Patch Notes
What changed in Swarm MMO, newest first.
September 4, 2026
- Fixed a bug where an attacking swarm's probes and flight line appeared to launch from behind the source planet, cross over it, and only then fly normally toward the target. The client now reads the server's own clock for this, and for production counts, countdowns and time-since labels; before, all of these compared a server timestamp against the device's own clock, which could run a few seconds off.
September 3, 2026
- Guest accounts can no longer found or join a clan; a verified email is required. Clans a guest led have been disbanded, and guests were removed from every clan they were a member of.
- The Focus button now opens a panel instead of jumping the camera directly. Quick focus at the top does what the button used to: centre on your largest holding. Below it, tabs list every planet, sun and black hole you own, and every probe movement you are part of: attacks, movement between your own planets, support sent to allies, and support or attacks arriving from someone else. Clicking a body or a movement centres the camera on it, a movement at its current position along the line.
- Fixed a bug where suns and black holes stopped being clickable once zoomed out far enough to become squares. Clicking one with a selection active cleared the selection instead of sending it there; they are now clickable at every zoom, the same as zoomed in.
- Giving a planet, sun or black hole to a clanmate is temporarily disabled. The Give control is gone from the planet, sun and black hole menus and from the selection toolbar.
- Assault and Salvage now apply when a swarm takes a neutral planet, not only when it takes one another player owns. The send dial already assumed this, so a swarm sent at its exact-capture mark could fall short against a neutral planet and bounce instead of taking it.
- The game now says so when it loses its connection. After two seconds without one, a notice at the bottom of the screen says whether the browser has no network or the game is reconnecting, that what is on screen is from before the drop, and that nothing you do is being sent. It clears the moment the connection is back. Nothing pauses while you are disconnected: your planets go on producing and swarms go on arriving. Pressing and holding a target with a selection live now shows which of your bodies would fire and how much would arrive, before you let go. The map controls gained zoom-in and zoom-out buttons; tap one for a step, hold it to keep zooming. The top bar now fades at whichever edge has more buttons than fit, and opens scrolled to the account end instead of the help end.
September 2, 2026
- A tab left in the background now drops the map view after 15 seconds and reloads it when you come back. The connection itself still goes after five minutes, as before, and nothing in the game pauses while a tab is in the background. Pages and the game are now sent pre-compressed, which makes the game's main file about 15 percent smaller on a first load.
August 27, 2026
- Restart now puts you on a fresh home system straight away, without leaving the game. It used to drop you on the start screen with a PLAY button, which read as being logged out. Everything you held is still released; username, colour, credits, tech and prestige are kept as before.
- Only guest accounts are fingerprinted, for the one guest per device limit. A verified account is not: nothing is recorded when it enters, and the fingerprint a guest held is dropped when it links an email or logs into an account. A verified account that loses its stored login is given a fresh guest on that device; logging in from the account panel with the same email discards that guest and restores the account.
- Logging in no longer goes quiet after a code is accepted. The entry screen now shows each step (connecting, browser check, entering the galaxy) and reports an error instead of leaving the form on screen. Returning to an account you already have no longer waits on the browser check, and a check or a server call that never answers now times out with a message rather than hanging. A code request is limited to 5 per account and 12 per network address every 15 minutes; it used to be 5 per address.
- Holding C while dragging onto a planet you or an ally already own now sends exactly the probes it still needs for its next level, instead of doing nothing. The send dial marks the same amount, labelled "levels up". It funds one level, priced against the garrison the planet will have when the swarm lands, and with Auto on the upgrade happens on arrival. A planet at max level, one that can already afford its next level, and a meteorite all open the dial as before.
August 26, 2026
- Collapsing a galaxy no longer pays 100 credits. The prestige level is now the whole reward, and it goes to every clan member holding a sun in the collapsed galaxy as well as to the player who owned the black hole. One level each, however many suns they held; a member who held nothing there gains nothing. Credits still come from meteorites, quests and invites.
- The Command Center's match list is now sortable and paged. Clicking the ID, Level or Probes header orders the list by that column, and clicking it again reverses it; the list opens on probes, highest first. It used to stop after the first 100 matches, which are now paged through instead.
- A saved Command Center preset can now run on a schedule, every 15 minutes to once a day. A scheduled run works like Apply: it needs the subscription, spends CPU per changed body, and is skipped when the pool cannot cover it. Presets that select on the map cannot be scheduled.
