Cleaning vehicles: the point where hand tools stop mattering

The hand-tool phase has an expiry date

Every brush upgrade follows the same curve: it raises your cleaning rate by a modest percentage, and the next one raises it by a little less in relative terms because you are already fast. Vehicles break that curve entirely. Instead of sweeping faster, they sweep without you.

The store copy lists cleaning vehicles as the next tier after depots, and describes putting them to use as your operation grows. That framing is accurate: a vehicle is not a tool upgrade, it is the point where your operation stops being a job you do and becomes a process you run.

Three classes, three different jobs

Observed in a recorded session, the vehicle tier contains at least three distinct things, and conflating them is the most common planning error.

• Push sweepers are driven manually but cover a wide deck. They are a rate multiplier on your own time, not a replacement for it.
• Autonomous sweepers roam a marked area and empty themselves into storage. They earn while you are elsewhere, which is a completely different kind of value.
• Conveyor and silo links move dust from a collection pad into storage with no driver at all. They are infrastructure, not equipment.

A push sweeper buys you speed. An autonomous sweeper buys you time. Conveyors buy you the ability to stop thinking about the first two.

Price anchors and what they imply

The autonomous unit being cheaper than the push unit is not a mistake in the data; it reflects what each one replaces. The push sweeper replaces your labour at a high rate. The autonomous unit replaces your presence at a low rate. If you are actively playing, the push unit is worth more. If you step away, the autonomous one is worth anything at all.

When to stop upgrading the brush

The recorded session answers this directly: the player stopped buying brush upgrades the moment vehicles came within reach, on the reasoning that the machine would make further width irrelevant. That is the correct instinct. Each brush step is a percentage; a vehicle is a category change.

The practical trigger is arithmetic. If a vehicle costs roughly what two or three more upgrade steps would, and those steps together raise your rate by less than the vehicle does, stop upgrading and save.

Sequencing a first fleet

1. Depot first. A vehicle with nowhere to unload is a slow walk with extra steps.
2. Push sweeper if you play continuously and want the fastest return on your own attention.
3. Autonomous sweeper if your sessions are broken up, or if you want earnings while handling depot logistics.
4. Conveyors last. They only pay for themselves once the volume flowing through a pad is steady.

What automation actually removes

A machine that sweeps without you removes one thing and one thing only: the requirement that your attention be present. It does not remove the dust, and it does not finish the contract any faster than you would if you were sitting there.

That distinction decides which unit to buy first. If you play in long unbroken sessions, your attention is not the scarce resource; your cleaning rate is, and a manual push unit is the better return. If you play in fragments — twenty minutes here, an hour there — the autonomous unit converts the time you are away into progress, which is value no manual tool can produce.

The mistake is buying automation while playing continuously. It is the most expensive way to buy something you already have.

The conveyor question

Conveyors and silos are the least glamorous purchase on the board and the one that changes the shape of a session most. A conveyor link means dust leaves the collection pad without a player carrying it, which is the only way the operation keeps running when nobody is hauling.

Their cost is per segment, which makes them a volume purchase: a short link from one pad to one silo is cheap, and a network across a working face is not. That pricing structure tells you the intended use — connect one high-output pad, do not wire the whole Moon.

They also only pay off once the flow through a pad is steady. Installing conveyors before you have enough throughput is spending on infrastructure for cargo you are not producing yet.

A realistic fleet order

What to stop buying once a fleet exists

Once any vehicle is working a lane, hand-tool upgrades change character. Width still helps the vehicle phase only if the vehicle inherits your brush; capacity only helps if you still haul by hand. Neither is worth buying on the assumption that it will matter later — buy for the phase you are in.

The recorded run's decision to stop brush upgrades before buying its first unit is the cleanest example of this in the whole manual. It is a refusal to spend on the phase that is ending.

Next: reading the surface, or the shift that reached its first sweeper.