Luke's Software and Design

Hi,

This thread is started so that there is a focal point for providing ideas back to Luke for possible inclusion in a future update. In no way should this thread be deemed as an eventual update path. Only Luke can decide which one are good/bad or realistic to include in his game.

In saying that, I don't think its wrong to suggest just about anything but I think let's try and be fair to Luke with the ideas; they do need to be reasonable and possible to implement from a single dev point of view.

An example of ideas that, off the top of my head, might be interesting but possibly not be feasible or realistic:
- adding 100 player internet multiplayer support
- adding a single player storyline complete with 1 hour of cinematics



With that said, let's get this going! Some of these may have already been suggested previously by myself or others. I am not taking ownership of any ideas, I'm just posting them here for all to read and for Luke to consider.

Ideas:
- Endurance "high score" mode. Basically same game minus the availability of mother ship. Game difficulty is equivalent to level 99 (last level!). Great for high score chasers! To make it interesting, have 3 settings: Day, night and cycle (cycle: which is the normal game with the day/night cycles. 3 different modes = 3 times the fun lol. High score is tracked for: Score and total pilots rescued

- Zen mode: No alien turrets, no pilots to rescue, unlimited fuel. This is just you wanting to just fly around with no pressure.

- + mode: Same game but additional features added:
- Hidden "alien artifacts" to find, motives the player to search around more, adds variety.
- Bases shoot more than just the lasers, also includes photon missiles, etc.
- Aliens have repaired our ships which now can attack us! This is what happens when you don't blow up the ships after rescuing the pilots citizens!
- Downed pilots also have broken visual beacons. Find these for extra points! (this would really motivate us to search every canyon). This could be two tiered: broken visual beacons but with audio cue... and without audio cue (more points of course)
- Later levels: rescue shuttles that contain more than 1 pilot (damn scientists hitched a ride to study the planet). I'm trying to figure out a give/take on this one. There has to be a risk reward here aside from points
- Different color textures depending on location on planet (depending on how you created your fractals, I may not be possible). This is pure aesthetics so really not that big a deal just adds variety, may not even look good.

Well, this is a good place to start. I have other ideas, need to process them more. I'm trying to post ideas that I think might be realistic.

A terrain slider.

0 is a completely flat world.

100 is a world flush with Everest-like mountain peaks.

I like your suggestion!

My article about making aliens more cunning (tricky, inventive) is down bellow in this post.

But before talking about aliens, first allow me to introduce myself: I am Pavel, a mathematical programmer from Prague. I love strategy games and epic fantasy. Fractalus is probably the most memorable game from my 8-bit Atari years (and don't ask me how much the jump scared me!).

I have written many ideas to this forum. And while I was writing them, more and more things came to my mind, so a rich fantastic universe emerged in my imagination, with planets, races, history, technologies, various types of enemy turrets, fighters
and other aircrafts and cunning alien impostors (alien diversionists). A world where the player can choose from several ships, whose devices like hull, engine, weapon or radar can be damaged and repaired.

Many of these ideas would take so much labor that they are far beyond what I expect that would be acceptable for Luke. Fortunately, it is not my job to decide I decided to include also these extravagant ideas, because they may bring some inspiration.

I believe that presenting an elaborate and convincing (consistent) fictinal world (universe) - with explanations and stories and history - can sparkle much of imagination (fantasy) of other people, and some ideas that arise from this can perhaps be acceptable for Luke. So I tried to make my world breathing and consistent as much as I could (I know it is not perfect). More stories will come when I start writing a model (example) campaign.

Which Suggestion to Start With
My personal estimate of what might have the best "benefit to labor ratio" is:

• Cunning aliens knocking at airlock and using other tricks (see bellow)
• Damage from Aliens should be cumulative so that many aliens, each having time only for very few hits, can destroy the front glass.
• The game should be highly customizable, with different aspects of difficulty adjustable independently.
• Some kind of a threat incresing in time (several ideas are here) should be added because now the game is imho too easy after I destroy most of the turrets.

And maybe also - this is the second wave far behing the first one - a variety of mission objectives, diverse enemy turrets and fighters, each requiring various game style/approach to defeat - and also a choice of player's craft and the possibility of damage to various ship devices.

