I wonder, how about laser convergence like XWA has? The downside is it would change balance for sure, since quad fire lasers can all hit 1 fighter, which is very hard in the original.

I didn't like many changes in XWA, that one among them.
My personal tastes don't matter though, so I guess we can add an option to enable/disable it.

In my opinion, the X-Wing or TIE Interceptor are meant to be shotguns in quad fire mode. Best at middle range, their high "dispersion" eases scoring at least one hit on your target when dogfighting nimble enemies.
TIE Fighters and Y-Wings have tighter fire spreading, increasing their precision, but changing their intended use to something slightly different.

However, I have mixed opinion on XWA's unique combined fire mode, where both laser and ion canons would fire at the same time.
I think doing so allowed for some ships to have a chance at dogfighting. In particular bigger transports with widely spread out cannons, but also ships like the B-Wing, whose laser cannons layout was altered since "X-Wing".
In X-Wing, the B-Wing shoots lasers from each of its "arms" and one from below its "head". The ion cannons are placed two under the head, and one on its "foot". This allows for at least one centered laser that permits some precision.
In XWA, the B-Wing shoots lasers from the arms and the foot, and ions from the head. This makes B-Wing more of a shotgun, and sometimes quite hard to hit smaller targets with lasers if they aren't combined with ions at the same time.

Should we consider including combined fire?

Unrelated to the previous, I have some AI doubts.

I have noticed that most of the time, the flight leader does something different than what the other wingmen do.
In X-Wing flight groups have one order and zero, one, or two targets.
For example, in TOD 5, Mission 2. The one mission about defending the parked B-Wings from an Imperial attack, TIE Fighter Alpha targets the B-Wings. However, if you engage them, Alpha 1 tries to escape and kill the B-Wings, while Alpha 2 and 3 keep you busy.
Does this seem to be the rule all over the game? Does the flight leader focus on the primary target, while the wingmen escort the flight leader?
I don't think so, because sometimes other ships will focus on their target and basically ignore enemy fighters even when they are attacked by them, limiting themselves to some evasive maneuvers. For example, TIE Bombers.
It does feel like every ship kind has a slightly different behavior and it will be hard for me to identify them all without help.

I noticed that when I damaged the hull of some TIEs, they turn towards their mothership. In some cases they tried to land on them and in other cases they turned around and continued their mission.

With XWA, some battle roles were exposed to the players, I believe, during the creation of Skirmishes. Also during BoP campaigns, some groups would show particular role names.
Some roles I remember were Space Superiority, Strike, Bombing, Escort, etc.

I think some of them were selectable in those later games, but maybe they were hardcoded for particular ships in X-Wing and TIE Fighter.
For example, bombers (Y-W, B-W, T/B, GUN, TRN) would have the Strike or Bombing role, that determines that they will "stay on target" no matter what, and they will not attempt to engage attackers.
And others (X-W, A-W, T/F, T/I, SHU) would have the space superiority role, that would make wingmen stop following their leader and instead attack back their threats, even when their primary target would be other.

This would explain why some flight groups seem to try to go for their primary target under any circumstance, while others don't.
It would be nice if we could gather evidence of this by pinpointing some of these flightgroups in particular missions. I could observe them and study their behavior so that I can mimic it in the remake.
Otherwise, the mission balance could be seriously affected.
Sorry for the spam, but I really would like some more hints if you have them.

What kind of evasive maneuvers have you seen ships doing in X-Wing?
Do different types of ships perform different evasive maneuvers? Have you seen an A-Wing do something that an X-Wing never does? Or a TIE Fighter doing something a GUN never does?

I have seen some ships do:
- Turn in a particular direction hoping for their attacker to leave, then go back to their previous vector.
- Feint a turn to one direction, then half a second later, turn towards the opposite direction.
- Do a barrel roll while following straight (not very efective, but quite cinematic).
- Do a barrel roll while turning towards one direction (results in a spiral movement). I am not sure if I have ever seen this in X-Wing, or it is from another game.

Any others?

About linked ions and lasers: I wouldn't mind. Reason is - you can emulate the effect in X-Wing and TIE Fighter by setting both to linked fire, then holding down W while holding down the trigger. This will result in the weapons switching many times a second, effectively letting you fire a salvo of each weapon at the same time. Of course, it also fires missiles as well, but once you run out, it's exactly like the XWA mixed fire mode.

I agree with Tarvis regarding linked fire mode. An optional linked fire mode would be nice.

Regarding AI maneuvers, I've got an idea:
We could use the ingame flight recorder to record missions and analyze the AI's tactics in the film room. We could also swap recordings here. What do you think about it?

Yes, I use the recorder all the time. But it is quite time consuming to play thru the whole game and review all missions. It's definitely something that I could get help with. :D

I have spent the whole evening trying to program something as simple as the "Follow Flight Leader" task and I think I will go for a rough first version of all the basic tasks instead of trying to mimic everything to perfection.

Which missions would you need to be recorded and which ones have been recorded already?

It doesn't really matter which ones. We don't really need to record all of them.
Also, I have noticed that the film room is quite buggy when run on a modern computer. The recording usually ends looking totally different from what you recorded.

Anyway, my point was that we needed to identify the different ways flight groups and individual craft behave, and possibly document them with a recording and a minute:second index to be able to observe them. It doesn't have to be done for all missions. Just a little description of what you have seen them doing, and possibly indicate in which mission and which flight group. If it has a recording, even better.
I usually choose missions where there are particularly clear objectives for every ship, so that we can see how they attempt to achieve them.

I've just played ToD Missions 9 and 10.
As far as I can tell, the TIE Bombers stubbornly keep going after their targets, even if you fire a missile at them.
They only evade when their hull is damaged.
I've film room and video recordings of those missions. Would you like to have them?

Thanks. No need if you can describe their behavior that simple. I would need only a recording if you would see something fancier, like some weird twist and spin or stuff like that.

Then I guess TIE Bombers (probably also Y-Wings and B-Wings?) stay on target no matter what. I wonder if that depends on their particular orders, because I remember some TIE Bombers performing evasive maneuvers when they fly in formation, then coming back to formation.

Were their hull damaged when they did that?

I have an idea which could make analyzing the AI a bit easier:
We could write test missions to observe the AI's behavior. What do you think about it?

That would be perfect, yes.

It could be something similar to that training mission in TIE Fighter where there are 4 containers, and upon attacking one of them, multiple waves of a particular kind of ship come in. We could place a big, disabled capital ship for them to attack, and then observe how they react to the player's attacks.

I have made a little mission to test the AI behavior for the different types of starfighters.
AI attacks ISD
AI attacks B-Ws
I notice that GUNs and SHUs behave quite differently from all others.