My group is looking for some clarification when the Heavy Raider icon appears on the Activate Cylon Ships part of a Crisis Card. When there are basestars present, but no Heavy Raiders in space or boarding the Galactica, does each basestar launch new Heavy Raiders?

The rules specifically state that when basestars are present and there are not any Raiders in space, that each basestar launches two Raiders when the Raider icon appears on the Activate Cylon Ships part of a Crisis Card. Because there is no mention of Heavy Raiders, we originally took this to mean that basestars never launch new Heavy Raiders and they only appear from Cylon Fleet Crisis Cards.

However, when reading the Cylon Fleet cards, one of them states that whenever basestars launch new Raiders or Heavy Raiders, to launch an additional Raider of the appropriate type. My group could not think of any situation where basestars launch Heavy Raiders, unless it is in the above situation described and we've been playing incorrectly thus far.

Thoughts?

When you hit the 'activate heavy raider' icon, the description says that all heavy raiders and centurions activate when you hit it, or if there are no heavy raiders on the table, each basestar launches one, iirc.

So yeah, the 'launch raiders' and 'activate raiders' icons don't do anything with the heavy raiders, only the 'activate heavy raiders' icon does.

Each basestar will launch one heavy raider if there are none on the board. See page 24 just above the "Activate Cylon Basestars" heading.