What I Would Personally Like Most
This is my personal preference, I don't know if it reasonable in terms of benefit to labor ratio, in terms of Luke's vision and in terms of preference of an average player.
I my view current Remake 1.0.0 (and the original game) is very simple - one type of turret, one kind of saucer, very straitforward control of the ship etc. And it is an action-oriented game of quick reflexes. I prefer games where the player has to think and plan. And therefore if I am to chose several "personal favorites" which I would like most out of my suggestions, it would be:

• A highly customizable game with various aspects of difficulty set independently: piloting difficulty should be adjustable independently on combat difficulty (density of turrets), alien behavior difficulty, difficulty of finding downed pilots etc. etc.
• Dogfights with long-range planning where and when to meet which enemy, with complex long pseudorandomly seed-generated missions.
• Ship devices could be damaged and repaired + choice of player's ship out of several types - even three types differring only in easily implementable parameters (resiliency, maneuverability, firepower and maybe radar range or type) would be great.

Index of the Following Articles (Well, "Table of Content" would be a better word)
Here I will shortly sum up what I have written in the following posts. It happens to be structured in several thematic "chapters" and I think that they are ordered starting with ones with the best benefit : effort ratio (because I started with the ones that I estimated to be most promising).
Chapter One: Most Important Ideas:
P517 - P522: Cunning aliens, damage to player's ship devices, independent setting of difficulty aspects, a didactic campaign with diverse mission objectives...
Chapter Two: Various Example Lists
P523 - P531: I propose lists of enemy technology, turrets, fighters, large aircrafts and also a choice of several player's aircrafts.
Chapter Three: The Strategic Path
P532 - P539: I propose how to introduce dogfighting, maneuvering and ideas shifting the game toward strategic thinking and planning ahead.
Interlude: The Fictive Fractalus Universe
I try to introduce a logically consistent, breathing universe with planets, races, history, technologies etc. which the player will slowly, step-by-step, discover.
Chapter Four: Choosing What Equipment To Load
Coming soon. Here I will suggest that player can freely choose what equipment to load (within his ship's limited cargo space). Guns, rays, machine-guns, various kind of missiles, radars of various quality, repair droids or temporary boosters for speed, shields etc.
Update (late April 2022): Luke wrote to me that he would read my suggestions when he has time; after briefly looking through the ideas he said that many of them are similar to his own plans, but moving the game more toward strategy would deviate significantly from the original game. And that he does not want to add storyline if it does not take inspiration from original game's story: "There are elements from the original game's manual that hint at a backstory that isn't told in the original game" - Luke knows them but I do not, so I will NOT elaborate the chapter 6 mentioned bellow. I believe chapter 4 is sufficiently hinted in this post and there is no need to elaborate details, particularly not before I know a lot more about Luke's intentions. And as for chapter 5, I don't know if I will post something.
Chapter Five: Campaigns and Scenarios
I'm going to offer various ways how to organize the content to give player more thrill. For example a sequence of missions where the state (quality, damage, equipment) of player's ship depends on how well he did in the previous mission. As it is in Panzer General 1, but with a very limited load/save option.
Chapter Six: Tales and Storylines
This is one that I have not thought throw enough (as of early April 2022), but I believe I will come with an interesting storyline for the main campaign and probably more (TODO_LINK). And I look forward to it very much. Currently I think that the main campaign could have the following parts:

