🛰️ The mother ship in Rocket Crew: your station in orbit, its modules and its loads
Every player has a mother ship: a ring station in orbit, theirs from the first day, which travels the route with them. Its pilot is your commander. It opens with the ship button at the end of the route ribbon, or from its stop on the map.
Asleep until the Moon
Until your first trip to the Moon it sleeps: dark, still, with only a red beacon, and it cannot be entered. Your commander flies in that rocket and, once docked, wakes it up: from then on the ring turns, the lights come on and you can go in. Its icon says so too: still and dim, or turning.
Your rockets, docked
- On the first trip to each planet the take-off ends in orbit: the rocket climbs up the middle of the ring, docks in the hub and a capsule closes round it. Its flame stays lit: it is the engine of the ship.
- During the trip the ship goes with it, and on arrival it stays in orbit: the cabin comes down from it on a cable and then opens its parachute (the trip to the Moon).
- Each rocket stays as a capsule in one of its nine couplings. A repeat trip to a planet already reached goes without the ship.
The loads
Every cargo flight that reaches orbit, the daily challenge’s too, takes up one load: the prototype flies up to the ship and into its prototype dock. They are counted by the planet it took off from, and the Launch sheet says how many you have. While the ship sleeps, they wait for you in orbit. Later on they will go to improving it (cargo flights).
The ship mode
The ship has a screen of its own, like the hangar of your rocket but dark, so you can tell you are up there: its card (which planet it is over, the day, its name and its pilot), the Go in button and, at the bottom, the panel with Modules, Cargo and Hold (those two still to come). You choose its name: tap the pencil, up to 20 letters; left empty it is called “Mother ship” again.
The modules
| Module | Where it is | Now |
|---|---|---|
| 📦 Prototype dock | A capsule of the ring | Level 1: it takes in the loads |
| 🧭 Bridge | The hub in the middle | Level 1: your commander pilots from it |
| ⚗️ Refinery | A capsule of the ring | Closed: it will turn the loads into helium-3 |
| 🛏️ Crew quarters | A capsule of the ring | Closed |
| 🔧 Workshop | A capsule of the ring | Closed |
Tap a module to see its sheet: the ship stops turning and the camera goes to it. The next levels of the dock and the bridge, and the closed rooms, come later. The works on the ship need no worker: they run by themselves up there.
Inside
- Go in leaves you in the corridor of the ring, facing the great window with your planet. You walk with WASD or the arrows and look by dragging; on a phone, the left thumb walks, with a joystick, and the right one looks.
- Every door has its sign over it, with the name of the room and its level, or “Closed”.
- In the prototype dock there is a column for each planet of the route, with the crates of its loads.
- Facing the window, the corridor of the first spoke goes up to the hub. At the top is the bridge: a round room with a great window on your planet, the pilot’s seat and six screens: pilot, orbit, course, take-off, dock and fleet.
💡 Fly cargo flights even while your ship sleeps: every load counts, and they will be waiting for you when you reach the Moon (how to reach the Moon).