Steam Community :: Moon Sweepers

Moon Sweepers 1.0.4 Patch

1:47pm

Moon Sweepers 1.0.4 Patch is now out!

Update 1.0.4 brings major J.O.O.N.A.S. improvements, new suit gear, a better Moon map, much faster saving on big bases, automatic save backups and a long list of multiplayer and bug fixes.

NEW FEATURES

Night Vision Goggles: New $350 suit upgrade. Press N to cycle between helmet lamp → goggles → off. Nights look like daytime without shadows. Goggles are also visible on your astronaut.
Improved Moon Map: Right-click to set waypoints, focus or teleport. All robots now appear on the map with their current activity. Toggle each robot type on or off.
Teleport Panel: View and teleport between the stations you've discovered.
Suit HUD Icons: New indicators next to the dust gauge for lamp/goggles, jetpack boosts and gravity boots.
Helmet Lamp Upgrades: Moved to the supply wall.
Capsule Catcher: The glass now shows the collected dust, and capacity is increased to 100 kg.

J.O.O.N.A.S. IMPROVEMENTS

No More Dock Trips: J.O.O.N.A.S. cleans a sector and launches capsules to the nearest catcher from anywhere while moving on to the next sector.
2x Faster Cleaning: Cleans one hex at a time from the outside in until it's 100% done. Less circling and much less idle time.
Smarter Navigation: Finds its way around buildings and skips hexes it can't reach.
Always Working: Keeps cleaning even when no players are nearby.
Improved Bin Indicator: The gauge flashes red when full. Look at J.O.O.N.A.S. to see its information panel.
Sector Tracking: Shows which sector J.O.O.N.A.S. is currently cleaning.

SAVING & BACKUPS

Much Faster Saving: Saving large, heavily cleaned bases now takes a fraction of a second instead of up to half a minute.
Faster Quitting: Quitting the game or returning to the main menu no longer leaves you waiting on "Saving your progress...".
Automatic Backups: Each save slot now keeps up to 5 full backups of your world, taken a minute into every session and then every 30 minutes. They are stored outside Steam Cloud, in:
C:\Users\[user-name]\AppData\LocalLow\DragDropGames\MoonSweepers\Backups
Automatic Repair: If a save or part of it is ever damaged, the game restores it from your backups when the world loads and lets you know.
Crash Recovery: After a crash, the game checks your save files on the next start and repairs any that were damaged.

MULTIPLAYER

Ground Synchronization Reworked: Everyone now sees the same cleaned ground, including robot trails and manual cleaning. No more dust reappearing.
Shared Belt Building: Any crewmate can place splitters and mergers on belts built by other players.
Improved Mergers: Mergers now alternate between their inputs.

BUG FIXES & PERFORMANCE

Fixed all machines pausing with "Could not pack a capsule" even with power and materials available.
Fixed players falling through the Moon, including after teleporting between stations.
Fixed foundations not being placeable next to ramps.
Fixed machines failing to build when snapped side by side.
Fixed the map not showing full section payments, including the Region Bounty.
Fixed duplicate chess pieces appearing at stations.
Fixed overlapping key hints near vehicles.
Fixed freezing when switching tools while many robots are working.
Fixed capsules falling beneath foundations after removing belts.
Fixed a J.O.O.N.A.S. error when re-planning the middle of a hex.
Steam Deck / Linux: Fixed startup issues with older Proton versions.
Windows / AMD: DirectX 11 is now the default to prevent AMD GPU crashes. To use DirectX 12, add -force-d3d12 to your Steam launch options.

Note: Saves made in 1.0.4 can't be opened in older versions of the game.

Found a bug? Please report it in our Discord so we can fix it quickly. Thanks for playing Moon Sweepers!

Moon Sweepers

151

27

Whats the best setup?

Right now i have 4 sand constructors every of them going to 1 brick constructor, and 1 dust line that splits to all of them, does anyone knows the best setup, give me your own example or just take mine and tell me what i could do better, so more efficient splitting etc. i hope u know what i mean, i just want to split my dust as affective as i can with a smaller example that u can build over and over...

4

Manumehl

1 hour ago

General Discussions

A Message From the Developers

Oct 24

Thank you & we are sorry!

First of all we want to thank you all for being a part of this community!

We're incredibly happy to see so many people playing and enjoying Moon Sweepers. Seeing your feedback, reviews and the fun you're having with friends means the world to us. We also want to acknowledge that the launch hasn't been perfect. We've seen your reports about crashes, performance issues, multiplayer bugs, lack of automation and progression balancing. We completely understand how frustrating these issues can be and we're truly sorry to everyone whose experience has been affected.

We're a small development team of just two people and we've been working incredibly hard to fix these problems as quickly as possible. We're reading your feedback, investigating reported issues and releasing updates to make the game better every day.