1. New to the squadron: The player is explained the basic concepts (aliens, turrets, damage, fighters etc.). He soon impresses his commander Timothy and is tasked with teaching newcomers, including Timothy's sister, beautiful and talented Samantha. He must look after them in their first combat missions (he must give them a chance to practice fighting the enemy aircrafts, but ideally not to get harmed *too* much... Afterall, what is downed can be rescued... If the enemy does not get there first )
2. Planes and Planets: The player is introduced step-by-step to various planets and various ships that he can fly; he must choose the reasonable ship for each mission. The game gradually gets harder, the player fights also against huge Yetti on a frozen planet and human rebels on a ore-rich jungle planet.
3. Diplomacy and Espionage: The Central Command tries to make peace with other races so he can focus on the Jaggi and find their homeworld. There will be missions like "save enemy defector" or "rescue pilots but you must not shoot at the enemy if he does not first". The player also rescues downed Samantha and in one mission he competes against her who shoots down more enemies.
4. The Conquest of Fractalus: In a surprising discovery, Fractalus is the homeworld of the Jaggi who live deep under the ground. The player will help the allied forces build a base on Fractalus and bring the war to an end.
   The player will defend the base against bombers, serve as a transport ship... He is promoted to commodore and maybe we could even decide that in some missions he is accompanied with several friendly aircrafts (which can be shot down and if he does not rescue them, he will have a smaller accompany in the next mission).
   The final mission to erradicate Jaggi military command (just like the WWII allies defeated Japanese and German militarist to give freedom and prosperity to their people) will be particularly hard.

Of course there will also be many "more normal" missions among those described here. Such as rescuing pilots in different circumstances: In a dust storm with turbulences and limited visibility... Or with some kind of radar malfunction. Or despite enemy elite fighters and a dangerous Dominators trying to chase you... Or despite enemy bombers (or troop transports) trying to kill the pilots (or replace them with impostors) faster than you can rescue them.

Cunning (Tricky) Aliens

This post in nutshell: To make the game more tense, I'd like aliens to damage the front window glass cumulatively and to use cunning tricks, for example knocking the door in a way that needs some degree of player's attention to distinguish.

Hi, I think that it is not hard to achieve a such a "fry the alien" reflex that aliens pose no threat: the player knows that he can always kill the alien in time. I think this is a pity: No threat means no thrill and tension.

Cumulative Damage from Aliens
I would strongly recommend that the front window can take only as many blows (hits, strikes) of alien's fist, so a certain number of aliens, each having time to deliver only very few strikes, would gradually destroy the front glass. This would act as a second life-meter. I believe that the thrill and tension would greatly increase even if this life meter was relatively meek (forgiving).

Alien Knocking on Airlock Door
I would also like if some aliens tried to knock the airlock door for some time before jumping: they are cunning and they pretend to be the pilot. The sound would be clearly different from the knock of the pilot, but at higher levels the difference would be smaller, the alien could knock longer before jumping...
I even slightly consider what it would be like if it was not the sound of the knock that lets the player find out; it would be a very distinctive difference (from genuine pilots) in the frequency of knocks or the rythm etc. To make the game fair, this difference would have to be very striking, but at higher levels the difference would gradually diminish, so the player really has to listen a bit carefully. I think this would add to the intense feeling in the game.

Pilots knocking on a window and aliens immitating them
Then I have one more idea, one that might take more labor to implements: Let's say that some pilots have the unfortunate habit of knocking "Hey, let me in" on the front window rather than the airlock door, so the player has to unlearn his reflex to immediatelly kill anything that jumps (or rises or reaches or how to say it) to the front window.
And as the aliens are really cunning, they try to make use of this habit of some pilots:
* They will knock in a similar way as the pilots - this can mean many things: if, for example, the pilot knocking "let me in" has a completely different body position (he does not reach as high as a jumping alien etc.), the aliens can try to immitate them.
* They will gradually be more and more similar to human pilots, for example they do not completely remove their helmet before jumping. So the player would have to pay some degree of attention to distinguish them quickly. Also, killing a true pilot should be punished by some kind of very intense penalty (I don't know, for example mission cannot end with success). This would also make me fight the turrets more carefully when a crashed ship is near )

Independent aspects of difficulty
These features could be optional; I could easily imagine that piloting difficulty (ship maneuvarability, turbulences etc.), combat difficulty (turret density...) and alien difficulty could be set independently to create variety of game experiences and to fulfill the preferences of many players.
To that's it for aliens; I really enjoy the remake and I will post other ideas soon. I'll be glad to hear your opinion.
Reflame

PS: In one of the later posts I suggest that it would be nice if the player could see enemy troop transports searching and replacing the pilots with aliens.

