Ships are the vehicles of Adalia, and allow Crews to work from them, store cargo and propellant products in them, launch to and land from asteroid orbit, and travel between asteroids.
Ships are constructed with the appropriate ship integration process at a Shipyard building. A source inventory containing the required input ship hull and integration module products must then be selected. The time to complete the ship integration process will vary depending on several different possible bonuses and penalties, including Crew composition, Habitat bonuses, and starvation penalties. Once ship integration is ready to be completed, a lot or Spaceport must be selected for the newly crafted ship to dock at. The Shuttle and Heavy Transport require a Spaceport to be docked at, while the Light Transport can also dock on any empty lot. If docking at a Spaceport, the Crew that created the ship will need to have docking permission there.
Ships are assets that have both an owning account and an administrating Crew. The owning account can set the administrating Crew, and the administrating Crew can actually fly the ship, as well as manage the ship’s permissions, allowing or forbidding other Crews to station as passengers or to load or unload cargo or propellant.
When they are first constructed, ships are owned by the account to which their constructing Crew was delegated, and they are administrated by that Crew. Ownership can be transferred by selling the ship for SWAY ingame, or by transferring or selling the ship outside of the game on secondary markets.
The ship’s administrating Crew, also known as its “flight Crew”, may pilot the ship. This means that they may station into the ship, and then launch the ship to orbit, land it back on the surface, or travel to other asteroids using it. No other Crew may do these things. The flight Crew may also use the ship as a base of operations if on the surface.
In addition to their flight Crew, ships may have other Crews stationed on them as passengers. These Crews may not fly the ship, but may use the ship as a base of operations, and can go along for the ride if the flight Crew is flying it somewhere. The flight Crew can eject passenger Crews if they no longer have permission to be aboard the ship.
Ships have two inventories, a general-purpose cargo hold and propellant tanks for Hydrogen Propellant. The latter can only store Hydrogen Propellant, and only Hydrogen Propellant in the propellant tanks can be used for flying the ship.
Ships may be used to travel between the surface of an asteroid, and orbit around that asteroid. Traveling to orbit is called launching, and returning to the surface is called landing.
A ship’s pilot may select between tug-launching/landing, which is slow but costs no propellant, and propulsive launching/landing, which is near-instant but requires enough Hydrogen Propellant to produce the delta-V to reach or return from orbit. Larger asteroids take longer to launch or land using a tug, and also have higher velocities of orbit around them, requiring more propellant to launch or land propulsively.
The fundamental capability of ships is traveling between different asteroids in Adalia. Travel between asteroids must begin in orbit around an origin asteroid, and requires selecting a destination asteroid and finding a viable transfer orbit between the two asteroids.
This is done by examining a porkchop plot and selecting a launch delay and trip duration, corresponding to a specific transfer orbit. Different points on the porkchop plot have different arrival times and delta-V requirements, which translate via the Rocket Equation into propellant requirements. There is often a tradeoff between propellant usage and speed of the trip.
Propellant, cargo, and ship mass, as well as the orbitals of the two asteroids, all play a role in determining the porkchop plot and the required delta-V for a trip, as do Crew bonuses and penalties.
Trips may not last longer that the flight Crew’s food supply.