My two cents...

I've been playing combat flight sims since 8 bit days (bought my first computer for that very purpose), but I'm a single-player only guy. I want to play a dynamic career-type game with any sort of first-person sim. Having seen that done more-or-less right a few times, I won't even buy a game where the only single player campaign is scripted missions. With that background, here's my wish list for this game:

1) Your campaign charactor should be able to win promotions, medals, etc... These should be based on in-game accomplishments, regardless of difficulty settings. Assuming difficulty settings work as in the RB games, what happens to your charactor in the game would be based "raw score" before it is multiplied by the difficulty setting. The adjusted score would just be for "bragging rights" among players.

2) I don't so much care about dynamicism in the sense that the effects of your missions are persistent (the wreckage of the building you bombed is there in all subsequent missions, etc...). I also don't care if my mission results impact the course of the war, strategic situation, etc... My concern is that I don't want to even know what TYPE of mission is next until I go to the mission briefing, even if it is the 100th time I've played the campaign. Missions should be totally randomly generated on the fly, with the percentages for each mission type based on the current strategic situation around my squadron's base and the type of aircraft with which we are equipped.

3) I think the most realistic way to model squadron-mate AI is that every individual pilot has a level of natural ability, but they start out "green" - i.e. flying below their natural ability. With experience, "greenness" wears off until they reach their natural ability, but no amount of experience can make them any better than that. Experience isn't the same thing as score, either. I think historically it was mostly a matter of living through a few missions even if you didn't shoot anything down yourself. The LucasFilms games really bugged me in that regard. Experience was equal to score and both AI pilot skill level and rank were based on it. To get to the top AI skill level in SWOTL, the pilot had to be a General. Pretty silly when you consider how many of the top aces never held a rank higher than Captain during their combat flying careers:)

4) None of this hopping from plane to plane stuff. The only plane I want to control is the one flown by my pilot charactor, and if it goes down - end of mission.

5) It may not have been historical, but I liked the ability in RB (once you got high enough in score) to select any plane used by your air service as a personal plane regardless of what the rest of your squadron was flying.

6) Finally, I'd really like the ability to save at ANY time - even during a mission, even during combat. The reason here is personal:) My wife is highly intolerant of computer gaming, and I have to play when she is busy with something (sleeping in on weekends, taking a bath on weeknights, etc...). When she's wants me to stop and come "intact with the family", she doesn't understand that I have to finish the mission and fly back to base before I can save the game. When we were just engaged, it was almost over before it started when she turned up at my apartment while I was in the middle of a furball and it took about half an hour to get to a point where I could save:)