Hello all, I currently taking part in a game interface course and I would love to have some feedback on some design choices.

My game design is around a flight combat simulator, such as the Ace Combat series. You would play as a fighter pilot going through large, linear levels, and you must fulfill certain objectives in order to beat that level. Since these levels are supposed to be “large”, there can be times where flying manually is slow, boring, annoying, and it's starting to cause your fingers to hurt due holding in the throttle button. One function that would be added would be an auto-pilot, allowing the player to relax their hands and still move onto the next part of the level.

Next would be the flight controls. Since the player is flying a fighter jet, the player will have flight controls. Not all users are familiar with flight controls, so there would be beginner and expert control schemes for the flight controls. In beginner controls, instead of the player rolling their plane, they would just bank to the direction they wanted to go.

Finally, some missions would have allies, and sometimes (or all of the time) you would have the ability to give them commands, regarding their weapons, formation, and whether they are free to fire or not. This would not only let the player be able to feel like they have help based on what they want, but they will have some help should things be harder than they expected (if they have their allies still alive, that is).

I am open to all ideas, suggestions, questions, etc. and thank you for your time.