What We've Been Working On

We've already released an update addressing several major issues, including:

Multiplayer upgrades: Upgrades are now shared across the entire crew.
Performance: Significant optimizations to improve FPS and reduce resource usage for Windows.
Save files: Fixes for worlds that previously failed to load, along with improved save protection.
Multiplayer: Added host controls to kick and ban disruptive players.
Automation: Fixes and improvements to conveyor belts, mergers, splitters, and production systems.

What's Next?

We're continuing to focus on the issues you've reported, especially:

J.O.O.N.A.S units stopping when players move away.
Remaining crashes and performance problems.
Automation reliability and production issues.
Progression balancing and quality-of-life improvements.

We're aiming to release another update within the next few days, with the J.O.O.N.A.S issues and performance issues being one of our highest priorities.

Thank You for Your Patience

We know there's still plenty of work ahead and we're committed to making Moon Sweepers the game we all want it to be. As a two-person team, we might not be able to fix everything overnight, but we're listening, we're working and we're not slowing down.

Join our Discord community to easily report bugs, share your ideas/suggestions and stay up to date with the latest news, updates and development progress of Moon Sweepers. Your feedback helps us make the game better!

Thank you for giving Moon Sweepers a chance and supporting our little game. It genuinely means more to us than you might imagine. ❤️

Moon Sweepers

726

60

Moon Sweepers 1.0.3 Patch

Oct 24

Saves

Heavily cleaned bases load again. Some big worlds looked corrupted and wouldn't load properly; the save files were fine, and they now load normally.
Saves now protect themselves: a damaged save is repaired automatically as it loads, from its backup or a recent snapshot, and every save is checked before it replaces the previous one. You'll get a message if anything had to be repaired.

Multiplayer

Upgrades are shared: the whole crew uses the host's upgrade matrix, and anyone's purchase upgrades everyone. Older saves keep the highest level anyone had bought.
Host controls: in the ESC menu, Your Crew lists everyone. The host can kick or ban a player; banned players can't join that save again, and the host can unban them there.
Splitters and mergers built by crewmates now work.

Performance

The game runs faster, especially on big bases: up to about 20% higher frame rates in our tests.
Smoother driving across the Moon, faster teleports between stations and fewer stutters while the ground loads in.
Ground hidden behind the Moon's horizon is no longer drawn.

Building

Splitters and mergers snap straight onto each other, port to port.
While carrying a capsule, you can put it onto a belt right where you aim.
Machines can stand across several foundations, so pressure chambers, stone presses and garages fit on square foundations.
The deposit intake now pays exactly what its screen shows. Dust and stone arriving by belt are paid as they come in.

Vehicles

Your vehicles work at every garage: any garage can call them back, store them and upgrade them, and you won't be offered a vehicle you already own.
Demolishing a garage no longer deletes the vehicles kept there. They move to another garage, or wait for the next garage you build.
No more "Exited ..." message when you leave a vehicle, or message when a crewmate takes yours.

Look

New menu icons for the upgrade tree, garage, radio, robot dock and whiteboard.
New compass icons, each in its own colour: dust stations, crewmates, waypoints and the sector readout.

Important: All crewmates must be on version 1.0.3 to play together.

Moon Sweepers

152

32

298 people found this review helpful
8 people found this review funny

Not Recommended

19.5 hrs on record

Posted: October 24

Hey, the game is fun and very relaxing, but it suffers from severe progression issues after a few hours of gameplay.

You can transition from basic tools to vehicles so quickly that purchasing any tool upgrades becomes entirely pointless after the first hours. While having a Moon with over 160,000 sectors to clean sounds great and challenging, the current upgrade and building systems simply are not designed to support a scale this massive, making the title feel like an Early Access game. If you're going to build a map this big, the core gameplay and progression loop need to be engineered around it.

I have played solo, unlocking all economy and vehicle upgrades, and buying +10 J.O.O.N.A.S units, I have only managed to clean about 0.6% of the moon’s surface. Past a certain point, the gameplay does not feel rewarding and devolves into a "waiting simulator", as top-tier automated sweepers like J.O.O.N.A.S cannot be upgraded the way vehicles can. Like, what's the point then? Even idle games feels faster on that sense and scale properly. Even though the game isn't tagged as an incremental title on Steam, it certainly plays like one so player expects to feel constant progression. However, without well-balanced systems to back it up, players are bound to lose interest quickly.

Managing the robot vacuums is also quite frustrating. Very often, moon dust hidden under conveyor belts goes uncleaned, even when the docking station claims the entire sector is 100% clear. This forces you to constantly go back and clean those spots manually. It happens way too frequently on uneven terrain like mountains and craters, especially where conveyor belts snap flush with the ground. On top of that, what is the point of refunding only 75% of a building's cost upon deconstruction? This penalty makes no sense in a game like this, especially when there is not even a mechanic to relocate or move buildings to a different place.

