'CARRIER' - Aircraft Carrier

Introduction
An airborne turbine-powered dirigible capable of deploying single aircraft at regular intervals. The player carrier serves as a base for re-armament, and mission completion.

Player Carrier
The carrier serves as the only means of launching into battle for the player. It spawns at a fixed height and direction, and will generally be far enough removed from any islands or structures so as to give the player time to collect their bearings before engaging in combat (though occasionally a fighter swarm or enemy carrier may exist very close to the player's takeoff path).

After destroying all mission-objectives, landing on a carrier will end the current mission. If a player choses to land before completing all objectives, however, they will be allowed to heal, resupply their finite-use special weapons, change their loadout and takeoff once more. The first rearmament is always free, while consecutive rearmaments will cost Scrap, with the base cost increasing consistently over each day, and the immediate cost increasing with each repeated landing over the same mission.

By utilizing the one free landing, players can effectively co-ordinate their plans of attack. A viable strategy might be to lead with an agile interceptor, kill all air targets and spawners, then return with a slow vulnerable bomber to mop up the ground targets with very little airborne resistance.

Enemy Variant
Carriers, like Aerodomes, act as spawners for enemy aircraft. At regular intervals, once the player enters a certain range, they will disgorge one type of aircraft, the type and lethality of which are randomly determined according to what planes can spawn on that mission. Launched planes can potentially engage the player very shortly after deployment, but often prefer to first navigate to a specific location, usually to defend a building. After launching several planes in succession, a Carrier will temporarily decrease the rate at which it can launch planes.

Unique among Enemies, the Carrier's main body cannot be attacked directly. One must either target the weak spot on the carrier's command bridge, or individually destroy the four engines. The weakspot takes a inordinate amount of damage before succumbing, so unless the player's options are uniquely suited to applying massive blast damage to specific areas, it is almost always more practical to clip the engines in two quick passes. Aerotorpedoes, Bombs and the Flak cannon are some of the only weapons capable of extreme weakpoint damage.

Collision with an intact carrier is always fatal, but once it is dead and falling to the ground, impacts with it are fairly harmless, resembling those with enemy aeros.