Some excellent ideas all around but without meaning to offend anyone, Feathered takes the cake as it seems he's been thinking a lot about it.
I would really like to sometime see similar things in SoW, especially non-combat missions or missions with unarmed aircraft. If i'm reading and deciphering Oleg's posts right, these guys are building an engine to handle everything in the sim at a centralized level, so most of what you have in singleplayer you could possibly have it in MP as well. If the engine is as moddable as they are hinting it is, then we could have different campaign layers to interact with, all of which would be possible to enable/disable. Do you just want to fly around and shoot things? Good, because you can. Do you want to read intelligence reports on your or the enemy industrial output and strategic priorities, then plan the sorties yourself? Fine again, you can do that too.
Imagine that we're 2 years in the future, flying an expansion of SoW and we have something like this...
According to the latest orders, we need to switch our attention to the enemy's oil production and metal works. To that end, we need to identify major targets in the Ruhr. We need accurate information about target layout and possible defences.
To that end and since you've recently been promoted to squadron leader and you want to lead by example, you're taking a photo recon mosquito this morning.
Taking off and climbing early before the sun has even risen, you are thinking about how to do this. Do you fly under the radar and make a low-level run, or climb really high for a better shot of the target and hope your altitude and speed will be enough to escape any interceptors the enemy radars will throw at you? You decide to come in high and get some good photos of the target, flak and fighters be damned. This proves to be a good choice, as on your way out there is a small fleet of German torpedo boats attacking some friendly ships. If you were low they could probably spot and report you, but you're too high for them. If you can see them however, you can report them and let Coastal Command vector someone to their vicinity to dispatch them. Nobody sees anyone though, so you both go about your business.
Crossing into Holland you check your navigation, you don't want to fly too close to any enemy airbases so your flight plan is zig-zagging between them. Radar will pick you up at some point of course, but why make your job harder? Nearing the Ruhr valley you make for the target. By this point it's almost certain that they know about you and your heading. Yep, just your luck, there's 4 little specks in the horizon, still below you but climbing hard. Wait, what is that? God, it seems like a dozen or so aircraft, maybe it's time to abort the mission. Firewalling the throttles you start climbing again, doing your best to keep high but not above the start of the contrail forming layer, something that will definitely give away your position for miles around (mig alley anyone? contrail formation height was a briefed item in that sim).
Suddenly, you see another contrail off in the distance and then another and they gradually multiply. Your heart stops racing as you realize that the specks you saw, now marginally identifiable as 109s, are not after you but some 8th AF heavies that are heading out on a raid of their own. They appear to have been engaged already, as some are streaming black smoke. You wish the heavies luck and swing around to avoid the 109s, just as you see 8 specks break away from the rear of the friendly formation and their contrails moving towards the 109s at a considerably faster rate. Yep, these must be the P47 escorts. This is definitely not your fight.
After a quarter of an hour you are over your briefed target, you snap your photos and make for home. You can see some activity in close-by airfields, dust is being kicked up by engine starts, so you assume they are now after you as well. Some 109s are returning with battle damage after their scrap with the 47s and some new ones are taking off, all in all there's a lot of activity going on and you need to slip by undetected. Firewalling the throttles again, you turn away from your briefed heading for a few minutes. Then, you go into a steep dive right down to the weeds. You are now under the radar and they should be looking at the wrong heading. Turning 90 degrees towards your real heading and having the extra speed from the long dive, you should be able to put quite a distance between your real position and the one they estimate...
One and a half hour later you are back at the base. In the evening your photos have been analyzed and the strike planned for the target. You take a look at the suggested flight plan and alter a few things, then distribute it to the squadron. The next evening, you strap into a mosquito with target marker flares and set out to guide the squad to a night raid on the target. As you cross the north sea, you are briefed about contacts, possibly enemy. These Ju88s are at it again...
Wall of text, i know, but sometimes it's better to tell a story than go all technical, as FeatheredIV demonstrated
Just one final word for all this to work we're going to need a lot of dynamic triggers. We can't expect to have all this running on a current day PC, but it can run in the background and spawn/despawn accordingly, as the player nears or moves away from the items in question. Just my 2 cents.