Convoys
Nothing here flies alone. Satellites ride-share: one lifter and one cruise tug carry a whole batch to a destination system, and only on arrival do they scatter to their stations. Then the drumbeat starts: every time that system's launch window comes around again, a renewal convoy rides it with fresh satellites for the ones wearing out.
A fleet in the thousands does not mean thousands of launches. It means a much shorter list of well-packed convoys, and the solar system's own timetable, from the windows model, decides when each one can leave. Change the fleet size on the home page or the scale page and this whole board re-plans itself.
The convoy board
| Destination | Distance | Satellites | Deploy convoys | Next door | Cruise | Window rhythm | Due each window | Renewal ride |
|---|
Planets and their moons are one destination each, because a convoy that brakes into the Jupiter system can reach any of its moons from there. Everything else is batched by where it actually is rather than by what taxonomy calls it: Ceres tours with the main belt because that is where Ceres is, and Pluto keeps its own line because Charon rides with it. Comets and other steep divers are met inbound near perihelion rather than toured, and interstellar interceptors are not convoyed at all. "Due each window" is how many replacements come of age between one launch window and the next, from each environment's design life. Far-off destinations all settle to a yearly rhythm for the same reason: once a target is much slower than Earth, Earth simply laps it once a year, and the door opens on that lap.
How a convoy works
1 · Pack
A heavy lifter climbs the well with a cruise tug and a rack of satellites, folded like chairs. The rides page holds both machines.
2 · Cruise
One tug does the interplanetary work for the whole rack, then brakes the stack into a wide capture orbit at the destination, the same move you can play by hand in the gravity lab.
3 · Disperse
From the wide orbit, each satellite spends a few hundred metres per second of its own delta-v drifting down to its station: moons, ledges and pickets. The tug either returns for reuse or retires as a comms relay for the network.