Fighters and Aircraft Carriers: legal move?

I think it should be presumed then for the purposes of game play that you always launch your own fighters at the start of your turn from your AC. I hate the kind of player who says, “Whoa buddy, you never launched your fighters, they stay on the deck of your AC.” If I met a player like that online here I think I’d concede and walk away.

@froodster:

I think it should be presumed then for the purposes of game play that you always launch your own fighters at the start of your turn from your AC. I hate the kind of player who says, “Whoa buddy, you never launched your fighters, they stay on the deck of your AC.” If I met a player like that online here I think I’d concede and walk away.

I would not have a problem with a player who expects that fighters that moved with the AC have used the appropriate number of movement points.  If their first move(s) are not going to be with the AC move(s), they should be left behind when the AC is moved.  I’m not thrilled with the opponent who moves half his (her) pieces and then starts the “wait, I want this piece to move differently” with every piece, expecting me to remember where everything started at the beginning of the turn.  It is just like chess buddy, take your hand of the piece, it has moved.

Now to say those Fighters are cargo and not flying would be a problem.  It is much more reasonable to say those fighters are airborne and moving with the carrier.

I think the “cargo” thing should not really be regarded as an “option” for the player.  It is actually more of an automatic reaction of the Fighters (they become cargo) if you move your Carrier without launching them first.  Cargo is a temporary “state” that the Fighters enter if you do so, and the state only exists as a preventative measure against players boosting the range of their Fighters.  There is no benefit in moving your Fighters as cargo, but if you are Noncaombat-Moving your Carrier and you want its load of Fighters to remain on it, then there is no harm in moving them as cargo.  It is the exact same thing as launching them and flying to the destination seazone, then landing on the Carrier again.

So, in effect, the cargo state exists (in regards to your own Fighters on your own Carriers) for the purposes of a) not being used or b) being used only when using it has absolutely zero effect, compared to not using it.

~Josh

@OutsideLime:

I think the “cargo” thing should not really be regarded as an “option” for the player.  It is actually more of an automatic reaction of the Fighters (they become cargo) if you move your Carrier without launching them first.  Cargo is a temporary “state” that the Fighters enter if you do so, and the state only exists as a preventative measure against players boosting the range of their Fighters.  There is no benefit in moving your Fighters as cargo, but if you are Noncaombat-Moving your Carrier and you want its load of Fighters to remain on it, then there is no harm in moving them as cargo.  It is the exact same thing as launching them and flying to the destination seazone, then landing on the Carrier again.

So, in effect, the cargo state exists (in regards to your own Fighters on your own Carriers) for the purposes of a) not being used or b) being used only when using it has absolutely zero effect, compared to not using it.

~Josh

I prefer to think of fighters in cargo to be something the controlling player has to explicitly state.  In all other cases, the fighters are assumed to be airborne.

Whether the move is Combat Move or Non-Combat Move, if those fighters are moved with the AC when it moves, they have moved also and it counts toward their total of four spaces and is part of their flight path.  Anything else gets into the whole spaghetti bowl of pieces being moved 45 times as your ferret on crack of an opponent attempts to find coherent thought in the vast emptiness that passes as vacuum between his ears.

Well I guess Fighters are just different then - I was going to say that Infantry can even retreat after having moved their full move, but I see the reasons below.

Seems like a silly rule though. Because when your AC is attacked and the attacker withdraws, your fighters are given a free movement point to try to land somewhere else when it is not even your turn. Call it the old “flying on fumes just over the wavetops” - in desperate situations you manage to push your ftrs one zone back to where they came from.

Also, note that tanks can sometimes get a total move of three by attacking and then retreating to a territory on the opposite side of the territory they attacked (provided that attacking units also came from that territory). If anything, that seems more problematic than fighters returning to a seazone they came from on the deck of an AC that can carry them whether they have fuel or not.

Sorry, I don’t quite get how that makes it different. All units can use their full movement to get to a battle, and then retreat.

Maybe it’s just not clicking for me.

It goes along with teh special mid-battle retreat that FIGs can do, and also the fact that they can NOT remain in a combat zone after a batle (except by landign on an AC after a naval battle).

You HAVE to be able to MOVE in NCM to land in every type of battle EXCEPT a Naval Battle, and then you can ONLY stay there if you WIN.