Four tabs (since 2026-10-13: Cargo ships with the container, vehicle and livestock carriers; Bulk & tankers with the ore and grain carriers and the tankers; Seafood with the fishing boats, crabbing boats and seafood carriers; Service with the recovery boats, tugs and icebreakers), each a section per ship line laid out in rows with the sections of a row side by side, each as wide as its models, cards widening (up to 175 px) to fill rows with fewer ships (up to 6 cards a row, beside the open activity log at the default window): container ships; ore and grain carriers; livestock carriers and tankers; vehicle carriers and recovery boats; icebreakers and, in a wider section to their right, tugs. A row too wide for the window stacks its sections. Cards are compact (prices of $1M and up shortened: "$15M"), one per ship model, showing its stats, price, and how many are owned ("Owned 2 / 10"). Each section title fades letter by letter through its models' map colors, smallest ship first, and each card's name is in its model's map color (dark colors brightened a little so they read on the cards). Each section sits on a faint tint of its ship line's color (the same colors as the Ships tab, Finances and the Prices menu). The Tugs section has "Buy all tugs (14)": it fills every free tug slot the money allows, each tug given a suggested name and based at the route port that needs one most.
Under its name each card shows the ship as it looks on the map (its hull in the model's map color, container ships, car carriers and livestock carriers fully loaded), bow to the right, in a 44 px strip. The biggest model on the map (the Mammoth) is 150 px long and the rest scale by the square root of their map length, so small ships stay a good size: a Scooter 20 is about 72 px (a quarter of a Mammoth's length on the map, half here), a Dominator about 120.
Each card shows owned / slots at the current level (and the max, while it can still grow). A full model shows "Next slot at level N"; a locked model shows "Unlocks at level N". A red dot sits on each Buy button that can be used right now (unlocked, a free slot, and affordable).
A model with a first-purchase price shows it on the card ("$150,000 for your first, then $1,250,000"). Buy → naming popup with a suggested random name (editable, must be unique; a Random button suggests another) → confirm. Disabled if the player can't afford it: hovering it then shows a small note straight away, "You can't afford this ship ($1,300 short)." Shows "Limit reached" at the ownership limit.
Maritime Empire
