Hi Reflame and welcome to the forum!
Thanks for your feedback! I'll respond to each of your sections below;
In general I am aiming for an accurate-but-modernised remake of Fractalus, so I will be attempting to keep things as close to the original as possible - at least until v1.0, after which I would like to look at making enhancements on the original game.
=== Turrets
The damage caused by turrets is very low. I agree they should cause a bit more damage. The saucers should still cause more damage than the turrets, as the original game had the damage balanced this way. The problem with the saucers is more an issue with their behaviour, which I'll comment on below. For the turrets, the increased damage will hopefully be offset by their targeting system, which takes a few seconds to get an accurate lock.
I think the problem with the number of turrets on higher levels is that they are randomly distributed across the map, independently of other turrets, so it's possible to get clusters of them, and areas where there are no turrets. I will need to check this out and see if it's a distribution problem or a count problem. If it's a distribution problem then I can easily distribute them more evenly across the map.
Your idea for turrets with different levels of firepower is something that could be implemented after v1.0, as it differs from the original game.
=== Saucers
The sun blinking on saucer approach may be a bug with the sun's occlusion testing. I'll look into it.
I have made some changes to the saucer behaviour in v0.7, including reducing the damage and making them slightly slower so that they can be easily outrun. I still need to do more work on the logic for where they appear as they can sometimes appear right next to you, which is not what I had intended.
I recall from the original game that they would approach you head on, and if you managed to dodge them they would disappear or leave you alone. I will look at implementing something similar to this behaviour in the remake as that would make the saucers less difficult to deal with.
I need to do a lot of work on balancing the saucers to make them difficult yet fair. Your observations will help with that work.
=== Level Setting
The level setting affects the number of pilots to rescue, the number of turrets present, and whether saucers appear or not. Saucers only appear on levels 4 and higher. The number of turrets is calculated as (Level - 1), and the number of pilots is calculated as (3 + (Level / 2)).
I will need to check the original game again and have a closer look at how the level number affects various aspects of the gameplay, and then copy that behaviour to the remake.
=== Landing and Collision
I agree the landing process needs to be made a lot smoother and more sensible, particularly as you mention when flying with at velocity 5 and the landing is instant if you're close enough to the mountain. I think the landing process needs some sort of autopilot AI rather than just slowing and descending.
Collisions with mountains do an amount of damage that is proportional to your velocity at the time of the collision. At high velocity, this will destroy the ship. I just checked in the original game, and the damage was gradual as your ship scraped along the terrain, even at maximum velocity. The behaviour in the remake should probably be changed to be more like the original game.
I intend to add a few more sounds for things like being hit by a turret/saucer, collisions with terrain, warning sounds, etc.
=== Instruments and Night Flights
I will have a look at the miniscreen not showing the terrain properly. What you see there should be the same as the physical terrain.
Night flying is incredibly difficult, and I've yet to come up with a decent solution for it. I went back and had another look at the original game's manual, and it mentions that on levels 1-15 you fly near the south pole of Fractalus, which would result in the sun at a perpetually low angle and almost no night time, but on level 16 and above you have the full day/night cycle, and that at night you're "flying blind".
I do need to modify the behaviour of the turrets and saucers at night, as they would have as much difficulty finding you as you would finding them.
The artificial horizon and compass instruments are planned to be added, but I haven't yet implemented them. They will probably help with navigation, and keeps in line with the original game rather than displaying coordinates.
=== Others
The behaviour with launching close underneath a saucer sounds like a bug. I'll check it out.
I think I need to rework the pilot distribution logic, similar to what I will do with the turret distribution logic above, as two of them should not really be that close together.
===
Thanks again for all your feedback!