August 25, 2026
- The tech upgrades are now a tree with four branches. Economy runs Construction to Terraforming to Conversion, Offense runs Assault to Salvage, Defense runs Defense to Toughness, and Logistics runs Velocity to Navigation. The first step in a branch needs level 20 in the one above it, the second needs level 40. A requirement only decides when an upgrade unlocks: any upgrade you already hold a level in stays open, so nothing you have bought is affected.
- New tech upgrade: Terraforming. A planet inside a friendly sun's radius pays 0.5% per level less for its next level, so at level 100 a level-1 planet costs 50 probes instead of 100. Upgrade automation waits for the discounted price rather than the old one.
- New tech upgrade: Navigation. A swarm launched near a friendly sun loses 0.5% per level less at a galaxy border, so at level 100 a crossing costs half what it did. A galaxy still inside its spawn grace period is closed rather than expensive, and no level of Navigation opens it. Automations keep waiting for the undiscounted amount, the same way they keep paying the full conversion price.
- New tech upgrade: Salvage. When a swarm launched near a friendly sun takes a planet, 0.5% per level of the probes it spent breaking the garrison join the new one. Toughness for the attacker, except it fires on every capture rather than only when you are attacked. It never changes who wins, only what is left standing afterwards.
- New tech upgrade: Assault. Probes count for 1% more per level when the swarm launched from near a friendly sun, the mirror of Defense on the attacking side. Assault and Defense at the same level cancel exactly. The send dial reads your level and marks the lower requirement, so an attack never lands for more than the dial promised.
- A black hole can now be added to the map selection from its own menu, and a selection of black holes can be given to a clanmate. NoAuto now works on a selection of suns as well as planets, clearing their relays.
- Sun relays now take a threshold, like every other automation. A sun forwarding to another sun waits for the number of super-probes you pick, from 1 to 10,000. At 1 it forwards as soon as it has anything, which is what a sun relay always did, and relays that already exist keep that setting. Holding SPACE while dragging from a sun sets the lowest threshold; the dial's Auto is where a higher one is picked.
- The send dial now takes the same keys as a launch drag: 1 to 9 and 0 send that share of the garrison, C sends exactly enough to take the target, and Enter sends the amount the dial is set to.
August 24, 2026
- The universe now always keeps one galaxy with room left in it that can be attacked from outside. While every such galaxy is still shielded, a new one is created with no border at all: no shield, and no border toll at any age. Nobody spawns there, and taking its black hole makes another open galaxy appear elsewhere. New players now always spawn in a galaxy whose shield still holds, so a galaxy stops taking new players once its border opens.
- Fixed a restart leaving you stuck on the browser check. It is now solved again whenever it is needed, not only once per page load.
- A tab left in the background for five minutes now drops its connection and picks it up again when you come back, which takes a moment to reload the view. Nothing in the game pauses while it is disconnected.
- Zoomed out to the galaxy-disk view, each galaxy now shows its black hole's countdown in the middle of its disk: the grace period, the border toll, the wait for instability or the time left before it collapses.
August 21, 2026
- Black holes now move differently depending on their state: slower while still protected, a steady glow once garrisoned, faster arcs and the occasional spark once unstable, and a quiet collapse when one is consumed compared to a bright one when a player triggers it.
- Command Center automation sending at the nearest unclaimed body now skips one that swarms already in flight are enough to take, and moves on to the next one out instead of piling more probes onto it.
- The black hole menu now shows the exact time left, the next megaprobes it will eat and when, and what the coming day will cost to hold.
August 20, 2026
- You get a one-time warning when your black hole turns unstable.
- Black holes turn unstable 14 days after a galaxy is created, and start eating their own megaprobe garrison: 1 a day at first, doubling every day after. An ungarrisoned galaxy is destroyed at day 14; a defended one lasts about a month.
August 19, 2026
- You can now hand a planet or a sun to another player.
August 18, 2026
- Fixed sending swarms at suns.
- Fixed attack lines not being drawn.
- The intergalactic toll no longer tracks how much of a galaxy is claimed. It now falls with the galaxy's age: full for the first 3 days, then down 10 points a day until it reaches zero at day 13.
August 16, 2026
- How the intergalactic toll is measured changed: it now weighs the black hole, the suns and the planets separately, with the black hole worth about 82% of a galaxy.