PPS: I think this could be a funny objective for one of the missions in the campaign:
Jaggi colonel Dah'ga'rah Han passionately disagrees with Jaggi cruelty and enslaving weaker races. He has been giving us a valuable intelligence which significantly helped us to defend against the Jaggi. But now the Jaggi know that they have a mole (=spy, informer, traitor) in their midst. It is only a matter of time till they discover him.
He tried to escape but was shot down. Take him aboard - he is in a crashed ship and transmits human emergency code in order to hide from Jaggi. Take him aboard! He will run to your ship and gently knock at your front window. You will tell him from other Jaggi aliens by a huge scar under his left eye.
Some of our downed pilots can give you hints where to find him. If possible, take also his two aides which have been shot down elsewhere on the planet. You can recognize the colonel and his aides because they will knock only with one hand while malevolent aliens knock by both hands. Open the airlock and let them in.
The colonel knows many valuable secrets: Bring him alive at any cost!

This post in nutshell: I suggest that enemy fire can damage various parts and devices of player's shift, each having some kind of unique unpleasant effect when damaged.

I'd like to suggest that various parts of the Valkyrie fighter could be damaged - either as a result of enemy fire, or as part of difficulty setting to make various missions more unique.

Here are some ideas of what can be damaged; hopefully some of them could be implemented with little labor:

• Cannon damage: Cannon consumes more energy, is unreliable (does not shoot each time), shoots with a delay, shoots with a small random deviation in angle (so it is hard to aim), shoots weaker projectiles (requiring a more precise hit). I do not suggest to implement all of these, but some, perhaps one.
• Engine damage: The engines sometimes change speed without reason. Or: The engines have a minimal speed, so that the player cannot fly as slowly as he would like.
• Maneuvering damage: the maneuvarability is lower. Or: Sudden changes in direction as if the ship is hit. Or: There is a weak but constant pull in the controls (left, up, ...)
• Gyroscope damage (or whatever we call it): The ship no longer tries to automatically return to a horizontal position. Or: it tries to "return" to an angle that it mistakenly considers horizontal.
• Hull damage: Hitting the rock and landing (particularly rough landing in a high speed) will cost much more energy.
• Instruments damage: Some indicators (such as artifical horizont or - this might be cruel - energy indicator) show a (slightly, partially) incorrect value. I can elaborate details if anyone is interested.
• Front window glass - details here
• Systems damage: When the systems are off, key "S" sometimes works, sometimes does nothing and sometimes opens the airlock. Very unpleasant when an alien is knocking, because systems cannot be turned on when the airlock is open.
• Radar damage: There are many possibilities, such as false images, images hard to tell from the "radar noise of backgound", blind areas on the radar etc.
• Shield damage: Enemy hits cost more energy...

I personally prefer highly customizable games, but I don't know if Luke has a similar opinion. So imho one extreme would be to allow a detailed setting, including a "damage difficulty" (how easily the fighter instuments get damage) chosen independently on combat difficulty (turret density), piloting difficulty etc. The opposite extreme would be just a simple switch to choose one of several options, which should include at least these three:

• No equipment damage (faithful to original Fractalus)
• Enemy fire causes equipment damage (besides energy loss)
• Enemy fire causes equipment damage and the mission starts with a randomly chosen equipment badly damaged.

The damage could be repaired by mothership, rescued pilots-mechanics or a repair droid.

This post in nutshell: The front window glass can be damaged from aliens (and maybe also enemy fire) so that the player can see worse and worse through it, which makes the gameplay harder.

One of the fighter parts that could take damage in my vision is the front glass (window). The damage will simply be indicated by drawings on the display that look like a damaged glass. The only way how this affects the gameplay would be that these drawings have a high or 100% opacity, so they obscure (hide, overlay) the outlook to objects outside the fighter that the player needs to see (turrets, mountains...).

This will cause the player to maneuver less efficiently. And the more the front glass is damaged, the higher percentage of screen is filled with these drawings and the worse the player will see.

