If your Upgrade Matrix and vehicle upgrades are all bought and the Moon counter still reads well under 1%, your save is working as the game is currently built. Players across many launch-week reviews report the same thing: tool, economy and vehicle upgrades run out long before the Moon-wide percentage reaches 1%. One solo player reported owning every economy and vehicle upgrade plus more than ten J.O.O.N.A.S units at about 0.6% cleaned.
The important limitation is that there is nothing further to level up. Players report no upgrades for conveyors, Pressure Chambers or Stone Presses, and say J.O.O.N.A.S cannot be upgraded the way vehicles can. From this point, progress comes from adding more cleaners and processing, not from higher upgrade levels. The developers listed progression balancing as continuing work in their October 24 message, but no new upgrade tier is confirmed on patch 1.0.3.
What Players Report at the Cap
These are individual community reports from the first days after launch. They agree on the overall pattern, even though the exact percentage differs from save to save.
| Hours on record | What the player reported |
|---|---|
| 19.2 | All economy and vehicle upgrades unlocked, more than ten J.O.O.N.A.S units bought, about 0.6% of the Moon cleaned, playing solo |
| 18.9 | Possible to fully max out after clearing less than 1% |
| 14.6 | Best broom and a vehicle owned well before 0.1% completion |
| 10.1 | Progression stops before 1%, with no way to upgrade machines or conveyors |
| 8.0 | A hard plateau where no more upgrades can be acquired, with not even 1% complete |
A recurring complaint in the same reviews is that the late game turns into waiting, because the strongest automated sweepers do not have their own upgrade path. Another player argued the opposite point of view: each additional J.O.O.N.A.S raises income, so purchases speed up over time. Both views describe the same system, just with different expectations.
Why One Percent Is So Far Away
The scale of the Moon is the reason the cap arrives so early. The Moon Map counts the surface in sectors, and players and guides report well over 160,000 of them. One Moon Map captured during an active run showed 0.09% cleaned even after a large area around the starting station had been finished.
Even after hours of play the Moon-wide figure stays below one percent.
That is why local progress and Moon-wide progress feel so different. A region can show 100% and award its bonus while the overall percentage barely moves. It also explains the achievement data: You Missed a Spot, the achievement for cleaning 1% of the Moon, had been unlocked by only about 0.3% of players when the achievement list was checked during launch week.
So reaching the upgrade cap before 1% does not mean you played inefficiently. It means the upgrade ladder is short and the job is enormous.
Confirm You Have Actually Hit the Cap
Before changing strategy, make sure nothing is left to buy. It is easy to miss an entry in a category you rarely open.
- Open every Upgrade Matrix category. The matrix is split into cleaning, suit, logistics and economy. Check each one for an entry that still shows a price.
- Check economy entries one level at a time. Market Contracts, Region Bounty and Supplier Network have several levels, and later levels cost more. One co-op recording also showed a separate Lunar Exchange entry at $2,500 for an extra 10% launch payout.
- Open the Garage for each vehicle you own. Vehicle upgrades such as speed and storage are bought at the Garage, not in the Upgrade Matrix.
- In co-op, check the host's matrix. On patch 1.0.3 the whole crew uses the host's Upgrade Matrix, so the cap you see as a guest is the host's progress.
If every entry is bought, you are at the current ceiling. The rest of this page is about turning that position into Moon-wide progress.
After Maxing: Grow by Count, Not by Level
Once levels are gone, the only way to raise your cleaning rate is to own more working machines and make each kilogram worth more. Spend in this order of reliability.
Add J.O.O.N.A.S units with a Capsule Catcher
J.O.O.N.A.S costs $20,000 and cleans the nearest remaining dirty hexes, one at a time, instead of staying inside a fixed dock radius. It fires collected capsules to the nearest Capsule Catcher ($1,500). Without a catcher, it carries a full container home and waits, which breaks the unattended cycle.
Because J.O.O.N.A.S has no upgrade path, extra units are the late-game equivalent of an upgrade. Before buying the next one, confirm the previous unit is actually cleaning and that its capsules reach the catcher and continue down a conveyor.
One caution applies on patch 1.0.3: the developers still list J.O.O.N.A.S units stopping when players move away as an open issue. Plan for units near where you play to be the ones doing the most work until that is fixed.
Fill fresh ground with Robot Vacuums
Robot Vacuums are cheaper and fixed in place. The Mk I ($250) covers 19 hexes around its dock and the Mk II ($500) covers 37. They finish their area and then stop, so they are best placed on large untouched patches near your conveyor network. Overlapping docks waste coverage.
Raise the value of every kilogram
Processing does not clean more ground, but it raises income, which funds more cleaners:
- Moon Sand from a Pressure Chamber ($500, 10 kW) sells for three times the value of raw dust.
- Moonstone from a Stone Press ($1,000, 18 kW) sells for seven times the value of raw dust and needs both dust and sand.
Machine counts, ratios and power layouts are a separate planning job. The point here is that once upgrades are exhausted, processing is one of the few remaining multipliers on your income.
Keep vehicles on the biggest open areas
A fully upgraded vehicle is still your fastest personal cleaner. The Mega Vacuum Rover has a 4 m intake, and its Suction Control widens the strip at the cost of speed. Use high suction on dense, open, untouched ground and lower suction when crossing areas that are already clean. Leave small leftovers inside finished regions to Robot Vacuums.
Goals That Still Move After the Cap
The upgrade cap ends one kind of progress, but several long-term goals keep counting. They give the post-cap phase concrete targets:
- Spending achievements: spend $100,000 and then $1,000,000 on tools, vehicles or structures. More J.O.O.N.A.S units and processing lines count toward these.
- Earning achievements: earn $100,000 and $1,000,000 in total.
- Section achievements: help clean 1,000 and 10,000 sections. These count completed sections, not the Moon-wide percentage.
- Deposit achievements: 1,000 and 10,000 Depot deposits.
- Moon completion: 1%, 10%, 50% and 100% of the Moon.
- Exploration: flags and survey sites have their own counters on the Moon Map, and flags paid $100 in early runs.
Exploring with a maxed vehicle is also one of the more enjoyable parts of this stage, according to players who otherwise criticised the late game.
What Is Not Coming From Upgrades Yet
It helps to be clear about what the current version does not offer, so you do not search for it:
- No upgrade levels for conveyors, Pressure Chambers or Stone Presses have been reported.
- No J.O.O.N.A.S upgrade path has been reported.
- No larger vehicle beyond the Mega Vacuum Rover is listed in the Garage shop.
The developers' October 24 message named progression balancing, automation reliability and the J.O.O.N.A.S distance issue as ongoing work, and said another update was planned within days. A preview branch for version 1.0.4 already appears in the game's Steam branch list, but its contents are not documented in the research for this page. Treat any new upgrade tier as unconfirmed until it appears in official patch notes.
A Simple Post-Cap Routine
When every upgrade is bought, a repeatable loop keeps your money turning into cleaned sectors:
- Check income and the Moon Map at the start of a session and note the overall percentage.
- Fix the first broken link in your line before buying anything: a stalled belt, an idle machine, a catcher whose output is blocked.
- Buy the next cleaner your budget allows, usually a J.O.O.N.A.S plus catcher once income supports it, otherwise Robot Vacuums on fresh ground.
- Add processing only when raw dust is arriving faster than it is being sold.
- Drive the vehicle through large untouched areas, collecting nearby flags or survey sites.
- Recheck the percentage at the end of the session so you can see whether the last purchase actually helped.
The cap is a real limitation of the current version, not a mistake you made. Treat money as the new upgrade currency: every purchase that adds a working cleaner raises the rate at which that small percentage climbs.