Some suggestions

[Erik2]

Listen, if the designer wants you to be able to use a carrier with air units, he/she will also add the necessary air command points to purchase the air units.
It really is that simple.

If you're playing a naval scenario that is designed as a gun vs gun battle (like one of the stock multiplayer scenarios), please don't except to buy a carrier and get air units as part of the carrier.
It would unbalance the scenario.

OK, I'll keep out of this discussion now, enuff said

[Myrddraal]

I don't think this is a question of 'fault' or of being foolish for misunderstanding the rules, just a different idea of how it should work.

To explain the intention: it's important to make the distinction between supply and command points, they both serve different purposes for the scenario designer.

Carriers (and airfields) provide air supply which is essential to the operation of your aircraft. You can see this by pressing the space bar.

Command points are more akin to a unit limit. If it helps, you could think of them as unit slots for the scenario. They are generally fixed for the scenario (although triggers can change them) and are not provided by carriers or airfields. For example, some scenarios start with no airfields but do provide air command points. If you deploy one carrier, you will have enough supply to support a few aircraft. Deploy two and you will be able to support more. This means that the scenario allows you to deploy carriers to support additional aircraft.

In summary: capturing an airfield or deploying a carrier gives you extra air supply (and more places to land), but it doesn't raise the command point limit.

[bjarmson]

I don't think there is the slightest relationship between airfields and carriers. Airfields are just places for planes to land. Carriers are weapons systems that never go anywhere without planes aboard. This means they should be handled completely different from airfields, thus my suggestion that they should automatically be assigned air CPs, if added after the beginning of the scenario. But enough of this, I'll accept things as they are. Which brings me to my next suggestion.

Carrier airgroups should be halved in size, in other words instead of 3 groups fleet carriers would have 6 groups. This would allow for more realism as to how carrier airgroups were actually handled. It was rare for a carrier to launch every plane on an airstrike. This is particularly true with fighters. Some were reserved for CAP (combat air patrol) over the carrier group, while some flew escort for dive bombers and torpedo planes assigned airstrikes. Airstrikes were usually made up of only part of the carriers compliment of dive bombers and torpedo planes, usually holding some in reserve for a second strike.

[adherbal]

Carrier airgroups should be halved in size, in other words instead of 3 groups fleet carriers would have 6 groups.

If this was a pure naval game then yes, we probably would've allowed more aircraft per carrier. However we have to balance the entire game around both naval and land battles and this is more tricky. If in a naval battle you have 2 or 3 core carriers with full aircraft cargo, and that limit is increased to 6 per carrier that means a whopping 12 to 18 aircraft in your core force. While this may work on naval maps, it would be totally unbalanced on land maps. Either the majority of these aircraft would be unable to deploy (limited CP) or the whole map would be crawling with aircraft. As it stands, 6 to 9 aircraft in your core is already a powerful force, both on land and sea.

[Poddster]

Couple more suggestions:

6) When buying a carrier to add to scenario, it should come with plane command points equal to the carrier's plane capacity (fleet carriers, with 3 planes/squadrons, would automatically add 9 plane command points to the scenario). Or alternatively, carriers might be purchased with planes already loaded, 1 fighter, 1 dive bomber, 1 torpedo bomber.

7)There should be a way to detach transport units from their assigned unit so they can be reattached to another unit.

6) A carrier increases Air Supply

7) I agree with this. It's annoying to upgrade to a truck, but to remove the truck or upgrade to a halftrack costs just as much! If I'm paying full price to "remove" the truck I want to be able to give someone else a truck for tree?