Cumulative Damage from the Aliens
Also, in the second paragraph of this post I suggested that the damage of the front glass from alien's knocking should be cumulative, so that several aliens, each having time only for very few strikes, could destroy the fighter. These ideas can be combined together in a number of ways:

• Front glass damage can be caused by enemy fire, alien's knocking or both.
• Front glass damage can serve as a second life meter (when the glass breaks, the game is over) or it can simply worsen player's vision (outlook) which negatively affects his maneuvering.

I want to share some more ideas about damage to specific parts (equipment) of player's fighter.

I think it would be interesting if some or all of the rescued pilots were mechanics who partly repair a random damaged equipment (instantly after being rescued). And after returning to the mother ship, the player would be allowed to fully repair (for example) one equipment of his choice.
Only one - perhaps even in case that mission has been completed. Yes, I admit that this would have huge consequences, because then it would not longer be true that every mission starts without any influence from how well the previous mission went. (A player who returns from level 10 and starts level 11 would NOT be in the same situation as if he starts a new game on level 11.)
Yes, it is a significant change of mission logic, but I intend to post (in the future, not in my immediatelly planned posts) ideas how to develop the game in this direction. For now, I will only say that the player should be probably allowed to continue at the same level (now he must choose between +1 and +4 level) if he is worried that his fighter is too damaged.
And there is no reason why it should be one a one-directional matter (start the mission with an undamaged fighter and then typically end every mission more damaged than the previous one, until the damage is so big that the player fails). It can be exactly the opposite: I propose that the player is allowed to choose that he starts a new game with a significant random damage and then he will try to suffer less further damage than can be repaired (by pilots and in mothership's bay), so after a few mission he gets into such a good shape that he dares to fly a higher level.
Btw. I dream about one more thing: Perhaps the damage gameplay could be finetuned so that it practically replaces energy as a life meter. By this I mean that at some level of damage, the gameplay will be significantly impaired (made difficult), so the ship will take more damage, and the player struggles to keep alive, desperately trying to let the repairs compensate for new damages (which come more often if the ship is more damaged - a cursed circle) - and he either makes it, manages to break this circle, or suffers such a damage that he knows he is lost before his energy actually runs off... This way the damage of the ship's part would define player's chances more than the current status of energy... I think it could be interesting.
To achieve this, I think that the damage should work exponentially, not linearly: if an equipment with 100 damage points has a 50% performance of an undamaged equipmen (for example a weapon fires only 50% projectiles per minute, a repair droid - see bellow - repairs twice as little damage points per minute etc.), then I propose that 200 damage points should decrease it to 25%, 300 points to 12% etc. (Linear dependency would mean that 150 damage points decrease it to 25% and 200 damage points to 0.)
I think this is important because in the linear dependency, the total performance of ship parts could rather suddenly drop to a level in which a failure is inevitable. But with the exponential approach which I prefer, the performance would drop very slowly, giving the player a chance to make for the damage with his skill and still try to complete the mission.

Repair droid
And what if the Valkyrie ship had a repair droid and the player can tell this droid which damage to slowly repair now...
And the player would have a dilemma how big part of the repair droid's capacity (or how big percentage of game time if the droid can repair only one thing at a given time) to assign to repair the repair droid at the expense of repairing other vital devices?
I think it might create an interesting dilemma where both extremes are bad: if the player assigns too much capacity of the repair droid to repair itself, it will delay the repair of (for example) weapon and maneuverability and so the powerless ship will take more and more damage. And on the other hand, if he assigns too little, then the repair droid will be more and more damaged, it will work slower and so the player will be unable to repair vital devices in time.

Hi, in this post I will try to suggest how to help the player not get lost in the numerous optional game rules and modifications that I and other contributors propose here.
I suggest that there will be ca. six game modes, including pseudorandomly generated campaigns, but here I will describe only three most important ones:

• Original levels (this doesn't need any explanation, they have already been implemented, they are the only thing that we can choose in remake 1.0.0)
• Main campaign (a storyline with a variety of missions)
• Custom mission

Custom missions
The Custom mission would be extremely customizable; it would allow almost any combination of optional rules, for example: day/night cycle, turbulences, occurence of special turrets (super-resistant, or masked ones which are harder to spot...)
I also think that making some actions cost very much energy could lead to interesting missions (in one mission it will be firing, in another it may be landing, hitting the rock, hiting the saucer or simply flying). But this is partly redundant with my suggestion of shield/hull/cannon damage.

