Shipyard

A ship is a set of parts on a grid. Choose a part from the tray, then click the ship to place it. Parts snap to the grid; hold Alt to change the snap step. Every key is listed in Controls.

Every part has a price in Coins or Rare Metals. When a design uses parts you do not own, the shipyard offers to buy the missing ones. Parts belong to the ship they were bought for: one you remove goes into that ship's storage, and switching ships does not carry it across.

The home screen counts a design's launch issues and the shipyard gives the reason for each. A design launches when all of these hold:

• It has a hull, and every part is attached to the ship.
• No two parts overlap.
• It floats: the hull's sealed volume must lift the ship's whole weight. Add hull or remove weight.
• It has no more than 4,096 parts.
• It fits within 1,280 × 320 × 320 m.
• Each aircraft has a runway, catapult or flight deck long enough for it, on the same deck level, and there are no more than 64 aircraft.

Launching is not the same as working. A ship moves only with an engine and a propeller in the water, and steers only with a rudder. Use Test ship in the shipyard to try a design at sea: it pays nothing and costs nothing.

The Ship stats panel adds up the design. Displacement is the ship's mass. Buoyancy is the most mass the hull can hold up, so the gap between the two is your margin, and the same margin is the health bar in battle (see Health and sinking). Est. draft is how deep the ship sits. Power is the installed engine power.

The Shop sells complete ships and bare hull templates. A ship costs the sum of its parts and arrives with all of them, so you can refit it in the shipyard straight away. Ships lists them by price.