How To Design a Spaceport
Follow these steps to design a tech level one spaceport. A spaceport is a stationary spacecraft that acts as a trade and repair hub for all cities in a solar system. A spaceport also provides the first line of defense for the area around a planet. The final result is the spaceport pictured at the left.

Move to a design studio and enter a vacant studio using the Labor (F10) window. You will be placed in a private instance of a design studio.

It is best to design a spacecraft from the bottom to the top. It is also helpful to have a general idea in mind of what the final shape will look like. After designing a few spacecraft, you will get a feel for the sizes of rooms and the equipment needed.

Open the Spacecraft Design (F6) window. The lower portion of the window shows an analysis of the current design in progress. Review the design analysis as you make changes to see the affect of those changes.

A spaceport is distinguished from a spaceship by its maneuver acceleration. To make a spaceport, keep the maneuver acceleration low. The design analysis identifies the spacecraft structure in bold text at the top of the analysis. To explore your system, design a spaceship or a starship.

The design grid forms squares using horizontal and vertical lines. Turn on the diagonal grid lines using buttons on the Spacecraft Design window.

Each room is filled by selecting a room type and click-dragging in the scene like a paint program. The cells formed by the design grid are filled as you drag. All the cells of a room must join with flat sides; there cannot be separate pieces or pieces joined by only a corner point, like an hour glass.

There are heavy lines in the grid to help guide your work. They don't affect anything; you can draw your design anywhere in the design space.

Fill the rooms of deck one to match the following picture. The rooms used on deck one are:
Lounge
Engine Room

To fill the second Lounge, the room tag number must be changed. This distinguishes between multiple rooms of the same type on the same deck.



Add crew stations, game tables and a turret. Use left and right arrow keys while placing the game tables to rotate them.
Engineer Station
Game Table
Power Relay Station
 Turret



Add life support units, power plant units and gravity drive units.
Gravity Drive Unit
Life Support Unit
Power Plant Unit



Move the design grid up one deck and draw the rooms of the second deck.

Fill the rooms of deck two to match the following picture.

As with the first deck, room tag numbers must be changed to add more than one of each kind of room, i.e. the staterooms, cargo holds, fuel cells and officer cabins.

Two halls are used to encircle the open-to-below area in the center. This must be done because holes in rooms are not supported. The unwanted walls are removed in a later step to result in a continuous hallway around the open-to-below center. Skip ahead to the close-up view of the center section to see how this is done.

Gravity wells are used like elevators down through the ceiling of the lounges on the deck below.

The rooms used on deck two are:
Barracks
Crew Cabin
Fuel Cell
Galley
Gravity Well
Hall
Hold
Officer Cabin
Open to Deck Below
Stateroom
 


Add doors between rooms and hull doors to allow access to the outside. It is good practice to use crew doors on cargo holds to restrict access to the hold; a person in the hold can access all of the cargo on the ship.
Crew Door
Crew Hatch
Hatch
Hull Door
 Large Hull Door
 


Add wall openings to remove the walls between the galley and the halls and the walls between hall 1 and hall 2. Add railings to each of the walls of the open to below area; the entire wall from end to end becomes a railing instead of a solid wall. Add single and double bunks to the living quarters. Use left and right arrow keys while placing bunks to rotate them.
Crew Door
Crew Hatch
Door
Double Bunk
 Hatch
 Large Hull Door
Railing
Single Bunk
 Wall Opening



Move the design grid up one level and fill in the rooms on deck three. Like the halls on deck two, the bridge must be split into two rooms to encircle the open-to-below area at the center.
Bridge
Open to Deck Below



Add crew stations, railings, wall openings and hatches. Add a captain's chair. The captain's chair is essential for a ship to be commanded by an NPC.
Captain's Chair
Crew Hatch
Hatch
Helm
Navigator Station
 Wall Opening



Finally, move the design grid up one more level and place a turret above the center hatch.
Turret



The final design analysis is shown in the picture at the right.

Press F6 to hide the Spacecraft Design window. This causes the design to be drawn as a solid spacecraft. Walk through all the rooms of the design to make sure you didn't forget any doors. Notice how the stack of hatches up the center becomes a single long ladder for accessing the top turret.

Save the design.

Burn the design onto a blank disk. You may need to purchase a blank disk from a design studio or a retail store.

Take the design disk to a spacecraft factory. You can pay a spacecraft factory to manufacture your design instantly. If you are in the chain of command of the city, you can configure the factory to manufacture the design using commodities from the city inventory, like other manufacturing processes.