It has been a while since we wrote up what changed in the game in one place. Our last “what’s new” style post was What is new in MOON Uni 2? (August 2025). Storyline posts kept coming — including Escaping the Dying universe in February 2026 — but this dev log is about the client and quality-of-life work that landed in May.
TL;DR: Almost everything shipped in a concentrated May 8–22 sprint — three production releases, roughly forty merged pull requests. The two themes that matter most for daily play: MOON works much better on your phone, and you are harder to surprise when someone attacks you.
Play MOON on your phone
If you have not opened moon.hive.pizza on a phone lately, try again.
Bottom navigation
On narrow screens (phones and small tablets), you get a fixed bottom bar: Overview · Buildings · Fleet · Galaxy · Menu. Desktop and wide layouts still use the classic top menu — the bottom nav only appears when the viewport is small enough that reaching the top menu was painful.
Layout pass across core pages
May was a full mobile layout sprint, not a single page tweak:
- Overview — shortcuts and command timers readable; buttons have visible backgrounds on dark mobile chrome.
- Fleet — header no longer clips under the menu; table works as stacked cards on small screens.
- Galaxy — rows stack as cards; navigation is swipe-friendly; the latest update compacts the system view so a full solar system fits on one screen without endless scrolling.
- Messages — improved layout on mobile.
- Popup-style pages (simulator, records, etc.) — same bottom nav as the main shell so you are not stranded without navigation.
We also added an automated check in CI so new pages do not silently ship without the mobile bottom nav.
Touch-friendly fleet
Sending ships on a touchscreen is less fiddly:
- Quantity steppers for ship counts.
- Clearer ship selection controls when filling a fleet slot.
Install MOON like an app (PWA)
MOON can run as a Progressive Web App — “Add to Home Screen” on iOS, install prompt on Android Chrome, plus guidance in Settings.
What you get
- An install banner on mobile (dismissible for 30 days) with platform-specific hints — e.g. iOS Share → Add to Home Screen.
- Settings section for install help if you dismissed the banner.
- iOS session persistence — force-quitting and reopening from the home screen should not log you out as often as before; sessions can restore from the database when the browser drops the PHP session file.
Updates actually apply
If you installed the app during testing, you may have seen stale CSS after we deployed fixes. That is addressed with service worker cache busting — after a deploy, a refresh should pick up new styles reliably.
Optional: attack alerts (web push)
When the server operator enables push (VAPID keys in config), you can opt in under Settings for notifications when hostile fleets are inbound. The plumbing shipped in May; if you do not see the toggle on production yet, we may still be flipping it on for MOON — ask in Discord.
Combat and reports — less surprise, clearer feedback
Incoming attacks — harder to miss
Hostile fleets show up clearly on Overview (Activities list with countdown and mission), so you are not guessing whether you are safe while building or reading mail.
We also built a global red “You are under attack!” banner on every in-game page (#142); that UI was reverted briefly while we polish it — re-landing is tracked in #99. Until then, watch Activities and enable attack / fleet alerts in Settings.
Combat reports
- Unprofitable raids are highlighted — when stolen resources are worth less than the fuel spent on the attack, the report makes that obvious (tooltip explains why).
- Hall of Fame — players in destruction battles appear on the correct side.
- Statistics — duplicate rows fixed.
- ACS — allied fleets in a joint attack no longer show as enemies on Overview.
Fleet and overview quality
- Continue on Fleet appears automatically when a fleet slot frees up — no more refreshing the page to see it.
- Building / research / shipyard timers on Overview: no negative countdowns, “Ready” not shown too early, refresh loop fixed after timers finish.
- Messages shortcut on Overview only when you have unread mail.
Smaller polish
- Login page title uses the game name only (cleaner browser tab).
- Logout page drops the full game menu — just confirmation and redirect.
- Stability fix for a rare attack mission crash when speed config was missing.
Behind the scenes
- Three releases to production between May 16 and May 22 — fast iteration after mobile feedback.
- HiveNova remains open source: github.com/Hive-Pizza-Team/HiveNova. Bug reports and ideas welcome via GitHub Issues.
- Storyline / ops tooling (solar system destruction preview, automatic DB backup before destructive admin actions, restore on the backup page) supports MOON Universe 2 events — curated resets and relocations. Watch Discord for event timing; this post is about what players feel in the UI.
What we are thinking about next
Mobile and PWA were the big push this month. Here is what we are looking at next — nothing is locked to a date, but this is where your feedback helps most.
Universe choice and multi-universe play
MOON is not one ruleset forever — we want distinct universes to feel like different games on the same engine:
- Richer universe descriptions — speed, resets, PvP tone, rewards — before you spawn.
- Deposits and rewards per universe — play in any universe with separate reward pools scoped to that world.
- Weekly-reset / seasonal universe (experimental) — shorter seasons, possibly faster build speeds. The admin galaxy reset tooling shipped in May; the missing piece is a clear player-facing season ruleset.
Bigger bets (early discussion)
- PvE elements — NPC or non-player objectives; ideation only.
- Graphics overhaul
Tell us what you would play first — reply here, or in Discord, or open a GitHub issue.
Thank you
Thanks to everyone who tested on phones, reported layout bugs, and reviewed pull requests during the May sprint. See you in the galaxy.
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