Black holes

Every week you set up a wave fleet and attack black holes – without losing ships, for Spice, war emblems and mentor stars.

Black holes keep appearing in the systems of your universe. On the galaxy map they replace the sun of a system. Behind each one is a group of aliens that demands a certain attack power and often specific ship types. The fight runs in attack waves: each wave lasts one week and starts over every Friday. You get there via the war emblem icon on the right side of the game.

The fight unlocks at an attack power of 10,000 (tactical fleet strength, see Ranking). You cannot take part in spectral mode. At the start of each wave you click compose fleet and decide which ships may fly against the aliens this week – normally up to 25% of your tactical fleet strength, during alien week up to 100%. Once a day you can add more with request reinforcement. Spy probe, Jammer probe, EMP-Bomb and Scanner ship are not allowed.

An attack step by step

Pick a target: Click a black hole on the galaxy map or look it up in the Alien scanner. The info panel shows the required attack power, required ships, Spice reward and flight time.
Plan the attack: From your current planet, put together at least as much attack power as required and send every required ship along. You can only use ships that are still part of your wave quota.
Flight and reward: Your real ships fly there – there is no battle, so you lose nothing. On arrival you receive war emblems, red holes also give mentor stars for your alliance, and the fleet brings the Spice home in its cargo hold.

The colors

White and green: White holes are very easy opponents without ship requirements, only for players below attack zone 17 (Points & Attack Zones). From zone 17 on you attack colored holes. Green ones (easy) are no big challenge and rarely demand specific ships.
Purple (hard): Listed as "blue" in the wave statistics and shown in purple in the scanner. Tougher opponents that almost always demand specific ships, but pay out more.
Red (alliance): Huge groups of enemies that withstand many attacks – ideal for the whole alliance – and give mentor stars on top. Orange stands for the wave boss, which is not active yet.

Limits, growth and stealth

You have 100 attacks per week (300 during alien week), and you can attack each hole only once. On top of that there is a personal Spice limit: the wave page breaks it down into base value, planets, fleet share and extras. Each attack also only brings back as much Spice as fits into the cargo hold. From the waves you can earn up to 1,500 war emblems per week (Emblem shop), and mentor stars are capped per week as well.

Black holes grow: when the "Upgrade in" timer runs out, their attack power and reward go up – the more often the hole was attacked since the last step, the bigger the jump. After a certain number of attacks it closes. If it closes before you arrive, you get your quota back. Every day you have a few free invisible attacks (shown as "today left"). After that, each further one costs 5 Urplasma.