I am leaving a negative review for now, hoping the developer will implement much-needed QoL improvements and progression patches. Once those issues are addressed, I will gladly update my review to positive.

A developer has responded to this review

siul8r

158 products in account

5

125 people found this review helpful

Not Recommended

8.0 hrs on record

Posted: October 23

I think this game misses the mark quite significantly in the incremental, base building, and automation categories.

Why it doesn't really operate like a conventional incremental:
The first hour or two is pretty good, there is a clear increase in ability to perform the task of sweeping the moon. It progresses at a good pace which gives the player the impression that this kind of ramping up will continue. It doesn't. It hits a pretty hard plateau where no more upgrades can be acquired and you are left with not even 1% of the task complete. This leaves the player to realise they are in for a long and tedious mission to finish the game.

Why it fails as a base builder:
There are only handful of actually operational/interesting constructions. There are blocks but statue building doesn't really qualify as engaging base building.

Why it disappoints as an automation game:
The options you have to explore automation are extremely limited. There are conveyor belts (very janky, and caused my game to crash a couple of times), there are a total of two constructions that "upgrade" the collected dust, and there are a few semi automated gathers (but highly limited to a small local space).

The start of the game is quite fun. But when you scratch the surface you'll see that there isn't much there. At which point you'll need to decide: quit the game unfinished, or pour hundreds of tedious hours into completing it?

I have decided not to continue playing it. This game does not feel finished. And it's a shame because it's a cool concept.

omnihat

6

92 people found this review helpful
2 people found this review funny

Recommended

17.5 hrs on record

Posted: October 24

IGNORE THE COMPLAINTS ABOUT SEPARATE UPGRADES FOR MULTIPLAYER
The devs released a patch today fixing that, and so any upgrades the host has, the other players get too. Brings the balance back so it's fair for everyone instead of everyone for themselves.

Edit: I played a bit more and it's definitely lacking some key stuff. I understand that this is the flipping moon and it's supposed to be massive but folks are right, even with max upgrades this is still an excessively large task to complete, especially if you play solo. There needs to be bigger machines, better upgrades; the processing machines themselves need upgrades - I should be able to upgrade to faster conveyor belts, faster pressure chambers and stone presses. There needs to be a vehicle with a span big enough to clear entire zones. Now, you might be saying "won't that make it too easy?" No; theres 186,000+ zones to clean. Don't you worry your pretty little head. And the vehicle speed upgrades are kind of pitiful; I expected the transport buggy to be zipping along but no, it's not nearly as fast as it should be. So, wonderful idea, I've been having a blast, but if I don't get some more tools to help make this a more tangible task, I can see myself burning out super quick. Also, a guide on machine ratios would be super helpful as I can't figure out a happy medium. Hopefully the devs continue to read reviews because this game will not survive as it is. Also, maybe different sized moons? Allow for difficulty modes? Maybe I want an easy moon that's smaller.

A developer has responded to this review

Allideat

3

found a glitch in the game

a container of sand went into the dust entrance on the stone thingy and i cant pick it up because its bugged, if anyone has any solutin to the problem plz help

5

bruh123lol2

53 minutes ago

General Discussions

Endgame balance

There needs to be more content for the endgame. I’m currently buckling down for the endgame, but it does not feel like the devs playtested it. There are three endgame methods of dust removal, mega vacuum rover, JOONAS, and the robot vacuum mk 2, and I guess I’ll adress them each in turn. The mega vacuum rover is fun, I have 13 hours in my save as of writing this save, let’s conservatively say I’ve had the mega rover for 8 of those. I have cleared 837 of 163,830 sectors. I’m a big fan of the ...

9

ICBPenguin

1 hour ago

General Discussions

Do You Live Here?/Regular Customer Achievements

I'm wondering how these achievements work. I have deposited well over 100 capsules of dust via conveyor belts yet haven't got the 'Regular Customer' achievement so I assume this requires manual deposit. If that's the case then does the 'Do You Live Here?' achievement need me to deposit 10,000 times manually or does that one count conveyor deposits? I'm obviously happy to setup a garage that just deposits dust directly to the facility without any processing but if I have to do it manually that kind of insa...

2

Microsoft Word

1 hour ago

General Discussions

Screenshot

Award

27

1

Bisschen Spaß muss sein :P

Turbiii

View screenshots

Pressure chamber stopped working after the latest patch — “Could not pack a capsule”

Hi! Since the latest patch, my pressure chamber (dust into sand) seems to be stuck with the message “Could not pack a capsule.” Power: 100% stored, idle. Dust: 4/20 kg. Sand: 10/10 kg. Cycle: 3 done. It was working before the update, but now it isn’t producing any more sand. The sand storage appears to be full, and the error suggests it cannot pack the output into a capsule. Has anyone else experienced this? Is this a bug introduced by the patch, or am I missing a step to collect the output? ...

7