Kind of a noobish question
 

Seems awfully noob of me to ask this question even though I've been playing sh3 for over 7 years, but do planes actually take off of the decks of the aircraft carriers or the battleship search planes? Or do they spawn from land airbases only of the classes that the carrier has listed in the .equ file and then arrive on the scene?

The latter.

Nooooooooooo.:/\\!!

LOL :)