Independent Difficulties
I would very, very much like (sorry for repeating myself but this is a place where it surely must be mentioned) if various aspects of difficulty could be set independently:

• Piloting difficulty (maneuverabiltiy, turbulences, how much energy is lost by hitting the rock and harsh landings...)
• Combat difficulty (density of turrets)
• Damage rate and repair rate
• Alien behavior difficulty
• Difficulty of finding pilots
• And possibly others.

I can probably imagine even a control "how far are you in the main campaign?" which would hide advanced settings that the player cannot understand yet.

Now I will finish my previous post:

Main Campaign (Storyline)
The main campaign would be a sequence of missions, each with a story/tale/briefing, that use optional rules to make each mission unique. The player would therefore learn both the original game rules (landing, turrets, saucers, aliens...) and optional rules (deviating from original gameplay) in a reasonable pace.
To provide a very high replay value (instead of burdening the game creators with writing many unique missions for each of various possible player skill levels), I suggest that each mission of the main campaign has an objective rewarding 0 to 3 stars and also an optional difficulty setting that defines the difficulty multiplier.
The final score of each mission of main campaign would be the number of achieved stars multiplied by the difficulty multiplier. A player will try to beat his best score by selecting the highest difficulty at which he still has chance to achieve some stars.

A long example of a possible storyline is here in chapter 6, short background stories about planest and races are near the end of this article.

Example of Objectives
Each mission of the main campaign will have a unique objective rewarding 0 to 3 stars; the objective can be related to number of pilots rescued, or number of aliens killed, of turrets destroyed, or it can also demand accomplishing this in time, surviving on the planet for a given time... Finding the downed pilot under difficult circumstances or malfunctioning radar...

Some missions can include a heavy dogfighting requiring strategic planning when and where to meet which enemy fighter .

I can imagine many other game objectives, for example an attack to a heavily guarded enemy headquaters (maybe evocative of the Battle of Yavin). Or rescuing the Ace pilot; some rescued pilots may give hints (together with very personal stories) about the position of the Ace pilot, the headquaters or perhaps about a very deadly masked turret which the player should be cautious about.
Such missions would require orientation points on the planet and could take several (or even many) flights to complete while the player tries to make progress toward fulfilling the mission in each flight.

Difficulty switches
As I said, there should be difficulty settings for each missions. There are many ways how to do it. One extreme would be to make the difficulty switches the same for all missions of the main campaign and to make many of them (turret density, day/night cycle etc., piloting difficulty, etc.) If they are many, then the difficulty multiplier could easily range for example in 1-20.
(One of the drawbacks of this approach is that it can be hard for an algorithm to deduce the real difficulty of a complex setting, because extreme values or combinations can lead to bizzare effects with very easy or very hard gameplay.)

The opposite approach would be that the difficulty settings would be mission specific and each mission would only have a few; they would concern concepts that the player has already learned in previous missions or which are extremely easy to explain (such as turret density).
(I would prefer the second approach and the mission briefing screen might have a "Go to Custom mission menu" button; the settings of the custom missions would then be set to exactly immitate this mission and the player could then change any aspect that he wants - and perhaps pursue any objective he wants; there are several possible approaches to defining objectives of the custom missions, I can elaborate it if someone wishes.)

And how will the difficulty multiplier be deduced from the switches? For example if we decide that the difficulty multiplier will be 1 to 4 in each mission of the main campaign, then each mission must have

• either a single switch with four values (such as turret density)
• or three independent binary switches (for example: day-night cycle, presence of saucers and atmospheric turbulences), the difficulty multiplier would be 1 + number of switches set "on".
• or two independent binary switches, one of them more important and therefore worth two.

(This is just an example illustration; I am not sure whether the switches should affect the difficulty additively, multiplicatively or in some yet another way... But I think it is no big deal; the gameplay will not suffer if they reflect the difficulty only roughly.)

