Moon Sweepers public game safety: griefing and permissions

Can strangers wreck your base in a public world?

Yes. Once a world is public, anyone who joins can place and remove buildings on your Moon, attach splitters and mergers to belts you built, and spend from the crew’s shared balance. Patch 1.0.5 added a confirmation warning before a crew goes public precisely because none of those actions is tied to a role.

The 1.0.5 patch notes word the risk plainly: the prompt “explains what other players can do to your Moon and how to kick or ban them” (ESC menu, under Your Crew). Until someone abuses it, a public session looks identical to a private one, which is why the damage usually arrives before the warning feels real.

Which setting actually keeps strangers out?

Visibility is the access control the game documents. A world is either public, where players you have never met can join, or limited to invited players, where the crew is whoever you invited through Steam. You pick it when you host, and the game lets you switch a running crew to public later.

Since 1.0.5, starting a public game or switching an existing crew to public asks you to confirm first. If you have already been running a crew with friends and someone toggles it public, expect that prompt; it is the last checkpoint before strangers can act on your base.

The invitation routes, and where to find people to invite, are in the co-op player guide. The 16-player cap and lobby behaviour are on the multiplayer page.

Are there build permissions for individual crewmates?

No, as of 1.0.5. The 1.0.3 host controls are kick, ban and unban, and no later patch has added a fourth. There is no setting that lets one crewmate build while another is read-only, and no way to lock a room, a machine or a belt to its builder.

The demand is visible on Steam’s General Discussions, where threads titled “add server controls for who can build and permisions”, “Admin assigned money pool access” and “Random players destroying work” ask for exactly that kind of control. Patch 1.0.5 added a warning about the risk, not the control itself.

That leaves two workable permission models:

• Invite-only, trusted crew. The roster is the permission list. Remove someone and the problem leaves with them.
• A disposable public world. Keep experiments and public sessions on a save slot you are willing to lose.

Anything finer than that, such as per-player build or spending rights, is a request rather than a feature.

How do you remove someone during a session?

Host moderation has existed since 1.0.3 and is unchanged in 1.0.5:

1. Press ESC to open the menu.
2. Open Your Crew, which lists everyone in the session.
3. Choose kick to remove the player, or ban to also stop them rejoining that save.

A kick removes the player from the session; only a ban also keeps them out of that save. The host can unban from the same menu, so a mistaken ban is reversible. Step-by-step context for the roster screen is in the host controls guide.

Moderation is reactive by design: it acts on a player who is already inside and already has access to the base. That is the gap the public warning is meant to close before you open the door.

What can you recover after damage?

More than in earlier patches. Since 1.0.5, removing a piece refunds its whole price instead of 75%, so a deleted production line can be rebuilt without losing money. The Building Tool’s R move mode also lifts a piece together with everything standing on it and places it again for free.

What does not come back on its own is anything that was inside a machine, plus the time spent rebuilding. The recovery path for those is the backup system: each save slot keeps up to 5 full backups, written about a minute into a session and then every 30 minutes, stored outside Steam Cloud. The save recovery guide covers the folder and how automatic repair uses it.

How should you set up a world you plan to open?

Treat the public session as a different job from your main base:

1. Start from a separate save slot. Progression lives in the host’s world, so a public copy protects the base you actually care about.
2. Copy the backup folder before you open. The five rotating copies are the only rollback you get, and they cycle.
3. Open with the crew already inside. Invite first, then switch to public if you want more hands, rather than opening an empty world and waiting.
4. Stay in the session. The world is the host’s save; the crew plays while the host is present.
5. Agree on spending before the first purchase. Upgrades bought by anyone apply to everyone, so a stranger’s purchase is not a private decision.

The building guide covers placement basics if the crew is rebuilding a damaged line, and the patch history confirms which refund rules your build uses.

What can’t you do in co-op?

Three limits are worth knowing before you plan around them:

• No per-player permissions. Kick, ban and unban are the whole toolkit.
• No dedicated server. Steam’s store listing for the game carries no dedicated-server category, so a session needs the host’s client running. The player-finding guide covers what that means for scheduling.
• No protection from shared spending. Money is crew-wide, so a bad actor can burn it on upgrades or vehicles before you notice.

Patch 1.0.5 softened the worst outcomes rather than preventing them: a full refund makes wreckage cheap to undo, and the public warning makes the risk explicit up front. Neither replaces choosing the right people.

Game imagery © DragDrop Games.