starting to feel like I'm getting somewhere. Since this was my first *real* ship that I didn't buy with real money (ARX), rather, earned credits, and engineered / upgraded myself. And it's also the first combat ship that feels like I'm actually starting to get the hang of combat somewhat - I decided to dress it up a bit with a new paint job and other goodies.

Coming from No Man's Sky and EVE Online, I've discovered Elite Dangerous seems to be in the perfect sweet spot for me in between the freedom of NMS and the Harshness of EVE. I even decided to finally pull the trigger on a VKB Gladiator NXT EVO HOSAS setup.

I guess you could say - I'm hooked!

Hope you like it!

Not the best stats for Xeno Arena but makes up for it with STYLE

Two versions. One with 2 horns and one with a Unicorn horn

They're friendly tho! Whatever they are

But I got on Weaver's and so yay me?

Two versions. The dead one was killed by a predator just as I was snapping its picture 😛

Also a good stasis device farm system if you're into that

~45 days

~588 missions across 4 saves

Final stages done in less than 15 minutes 🙃

Screenshot from ‎Monday, ‎June ‎22, ‎2026, ‏‎10:13:47 PM ET for context.

TL;DR: 

Using the latest scoreboard numbers, the visible faction score appears to be: 

Team Score = 3 × that team's Purge + 2 × total Restore from all teams 

That formula matches the displayed scores almost exactly, within 1–3 points. 

Sabotage does not appear to be affecting the public score. 

Weavers are leading Royals almost entirely because of Purge:

569,794 - 526,915 = 42,879 Purge
42,879 × 3 = 128,637 points 

Actual Weaver lead: 128,639 points 

Traveler Fragments probably are not live player counts or task totals. They look more like cumulative assigned participants/fragments. 
Weavers only have 191 more fragments than Royals, but they would need roughly 6,950 more fragments for "more players" alone to explain the lead. 

So the current best read is: Weavers are winning because they are doing more Purge, not because the team is massively larger.

I have been tracking the Swarm expedition team scores and wanted to lay out the math in one place, because there has been a lot of speculation about whether Weavers are ahead because of player count, sabotage, hidden baseline score, or something else.

This is not meant as a victory lap or a complaint post. It is a fact-finding exercise based on the numbers visible in the scoreboard. If anyone has newer screenshots, especially with all three teams visible, this should be pretty easy to retest.

The short version: the visible faction score appears to be almost perfectly explained by Purge plus global Restore. Sabotage does not appear to be reflected in the public team score, and the Weaver lead over Royals is basically explained by the Purge gap alone.

Source notes

Hello Games' Swarm update page says the expedition assigns players into one of three Traveller teams: Royal, Sage, and Weaver. It also says all teams must work together to unlock the final battle, that progress is represented by construction of the Prismatic Core, and that construction is driven by Purge, Restoration, and Sabotage missions.

The same official page says the expedition runs for approximately eight weeks. That supports the idea that Hello Games has a planned event window, but the visible team scores themselves do not require a passive baseline to explain them.

SteamDB and SteamCharts are useful context for Steam player counts, but they only show Steam. They do not include PlayStation, Xbox, Game Pass, Mac, Nintendo Switch, or Switch 2 players.

Data snapshot being tested

These are the values from the latest stored screenshot baseline:

Metric	Value	Metric	Value
Construction progress	53%
Weavers score	4,579,949	Traveler Fragments	85,585
Royals score	4,451,310	Traveler Fragments	85,394
Sages score	4,411,155	Traveler Fragments	84,473
Score lead vs Royals	128,639	Fragment lead vs Royals	191

Team	Purge	Restore	Sabotage
Weavers	569,794	517,944	469,818
Royals	526,915	463,706	440,825
Sages	513,530	453,632	423,784

The scoring rule players are told

The activity scoring, as understood from the in-game descriptions, appears to be:

• Purge: +3 for your team
• Restore: +2 for each team
• Sabotage: -2 against the other opposing teams

If that full rule were being applied directly to the public scoreboard, a team score would look something like this:

Team Score = (3 x that team's Purge) + (2 x all teams' Restore) - (2 x sabotage totals from the other two teams)

But when you plug the visible numbers into that full formula, it does not match the public team scores. In fact, subtracting opposing Sabotage pulls the predicted scores way too low.

Team	Full +3/+2/-2 formula	Actual score	Difference
Weavers	2,850,728	4,579,949	+1,729,221
Royals	2,664,105	4,451,310	+1,787,205
Sages	2,589,868	4,411,155	+1,821,287

The formula that actually matches the visible scores

If we remove Sabotage from the public-score calculation and test only Purge plus global Restore, the numbers suddenly line up almost exactly:

Visible Team Score = (3 x that team's Purge) + (2 x all teams' Restore)

Weavers example

3 x 569,794 = 1,709,382

Global Restore = 517,944 + 463,706 + 453,632 = 1,435,282

2 x Global Restore = 2,870,564

Predicted Weaver score = 1,709,382 + 2,870,564 = 4,579,946

Actual Weaver score = 4,579,949

Difference = +3

All three teams

Team	Predicted score	Actual score	Difference
Weavers	4,579,946	4,579,949	+3
Royals	4,451,309	4,451,310	+1
Sages	4,411,154	4,411,155	+1

Those differences are tiny. They look more like refresh lag or timing mismatch than a missing scoring category.

Why Weavers are ahead

Restore benefits every team equally in this model, so Restore cannot explain the gap between teams. The gap is almost entirely Purge.

Weaver Purge: 569,794

Royal Purge: 526,915

Difference: 42,879 Purge

Score value: 42,879 x 3 = 128,637

Actual Weaver lead over Royals: 128,639

Difference: 2 points

That is the strongest piece of evidence in the whole thing. The Weaver lead over Royals is basically the Purge gap multiplied by 3.

