Depending on your desired ship, there are several different ways to obtain a ship and use it on your own:
Legitimate and Legal Way: Buy it
- You can not obtain Civilian ships through any in-game methods. They are automatically generated by their home Station (including player station(s))
- Small Ships are mass produced and are sold by Small Ship Dealers.
- These dealers are located at various Small (Civilian) Shipyards in the universe. There are 2 in Albion, 1 in DeVries, 2 in Omicron Lyrae, and (DLC: TO) 1 in Fields of Opportunity. (see below)
- Capital Ships are built on request and are ordered from Capital Ship Dealers.
- These dealers are located at various Capital Shipyards in the Universe. There are 2 in Albion, 1 in DeVries, 1 in Omicron Lyrae. and (DLC: TO) 1 in Fields of Opportunity. If you have advanced to a certain place in the Plot (AKA Capaign) another shipyard may be built in DeVries; it may build S/M & XL ships only depending upon how advanced it becomes
- Drones for the <player> are obtained from NPC Drone Dealer vendors.
- Drone Dealers provide a selection of player drones to buy/sell. Other drone dealers, even on the same platform, may have different selections of drones and different prices so it pays to shop around. Further savings can be made with a good personal discount on the vendor by small talking them.
- The Construction URV was removed from all vendors by a patch. It is likely to be unobtainable in vanilla now.
- Drones for L and XL ships are obtained from factories.
- When order a ship the player can specify a number of drones to come with it.
- A L or XL ship dealer can be ordered to retrofit drones to existing ships of the appropriate type. This is done under the 'Modify Ships' option in the 'Equip Drones' section. As ship dealers are end consumers it is likely going to cost more than other ways to obtain drones.
- L and XL ships can be ordered to transfer drones as drones from one ship to another. This is done by the 'Transfer Wares' order and requires the equipping ship have an operational drone bay. Such drones can be acquired as tradable wares from factories. When dealing with cargo transporters care must be taken to not accidently transfer drones as wares rather than equipping them for use and also that drones are not unintentionally transferred from equipped for use instead of cargo. Being able to find a good drone deal from a URV manufacturer can save quite a bit of credits using this method.
- L and XL ships can be ordered to transfer drones as drones from player owned stations. This is done in the same way as with other ships expect targeting a station. If the station is a URV Warf a huge selection of drones may be available so care must be taken to equip the correct sort. This is the cheapest way to acquire drones as player owned factories manufacture goods significantly cheaper than available on the market, potentially even for free with enough station chaining.
"Illegal" and "Pirate" Way: Board it
Refer to the articles about Boarding Ships for more info (link).
Simply put, you order your boarding team to try to overrun and take control of the ship. Note that it will reduce your reputation with <target> faction (as well as any faction nearby that is allied to <target>) to do so.
Random Way: Claim it
NOTE: This (mostly) applies to S/M ships!
When in dogfights with S/M ships, sometimes the Pilot in that ship bails out in an Escape Pod. The Small ship then becomes "Neutral" and does not function at all.
You will need to recruited a Pilot in order to claim the S/M ship. Once done, return to where your <target>ship is & double-click on it. Click "Claim" and wait for your Pilot to complete all procedures.
It is rumored that there are random ownerless ships scattering in the various locations in the entire X: Rebirth Universe.. If you happen upon a capship rather than a S/M sip you'll need at least a Captain to perform a similar feat (Pilots cannot work on capships; Captains cannot work on S/M ships)