After the first jump, all ships are taken away and the Galactica gets to enjoy a reprieve from annoying cylons for a while, right?  Is the only way that Battlestars/Raiders come back into play through crisis cards like Cylon Ambush?  The activate icons in the lower corner are ignored until cylons actually "spawn", right?

I ask the question because we went for a large number of game turns without any cylon ships being in play--I want to make sure we're playing correctly.

yep you are playing correctly...

the icons only do something, whenever there are troops on the board, or a basestar is there so it can launch.

halftard said:

Basestars can also come into play via the destination cards.

duckforceone said:

The only exceptions to the above are:

• if  "Activate Raiders" occurs, and there are raiders present; in that specific case, all basestars currently on the board spawn two raiders each. (p22, second column)
• If "Activate Heavy Raiders" occurs, but no heavy raiders are on the board, centurions already on the Boarding Track still move (p24, first column). (In fact, this is my Cylon friend's favorite way to win games - keep activating Heavy Raiders each turn using the Cylon Fleet space, and hope we don't roll well in the Armory. That was a bad day.)

Great!  Thanks kids!

Correction:

Big Head Zach said:

Fixed.