Are Traveler Fragments player counts or task contributions?

My read is that Traveler Fragments are more likely cumulative assigned participants/accounts/fragments per team, not current live players and not the same thing as Purge/Restore/Sabotage contribution totals.

Current fragment totals:

Team	Traveler Fragments
Weavers	85,585
Royals	85,394
Sages	84,473
Total	255,452

Why I do not think these are current live player counts: public Steam data around this check showed live Steam player counts in the thousands, not tens of thousands per team. SteamCharts also showed a last-30-days average around 13,971 Steam players and a peak of 28,162. That is just Steam, so it does not capture the whole NMS population, but 85,000 per team is still too high to read as current concurrent players.

Why they might be cumulative assigned participation: Hello Games says players in the expedition are assigned into one of three Traveller teams, and the three Fragment totals are very evenly distributed. That makes them look like assigned expedition participation counts, or something close to that.

The player-count blame test

If Weavers were only winning because they had more people, the Fragment lead should be large enough to explain the Purge lead. It is not.

Weaver Fragment total: 85,585

Royal Fragment total: 85,394

Actual Weaver Fragment lead: 191

Royal Purge per Fragment = 526,915 / 85,394 = about 6.17

Purge gap = 42,879

Fragments needed to explain that gap at Royal activity rate = 42,879 / 6.17 = about 6,950

Weavers would need about 92,344 Fragments compared with Royals at 85,394.

They actually have 85,585.

Needed lead: about 6,950 Fragments.

Actual lead: 191 Fragments.

So the raw player-count explanation does not hold up. The lead is much more consistent with Weavers doing more Purge per Fragment.

What about the 53 percent Prismatic Core progress?

A hidden baseline or server-side safety mechanism may still exist for the overall event progress. Hello Games probably wants the expedition to resolve inside the planned event window. But the faction scores themselves do not require a passive baseline to explain them.

There is also a simple hidden-target theory that fits the 53 percent construction progress:

Total faction score = 4,579,949 + 4,451,310 + 4,411,155 = 13,442,414

If the hidden construction target is about 25,000,000:

13,442,414 / 25,000,000 = 53.77 percent

Displayed construction progress: 53 percent

That lines up very well if the game floors the displayed percentage instead of rounding it.

Current best model

• Traveler Fragments = likely cumulative assigned participants/accounts/fragments per team.
• Purge = the main competitive score driver.
• Restore = a global boost shared by all teams equally.
• Sabotage = tracked statistic, rivalry flavor, or used elsewhere, but not reflected in the visible public team score from this data.
• Visible faction score = 3 x team Purge + 2 x global Restore.
• Prismatic Core construction percent = likely total faction score divided by a hidden or fixed global target, possibly around 25 million.

Caveats and how to retest

• This is based on a screenshot baseline, so tiny differences of 1 to 3 points are likely due to refresh timing.
• The public score may update at a different interval than the individual category totals.
• Sabotage may still matter somewhere else, such as hidden progress, internal balancing, activity flavor, or future rewards. It just does not appear to be included in the visible team score shown here.
• The easiest way to retest is to take a newer screenshot with all three teams visible, add up global Restore, multiply each team Purge by 3, and compare against the displayed team scores.
• If the formula keeps matching within a few points, that is strong evidence. If it starts drifting significantly, then the scoring model changed or another hidden component kicked in.

Bottom line

Based on the visible numbers, Weavers are not ahead because they have a massive population advantage. Their Fragment lead over Royals is only 191, when they would need something like 6,950 extra Fragments for player count alone to explain the Purge gap.

They are also not ahead because of Restore, because Restore helps everybody equally in the public score model.

The simplest explanation is that Weavers have more Purge activity, and the public score is mostly just team Purge times 3 plus global Restore times 2.

Sources

Hello Games official Swarm Update page: https://www.nomanssky.com/swarm-update/
Official expedition description, teams, Prismatic Core construction, mission categories, platform availability, and approximate eight-week event duration.

Hello Games Swarm 6.43 patch notes: https://www.nomanssky.com/2026/06/the-swarm-6-43/
Useful confirmation that Swarm expedition milestones and Prismatic Core interaction had active patching and online/offline behavior considerations.

SteamDB No Man's Sky charts: https://steamdb.info/app/275850/charts/
Current Steam live player-count context. Steam only.

SteamCharts No Man's Sky page: https://steamcharts.com/app/275850
Steam current, 24-hour peak, and last-30-days average player-count context. Steam only.

Appendix: compact math summary

Global Restore = 517,944 + 463,706 + 453,632 = 1,435,282

2 x Global Restore = 2,870,564

Weavers = (3 x 569,794) + 2,870,564 = 4,579,946 vs actual 4,579,949

Royals = (3 x 526,915) + 2,870,564 = 4,451,309 vs actual 4,451,310

Sages = (3 x 513,530) + 2,870,564 = 4,411,154 vs actual 4,411,155

Weaver Purge lead over Royals = 42,879

42,879 x 3 = 128,637 vs actual score lead 128,639

Weaver Fragment lead over Royals = 191

Needed Fragment lead if player count alone explained the Purge gap = about 6,950

Total score = 13,442,414

13,442,414 / 25,000,000 = 53.77 percent, matching displayed 53 percent if floored

Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk

EDIT CORRECTION:

Sabotage is actually -1 per opposing team as reported in game, not -2. However, the math ends up working the same and gives Weavers an even bigger lead if it were actually reflected in the team scores.

Just found this on my permadeath save. WOOHOO

Noticed I couldn't click on or engage the 'Restore' activity to start it today. Asked around the anomaly and everyone who replied said the same.