How important is the swarm to you

[MarkMark]

I am new so am not that experienced with the UDK, but as far as i can tell this swarm is only used for light calculations using lightmass.

I would like to ask:
- How often do you need to recalculate?
- How long does it take on the maps your working on?
- Do I need to slave some other home computers into the swarm

With Epic supplied maps I know it can take "some" time to perform this calculation depending on quality level of course, but they are rather complex maps from the visual quality that I see.

[Graylord]

All of those questions entirely depends on a lot of things.
You may only need to recalculate once, you may need to do it a 100 times if you are experimenting a lot with lighting.
It can take anything from 1 minute to a couple of hours.
You don't need to use the swarm function, but sometimes it helps.

It all depends on what you do. Nobody can tell you what that will be except yourself.