About Ashway Shuttle

What you actually do

You start with one province, one port and enough credits for a ship. Planets produce things and want things, and the gap between the two is your income. Find the gaps, fly them before anyone else does, and reinvest the proceeds into ports that make the next gap cheaper to reach.

The catch, and it is the point

A port costs more than a new player has. That is not a difficulty setting — it is what stops this being a solitaire game. You will land at somebody else's port and pay their fee, and they will land at yours and pay yours. Both rates were chosen by a person. Alliances, undercutting and grudges all start there, and none of it is scripted.

Starting costs nothing

One click puts you in your own province with a capital port and enough credits to get trading. No email, no password, no download. Claim the account later, once there is something worth keeping.

Play now

Nobody buys their way to the top

Wallet size is private and never ranked, no leaderboard is all-time, and granted or purchased credits are excluded from ranked income entirely. Money buys you options. Standing has to be earned in traffic.

Nothing you build is safe

Structures cost upkeep. Stop paying and they degrade, stop accepting traffic, and are eventually demolished — with a week's grace so anyone depending on them can react. A rival can settle your arrears and take a failing port off you. Empires that stop being run stop existing, which is what keeps the map worth looking at.

Cargo and industry

Cargo comes in tiers. Raw materials feed refineries, refined goods feed manufacturing, and a developed planet starts demanding its own inputs — so developing a place manufactures a route to it.

Raw

• Ore
• Ice
• Helium-3
• Silicates
• Biomass
• Rare earths

Refined

• Metals from Ore
• Water from Ice
• Fuel from Helium-3, Ice
• Glass from Silicates
• Polymers from Biomass
• Fertilizer from Biomass, Water
• Alloys from Metals, Rare earths
• Food from Biomass, Fertilizer

Manufactured

• Machinery from Alloys, Polymers
• Electronics from Rare earths, Glass, Polymers
• Medicine from Polymers, Water
• Ship parts from Alloys, Machinery, Electronics
• Luxuries from Electronics, Glass

Special

• Passengers
• Colonists from Food, Water
• Mail and data
• Hazardous waste

The formulas are public

Port market share, wormhole speed-up and delivery revenue are all published, because a game about competing on price is unplayable if the price rule is a secret.

A port's share of a planet's traffic rises with its size (exponent 1.2) and falls with its fee (exponent 1.5). The fee exponent is the larger of the two, deliberately: undercutting beats out-building.

portCost = 13000 × tier × expansion(distance)