Ship depots are places where you can buy a ship. Ship depots are used for Servicing ships as well and you can sell ships you don't need any more at a ship depot.

This tutorial assumes that you already have planned a new ship route and that you already have built the appropriate docks.

A ship depot.

Finding a suitable location

Ship depots need to be placed on water tiles and ships need to be able to access them from both sides. A ship depot is two tiles long and ships enter and exit them at the narrow ends.

Because ships need to visit the ship depot regularly for servicing, it's useful to place them somewhere along the route ships will take. Because you can't know the exact route ships take, just place the ship depot somewhere near the dock.

Building a ship depot

1. Open the Waterways construction toolbar by clicking the button.

The Waterways construction toolbar

2. Click on the Build ship depot button . A Ship Depot Orientation window will appear, allowing you to select the depot's direction. Remember, you can right click on any button if you ever want a description of what it does.

The Ship Depot Orientation window.

3. Select the preferred orientation from the Ship Depot Orientation window.

4. Two white squares will indicate the future location of the ship depot. Move the mouse around to indicate the location of your choice and then just click with the left mouse button to place the ship depot.

Selecting the location for the ship depot. Remember to keep both the entrance and exit of the depot accessible.

Our newly constructed ship depot near a dock.

And that's all there is to building a ship depot! Before we're going to buy a ship, we'll place some buoys to indicate the route our ship has to take.