A dock (starport) is a group of object, you'll be shocked to learn.

You need a location to act as the "docks". ie the central location. For Cryosphere this is "level1_1". This location has an array "dock.0", "dock.1", (with dock.count) which contain a list of the locations that act as docks. You can also have a "room" array containing rooms which get dock messages but don't act as a dock. (eg level2_18 does this with Cryo's dock).

All of these locations must have a "dock" property pointing back to the dock.

Making a panel

Just make a fixed object and change it's "on_examine" property to "dslist".

Advertising Your Dock So Private Ships Can Use It

dock.code	The ID code of the starport	BCR	BNM	BAS	AGB
dock.info	the access info of the starport	british	british:und	british:mod	american
dock.title	the name of the starport itself	the Cryosphere	Newman Spaceport	Aber Station	George Bush Spaceport
dock.city	the city the starport is based in (if any)				Nicespot
dock.planet	the planet the starport is based on (if any)		Newman		New West
dock.star	the star system the starport is based on (if any)	Music	Music	Music	Kennedy

3.0 will add unlockable fast travel via the use of private ships. In order for your port to be unlockable, you must provide a waypoint object, which should be a clone (made with auto of ships_waypoint_1. Place this in some central area of your starport. In this room set the "navtarget" property to point to the main dock room once again.

Making things pretty

At the central dock location, you should set "dock.name" to a string like "at the ^BCryosphere^n" or "on ^ASkinner^n" or "at ^AKingston^n, ^ANew Antarctica^n". This will make the landing messages better.

"dock.head" should be whatever ought to go on the topleft of "list", ie "Port", "Bay", "Pad", "Terminal", or what have you. (the common prefix of all the dock location names).

Then, in each actual dock set "port.name" to "3" or "4" or whatever.