They can attack, too. But you need to ensure that your attacking fighters are able to land safely either on the AC or on a friendly territory. What the rulebook meant is simply that combat and non-combat moves of the AC and the fighters are dealt separately.
Fighter as cargo scenario
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I landed an American fighter on a British carrier in a recent game and the guy I was playing against raised the issue of what restrictions this places on the fighter’s movement next round.
So essentially the Brit carrier could move 2 spaces and he says my fighter should not then be able to still move 4 on the American turn, which makes sense but I did not see any clarification in the rules which said basically the fighter is treated as cargo.
Any thoughts?
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The fighter can move with the carrier as cargo on UK’s turn, then move its full four spaces on its own turn.
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His claim goes against what is stated on the Manual:
Page 10, section Order of Play: “A round consists of each player taking a turn (…)”
Page 12, section Air Units: “An air unit’s movement in any complete turn is limited to its total move value”.The rest of the rules don’t mention anything about move limitations being posed on a fighter launching from an ally’s carrier, so a fighter always has 4 moves at a start of its turn, regardless if the carrier has moved on an ally’s turn of the same game round.
This effectively allows a fighter to move a total of 6 spaces in a game round, 2 when the allied carrier’s turn plus 4 on the fighter’s turn. It also makes gameplay simpler because otherwise both would have to remember or record the movement of all carriers carrying allied fighters to know how much they could move.
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Thanks for the replies. That’s what the rules say, but it seems wrong because in theory everything in a round is supposed to be simultaneous. We’ve developed some house rules over the years and this may be a new one. It just seems wrong that a plane can move extra spaces in the same round simply for landing on an allied carrier.
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Thanks for the replies. That’s what the rules say, but it seems wrong because in theory everything in a round is supposed to be simultaneous. We’ve developed some house rules over the years and this may be a new one. It just seems wrong that a plane can move extra spaces in the same round simply for landing on an allied carrier.
There’s another situation where tanks can legally move 3 spaces: imagine you have 10 German tanks in West Russia and there’s an allied stack on Eastern Europe. If you attack it with the 10 tanks and 1 unit from Germany and retreat back to Germany after combat your tanks have moved 3 spaces.
Just another of those game quirks.
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What if we count “landing on a friendly carrier” as one move? That might solve the “overmovement” problem.
For example, a UK fighter should first enter the sea zone controlled by a US carrier, then “land on the US carrier”, this landing process should count as two consecutive moves.
After landing, the UK fighter is treated as cargo and could be transported by the US carrier in US turn.
As to take off, a UK fighter should first move to the sea zone controlled by the US carrier, then move out of the sea zone, wich also should count as two consecutive moves.In this scenario, the UK fighter could at most move through 8 sea zones during two turns, 3 in the first turn, 2 carried by the US carrier, 3 in the next turn.
Only fighters and carriers of the same power could be considered as “in close cooperation” in the same sea zone (but not as cargo/transporter as in the different power scenario), thus don’t require the land/take off move.
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