I eagerly await your tales of managing aircraft with a garment hook.
But, yeah, two-way swaps are not supported. Frankly, the whole 'craft transfer via flight' thing is borderline cheaty to me, since it also instantly transfers ground staff, fuel, supplies, logistics, soldiers on board and their logistics, etc. With zero cost, unlike base transfers. Meridian has a somewhat similar opinion.
But one can't deny the functionality is already mostly there, it's just the extra hangar and perhaps some 'ignoreInCraftEquip' flags that stand in the way.
Yes, I always wash my craft on delicate and line dry them before they get blown to pieces by plasma.... don't you!?!?!?
I have a different perspective on the craft. There are three abstractions on how the logistics chain of a particular are explained and how it coorelates to resources of money...
1. Rent - It is a dollar amount per month and you get to use the craft as you wish, as much as you want. The logistics are containerized and mobile with a phone call.
2. Buy- The craft is built by a third party. The airframe or chassis is purchased outright and logistics is handled completely by X-Com with all of the parts being globally available. You do whatever yoo want because you own the craft and can buy stuff easily.
3. Build- The craft is built by X-Com and mission critical logistics are handled exclusively by XCom logistics. You use the craft as you see fit knowing that the golden BB is real and all parts are as modular possible and utilize as much possible already available off the shelf components.
in otherwords, you are already paying for the cost of transfers of men and material by buying, renting, or building a craft and paying for it's fuel and maintence directly in a relational business relationship through those abstractions rather than a transactional one with the transfers from base to base abstracted UPS or merchant shipping.
As far as
FEELING cheaty. Sure... totally agree on the logistical side of things. However, I believe you discounted something. By using a craft to move around cargo like that, you introduce the risk of having that craft be destroyed by enemy action on the geoscape. This is not the case with simple transfers and thus the transactional cost... invisble security lol!
My bases are set up in such a way as to be able to support each other in moving troops and their gear around to firefight specific situations. The logisitics would not support a direct flight from the base of origin of the solider or craft, so a leap from approach sometimes has to happen. The three that situations where I've taken tacitcal advantage are briefly...
1. Aliens attempt a base raid on a listening post and interception base in an activity hot region. Beat them there with two full transports of dudes so instead of facing a few rookies they had over two dozen hard bitten veterans to contend with. Single turn victory rather than a protracted anxiety filled encounter.
2. Everyone one was really wounded at the only base close enough to directly respond to a high score penalty for despawn mission. The party copter visited a few choice bases on the way to assemble the scratch team and then went and smoked it, while the other team recovered.
3. Fighter skipping so that a ufo encounter may be over a period of a day or so and can close the noose and deploy a team to rip and run alien goodies.