More Examples of Mission Objectives

Rescue the Alien Defector
Jaggi colonel Dah'ga'rah Han passionately disagrees with Jaggi cruelty and enslaving weaker races. He has been giving us a valuable intelligence which significantly helped us to defend against the Jaggi. But now the Jaggi know that they have a mole (=spy, informer, traitor) in their midst. It is only a matter of time till they discover him.
He tried to escape but was shot down. Take him aboard - he is in a crashed ship and transmits human emergency code in order to hide from Jaggi. Take him aboard! He will run to your ship and gently knock at your front window. You will tell him from other Jaggi aliens by a huge scar under his left eye.
Some of our downed pilots can give you hints where to find him. If possible, take also his two aides which have been shot down elsewhere on the planet. You can recognize the colonel and his aides because they will knock only with one hand while malevolent aliens knock by both hands. Open the airlock and let them in.
The colonel knows many valuable secrets: Bring him alive at any cost!

Replace Downed Jaggi Pilots With Human "Aliens" (Impostors that will jump and knock on their window)
A squadron of our Cobra fighters has shot down several enemy aircrafts. The enemy is able to build new crafts, but he has trouble to train enough pilots in time. Therefore it is crucial that you do not let these people return home. Destroy them from the air and destroy enemy rescue crafts; beware of their escort.
Also, you will carry several Special Forces soldiers; they will kill the enemy pilots, replace them and prepare an unpleasant surprise to the rescue crafts (This time, the pilot will run in the opposite direction )
But you must land skillfully and quickly: If the downed enemy pilot sees you coming and has time to prepare, he has a good chance to defeat your soldier.

Hi again. I have no idea how Luke will asses the labor : benefit ratio of this, but I propose that the player can choose one of several crafts to fly the mission. The crafts presented here are just an example of what the choice might look like to make each craft unique.
Of course I do not know if my idea will be accepted that the custom game setting must be able to immitate perfectly the special rules of any mission (with a button that presets the options of custom game to simulate that mission) - but if it is accepted, then I also propose that the "player's craft properties" section of custom game settings (which will contain fields like maneuverability, weapon, hit points, min. and max speed etc.) will be able to immitate perfectly each of the crafts. So the player can choose "Set all player's craft options to (for example) Collosus Bomber" and then he just adjusts what he wants. It is up to him if he makes the custom mission easier, harder, distinctive...

Room for Weapons
There are many ways how to decide about weapons. I dream about a craft carrying several weapons and the player could to switch between them - for example carrying a very limited number of super-good missiles that must be saved for desperate situations. I see several ways how to make it interesting, but that is a topic for a future post. So here I just want to remark that "room for weapons" is there just in case that something like this will be implemented; then a bomber will carry more payload (weapons) than a helicopter, for example. But for now let's say that each craft has a unique "default weapon": a craft with a large room for weapons has a larger and therefore better weapon.

What makes Valkyrie specific
In all game parameters where I think that the game would be more appealing with different behavior of player's craft (for example lower vulnerability by enemy fire and higher enery loss when hitting the ground), I described Valkyrie as deviating from this "ideal" average (therefore I wrote, for example, that it is very vulnerable by enemy fire and relatively very prone to hitting the ground); I'm not sure but perhaps this can fulfill my vision (that the game with such parameters would be more interesting) without changing the parameters of Valkyrie 1.0.0 .

In other words, when I say that Valkyrie is good (bad) in something, then I mean that in my vision most crafts should be worse (better) in this aspects.

Realistic Climb/Descend
I would also like to note that in a realistic physics, a typical aircraft (but not a helicopter) has a minimal velocity (under which it stalls and crash because the lift force of the wings is not sufficient to keep the plane flying), a limited climb rate (it slows down if the nose is raised to aim too high) and probably also a limited performance of decelerators (brakes) - that means that if it wants to descend quickly, it must aim the nose very low but it will then increase the speed significantly even if the player does not want to. I would like the player's craft to have this realistic physics at least to some degree and therefore I envision Valkyrie as having exceptionally powerful engines which allow flying very slowly (even when descending) or very quickly (even if climbing).

It seems good to split this article into two posts so that I can reference any of them - so I will continue in the following post: