Moon Sweepers Vehicle Roles: Who Drives What in a 16-Player Crew
A dispatch table for large lobbies: five machine roles, six crew jobs, the depot-runner loop, and the rules that stop a 16-player fleet from colliding.
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The game gives you sixteen players and five machines
Moon Sweepers supports up to 16 players in online co-op, but it hands out neither sixteen vehicles nor a job title. Vehicles are personal purchases, garages are shared storage, and the shop offers five machines with five jobs. This is a coordination framework rather than a rulebook — but a lobby that uses it stops cleaning the same hex five times.
Why a Full Lobby Needs a Fleet Plan
Sixteen players is not sixteen times the output; it is sixteen times the traffic.
Three facts shape this. Vehicles are personal, so a crew cannot field one machine per player without a serious budget — sixteen Push Sweepers would be $4,800 before garages. Garages reportedly service one vehicle in the bay at a time. And the map does not care who owns what: everyone can drive into the same crater from opposite sides.
The fix is to treat vehicles as roles, not possessions. A 16-player crew should own four to six machines, assign each a named operator, and rotate the dull jobs. The purchase question is not "who wants one" but "which job is unstaffed."
What Each Machine Is For
The fleet reference lists what is confirmed about the roster. What matters for a crew is shape, not price:
| Machine | Reported price | Best job | Worst job |
|---|---|---|---|
| Push Sweeper | $300 | One sweeper on a fresh sector | Long hauls between depots |
| Ride-on Sweeper | $1,000 | Regional clearing with a big hopper | Precision cleanup on a nearly finished hex |
| Crew Transport Van | $2,000 | Moving up to 8 players | Cleaning — it carries no dust |
| Lunar Sweeper | $2,500 | Heavy clearing on crater floors | Tight corners and narrow approaches |
| Mega Vacuum Rover | $6,000 | Feeding a base at volume | Anywhere without a working unload route |
The Van's entire value is other players' time, which makes it under-bought in large lobbies. The Mega is not an upgraded Lunar: its width is the most expensive per centimeter, so it belongs in a dense field.
The Crew Roster
Six jobs cover a full lobby. One player can hold two in a small crew; in a large one, every job should have a name attached.
| Job | Machine | Does | Does not |
|---|---|---|---|
| Line sweeper | Push or Ride-on | Clears one assigned region to completion | Wander into someone else's region |
| Heavy operator | Lunar or Mega | Works dense crater floors and feeds a depot | Chase the last corner of a hex |
| Shuttle driver | Crew Van | Moves players to the frontier and back | Haul dust — the Van has no hopper |
| Scout | Fastest available vehicle | Finds untouched ground, flags, waypoints | Stop to clean |
| Depot marshal | On foot | Keeps the unload route clear and launches | Drive a full hopper into a queue |
| Base operator | None | Power, belts, launch cadence | Leave the base at dusk |
A caution on "loader." Whether one player can empty dust into another's hopper is undocumented, and every source describes vehicles as personal. Until you confirm it, treat loading as a depot job: the marshal clears the route, the operator empties their own machine, and nobody waits behind a vehicle for a transfer that may not exist.
Who owns what
Vehicle purchases and components are personal, as the upgrade guide explains. Garages reportedly store and recall vehicles, and since 1.0.3 any garage services any vehicle, so a machine is not lost when its owner logs off — but it is not shared either. Assign one named owner per machine and let the crew vote on purchases above $1,000. The multiplayer guide covers the money side.
The Depot Runner Loop
The Van exists because the last mile is the worst mile. Patch coverage reports that the map gained right-click waypoints and teleports in 1.0.4, with a small fee between discovered stations. That gets a player to a station — not to a crater floor or a forward depot.
That gap is the Van's job. A clean loop looks like this:
- Stage at the main base. Players who just emptied a container or finished a region gather here.
- Run to the forward depot on a cadence, not on demand. Every five minutes beats "when someone asks," because demand-driven shuttles spend half their life idling.
- Drop at the frontier, not at the dirt. A Van parked on a slope is a Van nobody can board.
- Return with the players who are full, not with an empty seat count.
- Repeat the same route so the crew learns where to wait.
The Van carries eight, so a 16-player lobby needs two runs or two Vans — still cheaper than sixteen players walking the same route twice. In a crew of two or three, skip it and read the solo vs co-op comparison; the roles collapse into a rotation.
Dispatch Rules That Prevent Collisions
- One machine, one named owner. Shared keys produce empty tanks and mystery damage.
- Announce the region before you enter it. The map's color code is only useful if two people are not turning the same blue hex green.
- Park outside the garage bay. The bay is a service point; a parked vehicle blocks the queue.
- Match the machine to the terrain. A Mega in a narrow rim approach is slower than a Push Sweeper, whatever the price says.
- Never idle with a full hopper. A full machine at a depot is inventory; a full machine in a crater is a stalled player.
- Rotate the dull job. The depot marshal decides whether the night shift works, and the packager guide makes it easier.
Scaling the Plan Down
Most sessions are not sixteen players, and the same roles compress cleanly.
| Crew size | Fleet | Split |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | One Push Sweeper | One sweeps, one builds and hauls; swap every 20 minutes |
| 4 | One Push, one Ride-on | Two sweepers, one heavy, one base and depot |
| 8 | Two cleaners, one Van | Four sweepers, one heavy, one shuttle, one depot, one base |
| 16 | Four to six machines | Six to eight sweepers, two heavies, two shuttles, scouts, base crew |
At two players, roles are a rotation; at sixteen, a schedule. The failure mode is the same: everyone leaves at once, nobody watches the launch, and the crew returns to a full depot and an empty wallet.
Can I drive a crewmate's vehicle?
Not confirmed. Every source describes vehicles and components as personal purchases. Garages store and recall them, which keeps a machine available when its owner leaves, but that is not lending it. Test it with a cheap Push Sweeper first.
Is the Crew Transport Van worth $2,000?
In a lobby of eight or more, usually yes — it is the only machine that moves people, and it seats eight. In a crew of two or three, no: the same money buys a Ride-on Sweeper with a 500 kg hopper, which contributes far more to income.
How many vehicles should a 16-player crew own?
Four to six is enough if they are assigned and rotated. Outfitting everyone would cost several thousand before garages, and most machines would sit idle.
Who gets the first vehicle?
The player working the farthest region, not the player who asks first. Travel time is the cost a vehicle removes, so the machine earns most where the walk is longest. If that player is also the crew's best driver, that is a bonus rather than a requirement.
Related Guides
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