Am I in command?

It has been brought to our attention that the player might not actually be aware of being in command in the missions where he can order people around.

Changing the briefing cutscenes is obviously a no-go at this point, to we're open for other suggestions on how to make the player aware of being in command.

Well, for me is quite obvious. In missions where you initially aren't a flight lead the #1 gives you order to take command (to see how you handle the flight lead role). Otherwise (when you are a flight lead from the start of the mission) you launch first from the deck of the Hermes. The second situation could be not so obvious to everyone, so maybe at the start of the mission or during first engagement wingman could say something like: "I got your six covered, awaiting orders...",

Or maybe give a hint in the objectives screen after the briefing (no new voice-overs needed) for example: "Take command of your flight and ...<here the original objective>"

I would agree that having a bullet point in the mission objectives text would probably be sufficient. As damson said, you can figure it out based on launch order, but it seems like who's in charge is the kind of thing everyone should be clear on *before* you launch 😉

I would also agree that some sort of vocal query for orders might be nice, but that would probably involve more work (I don't have a good sense for how much more).

Another idea would be to have a listing of which pilots are flying which positions as part of the mission objective text; i.e. a bullet point that was something like:

* Wing Assignments: Alpha 1: Phalanx Alpha 2: Sandman Beta 1: Ninja Beta 2: Assassin

It's not strictly necessary (as the assignment of who is in which wing is usually part of the briefing), but it would be a good reminder of who was in (and who was in change of) each wing at the start of every mission.

Bullet points in the objectives list do not exist. Every line is not simply a bullet point but an objective that is processed by the game. We cannot simply add arbitrary text there.

As for the wing assignments... the Squadleader says the names in the order of command. So if he says "Sandman, Honeybear and Phalanx" it is likely that Sandman is in command, unless he states something like "with XY in command" afterwards. Also you can see your wing position in the ship selection screen. The player ship is marked orange.

Any further suggestions?

Well, I guess that I don't know enough about the engine to know where you can add text. Is there anywhere that you can easily add a couple lines of text that the player can read before a mission?

I did, eventually, notice that you can tell in the "ship selection" screen, but it took me a while. Also, I hadn't picked up that the briefings listed the members in order. Is there some way to explicitly point out one (or both) of these features to the player? The problem isn't that it's hard to figure out who's in command, it's that the player is left to discover these things on their own. I understand that you want to be "old school" and not hand-hold the player too much, but this seemed like a basic enough issue that the player shouldn't have to learn it through experience.

Again, if it's too much of a pain, it may not be worth it to fix; it was just something that struck me as odd during my playthrough.

I like the idea of voice queries. A wingman could simply ask "What are your orders, Sir?". That happened in the old WC-titles, too. Maybe even a "Sandman, what are your orders?". The aspects mentioned before, like the order of the wing assignments, maybe a bit too subtile for many players to notice.