Give me some "holy sh... did that just happen" ideas

[Alien]

Oh, and VERY SIMPLE commands by manouvers. I mean, i.e. reaction on friendly fire. You sweep your wings and then see your friend leveling with you, taking hand to canopy and flying away. It would be very nice to see

[Feuerfalke]

Well, considering the initial wish:

This is what I always felt was important for SP-experience:

It's an absolute immersion killer, if you can be sure you're alone in the sky, maybe one other friendly squad and 1-4 enemy squads, maybe, but groundtargets only at your base and in your targetarea.
In games like Falcon, however, you have a feeling of being part of an actual war going on. There are numerous other plans and groups acting together, bombing targets, capping, etc. Also the enemy territory is never empty. You see convoys heading for the front, ships on the sea, and literally hundreds of units fighting on the ground along the fence-line.
It makes a huge difference, e.g. when just flying from Germany to England staring at the sea below and actually seeing or even reporting shipping and watch other units attack those. Maybe even submarines or speedboats nearby.
On the british side, what about squadrons being on alert. When your group runs into trouble, you can call for assistance.

In SilentHunter this also combines with being witness of important battles or operations. That's also definitely great for immersion.

As part of that, the most thrilling and intense moments I had, were when going into combat, taking of or enroute to the fence-line and you see other planes returning, smoking, engines out, attempting belly-landings, etc.
Also damages to groundunits, equipment and buildings staying that way over missions.

[slm]

Three ideas:

-a bit more AI added to ships. If they notice a bomb/torpedo attack they could do some evasive manouvres, instead of staying on the path planned in Mission Builder. Like here:

http://users.swing.be/navbat/edito/navires/yamato2.jpg

-plane damage modeling effect not in IL2: in some planes when getting enough damage, the landing gear would go to landing position while flying and slow down the plane

-add a small explosion object to mission builder. Person making a mission could place such object inside buildings, static ships, fuel trucks etc. When it is hit during game, it would produce an explosion. The strength could be set in mission builder.

This way you could simulate things like ground attack hitting an ammo dump, fuel truck etc. Player couldn't see this effect in advance, because the object would be hidden inside bigger objects.