.

A galaxy nobody garrisons is gone at day 14. One that is held lasts about a month, and holding more of it buys very little extra: the rate doubles daily, so quadrupling what you produce moves the day it falls by about two. Every planet in the disk at max level reaches day 30.

A collapse-ready stockpile of 1,000 megaprobes buys about 9 days of survival on its own, with nothing else feeding it.

New galaxies spawn as the existing ones fill up, and a galaxy that ends either way frees its space.

A galaxy created with no border ages on the same clock as any other, so it turns unstable at day 14 too. When it goes, another open galaxy takes its place.