- The Command Center now offers a 1-day rental plan alongside the monthly one.
- French localisation added.
August 14, 2026
- The share card is now a JPEG.
- Box-select improved.
- You keep your probes when a planet goes neutral, instead of losing them.
August 13, 2026
- Sending swarms no longer clears your current selection.
- New Tips panel, shown once per session unless turned off.
- The Command Center's CPU budget doubled: 6'000 pooled, refilling fully in 120 minutes.
- Attack automation can now be scripted through the Command Center.
- Command Center presets can now be saved.
August 12, 2026
- New "gyro halo" cosmetic.
- Probe upgrades no longer lose probes to rounding when converting up a tier.
August 11, 2026
- New pages comparing Swarm MMO to other space strategy games.
- Meteorites can no longer be upgraded.
- The language switcher is now a dropdown and defaults to your browser's language.
- Simplified Chinese, Turkish and Spanish localisations added.
- Collapsing a galaxy now pays 100 credits, on top of its usual reward.
August 10, 2026
- Fixed a bug where the client could hang on "Connecting..." with a stale login.
- Sun energy is now paid once per owner, not once per sun.
- New attack animation.
- German localisation added.
August 9, 2026
- Comets no longer generate probes.
- The intergalactic toll can no longer be avoided by routing around it.
- New sun and black hole visuals.
- A planet's level is now shown on the body itself.
- Full UI overhaul.
August 8, 2026
- The quest system and its descriptions were improved.
- Intergalactic travel loss raised: only 10% of a launched swarm survives crossing a galaxy border, down from 50%.
- New close-range "micromap" overlay.
August 7, 2026
- The game can now be installed as an app.
- Referral links added, with a credit reward for the referrer.
- Meteorites added: temporary planets that spawn around a galaxy and pay a credit to whoever holds them when they expire.
- The Command Center added: a paid subscription that lets you script automated commands.
August 6, 2026
- Galaxies moved much further apart: at least 4 galaxy diameters apart, about 8.5 hours to cross at best speed.
- Travelling between galaxies now costs 50% of the swarm at the border, on top of the normal launch cost.
- The collapse threshold is 1'000 megaprobes, down from 100'000.
- You must hold every sun in a galaxy, yours or a clan ally's, before you can collapse its black hole.
- Collapsing a black hole no longer pays a one-time energy prize. It now permanently raises the energy every sun you own produces, by 1 per collapse.
August 5, 2026
- Swarm MMO now has an itch.io store page.
- The wiki and leaderboard are now public web pages, not just an in-game panel.
August 3, 2026
- The help panel was rewritten.
- New players now spawn into a ring covering half of a galaxy's area; when it fills, a new galaxy opens.
August 2, 2026
- The game now guarantees at least one galaxy always exists to spawn into.
- Fixed a bug where new players could get stuck on "Connecting...".
July 21, 2026
- Fixed a bug where a new guest could fail to spawn into a new galaxy.
- You can zoom out further on the map, and the minimap was improved.
July 20, 2026
- Attack automation thresholds raised: you can now set them anywhere from 100 to 10'000 probes, up from 10 to 1'000.
- Converting probes into super-probes now costs 100 probes per super-probe, down from 1'000.
July 15, 2026
- New Upgrade panel for planets.
July 10, 2026
- Attack controls updated.
- Two new swarm animations: V formation and electric scatter.
- The leaderboard now ranks players and clans by lifetime energy collected, not by planets held.
- Account merging removed.
June 28, 2026
- Premium features reworked around credits: skins, tech resets and recolouring now cost credits instead of a one-time unlock.
- New players spawn further from the galaxy centre, and galaxies sit further apart.
- Winning a galaxy now means holding 100 suns.
- Neutral planets cost far more to take. Garrison now scales with distance from the core: 1 to 5 probes at the rim, up to 200 to 1'000 probes at the core.
- Black holes added at the centre of every galaxy. Attack one with sun-swarms, and automate the attack.
June 27, 2026
- Select multiple planets at once and command them together.
- Planets no longer have a probe capacity. A planet holds as many probes as you leave on it.
- You can now send swarms directly at a sun, and automate sun attacks per planet.
June 26, 2026
- Solar surge and solar discharge removed.
- Swarm speed no longer depends on how many probes are in it. Speed is now positional: 0.25x at a galaxy's core, up to 4x at the rim.